Tim Sidford, Miniaturist

Tim Sidford, Miniaturist

I have admired Tim Sidford’s work for some time. Every once in a while I scroll through his voluminous Flickr photostream to find new treasures and revisit old favorites. Here are the results of today’s journey. The text is mainly Tim’s words.

Edward Wright Dollhouse

This house (built by Edward Wright) was meant to be finished months ago (I have been commissioned to decorate both interior and exterior). But recently life has been rather busy. Indeed the last year has

probably been the most intense, stressful, exciting and wonderful of my whole life, which was all very distracting and time-consuming, and so this project has by necessity had to limp along at an embarrassingly slow pace. I am incredibly grateful to my client for her patience and kind understanding.

But there is a plan! I have cleared the diary for the next few weeks of all work commitments in order to become a Craft Hermit, surfacing only for pasta and Ovaltine. Wish me luck!

The Marie-Antoinette House

One of six houses inspired by Queens/influential women from history. Each room has a portrait of the Queen and is decorated in the style of her era, and will come with a scroll with a brief biography.

Floor to ceiling height 17cm.
Featuring customized Playmobil furniture. Books, fireplace, and clock handmade. Floor/ceiling/walls handpainted.

[This solicited a comment from rassen99, which I found interesting]

“
I have a pair of my maternal Great Grandmother’s ivory earrings that she had made in London from Indian ivory back in the 1890s, and they look so very much like the Grecian or Roman woman on the right-hand flap of your house. As a child when I played with them (who would have thought!!!!) I called the one facing to the right, Fauna, and the one facing to the left, Flora as that was when my Great Grandmother and my Grandmother taught me about ancient mythology. It looks like you have my Great Grandmother’s goddess Fauna on Marie Antoinette’s wall! What a delightful coincidence!”

Tim’s Send-Up Collage

Sweetington Hotel postcard, the 1930s
Found this postcard of the Sweetington Hotel in a junk shop 😉 It is London’s only hotel built exclusively for Playmobil people, I believe!!

On the back is written:

My dearest dear, my sweet Doris, London very grey and rainy. Hotel v nice (hot water laid on all day AND night!) although food quite intolerable. A flurry of excitement this morning when Fred Astaire checked out!
Warm regards, Cyril’

Seriously though, I am new to this collage business and it is so much fun (and possibly addictive…oh dear). I have of course cheated slightly…the external hotel view is of a real life-sized hotel on the Strand, but the rest are my miniature projects.

*****

Now that you have had a glimpse of the Mythical Sweeting Hotel, you might like to visit the Mythical Sweetington Castle.

Susan Downing, with Patrick Owens

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I invite you to visit my Etsy Shop where I offer many accessories and pieces of furniture in 1:12 scale.