DUBOIS GROCER SHOP, PART II

As promised in my last post, I am now going to post pictures and write about our attempt to do a 1/12th scale model of the Dubois Grocer's shop. It is a real shop and can be found on the Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg. The facade was completed in Peter Kendall's class so our first chore was to create the bare shelves and counters in the shop. Once those were done, we began to create the items that would fill the shop. Tom did so much lathe work creating items for the shelves. Many things which appear to be ceramic or glass are really wood which were then painted by me and often completed with labels from my computer searches. The internet was an invaluable source for me in doing this project because I found so many appropriate labels to use. Early on in this project, I saw Jane Graber at a Tom Bishop show in Ft. Lauderdale. I purchased a number of pieces from her incredible selection of pottery and ordered more. Her bird bottles are a familiar sight in Williamsburg and they are seen in most of the real shops in the town. Tom later tried his luck at making a bird bottle on the lathe and it turned out quite well. We used some of his lathe bottles to fill up a shelf or two. However, whenever we put a bird bottle, front and center, we used one of Jane's authentic ones. Some of Jane's Colonial mugs are shown in the first picture...the mugs are sitting of the floor awaiting a postion on a shelf. Many of the bottles in the shop are done on the lathe with labels from the computer. I have a number of catalogs from Colonial Williamsburg and that gave me more ideas of things to put on the shelves. I ordered blown glass Shrub glasses from Ferenc Albert. He calls his glasses 18th Century glasses and I suspect that is to ensure that he does not infringe on the actual terminology used by Williamsburg. The Colonial lady who runs our shop was made by the London Company and was purchased for me by my daughter at a shop in New York. This was a fun project. I was indebted to Peter Kendall for the class in which the idea was born and also for his help when I aked him for additional bricks to finish the bottom of the shop. Peter had used bricks from a source in England and I needed additional ones so that all along the bottom of the shop were the same. A few words about the pictures which I will add shortly: We tried as much as possible to keep everything as it was in the original shop and some details were available to us because of the pictures we took in Williamburg. The door to the shop was done with wood placed diagonally and we did the same with our door. We took a picture of the window display from outside the shop and duplicated the display in our shop. Tom made the chandelier as a copy of the original. Once again the lathe came in handy as he used it to do the wooden bulb at the bottom of the fixture. Now for some pictures.

As a final thought on this project, in retrospect, I wish we had checked to see what was behind the curtain in the shop. That is, what was upstairs, downstairs and in the back room? I think I would have liked to do an accurate duplication of the shop, not just the shop itself,but all of the building. There is a lovely old chimney that would have been interesting to recreate, but alas, we didn't do that so the shop is not a true duplication.

THE DUBOIS GROCER

When at Williamsburg that fourth time, Tom and I visited the Dubois Grocer before our classes had started. We were fascinated by the interior of the shop and decided that when we got back to Miami, we would reconstruct the interior and that is what we did. It was such a fun project; it took a lot of time, but we love the results and have never regretted the decison to take on the extra work. Tom and I enjoy joint projects as I am sure is no surpriseto anyone reading this, and often he is more eager than I to move on to bigger and more difficult things. On our visits to the shop we took dimensions, checked out the stock, took pictures from all angles, talked with the shop keeper, who had worked in that shop for ten years, and took all of the information home with us to begin the project. The first step was building all of the shelves and counters and that was accomplished with the aid of the dimensions we had taken inside the shop. Once the shelves were all assembled and in place we started to add the items for sale. I had questioned the shop keeper about the many items which were not known in Colonial times. She told me that all food items had to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Health Department so that is why canned goods were available for sale. When we stocked our shop, no canned goods were included because we wanted all items to be ones that would have been available in 18th Century America. I have now added some pictures of the shop, one exterior and several of the interior. My next article will deal with how we did the interior of our Dubois Grocer shop.

EARLY PROJECTS REDUX

Earlier when I was writing about "A Door For All Seasons" I mentioned former Miamian, Donna Parker. I discovered her in the early 80's and was delighted to take some of her classes. I think it might have been her projects that had me find my love for detail and that has been my mainstay all through my work in miniatures. Donna had wonderful projects and what was unusual was that everything in her roomboxes was made by the class attendees. There might be one kit or two, but if so, the kits had to be put together and painted or in some way made to be one's own. In the project pictured here we made a Christmas florist shop. We constructed the box from a kit and then made everything inside. Most of the flowers were made from Fimo and there were shelves to be built, garlands and wreaths to be made and a lovely Christmas tree to be decorated. At one time that Christmas tree was lighted, but unfortunately, this was very early for wiring and it did not last very long. The project was a lovely one and still is even though it was built in late 1982.




Next was a breakfast room/patio, a more elaborate project, but an interesting and lovely one. Again everything in it was made by the ones who took the class. Donna had patterns for everything and what we could not accomplish in actual classes was done at home between class times. This particular roombox had a bit of landscaping, my very first attempts and I soon discovered how much fun landscaping could be. We even made the dishes for the hutch because Donna had learned a technique somewhere of making dishes using wallpaper coated heavily with several coats of Decal-It. The dishes turned out quite well and because wallpaper was used for the patterns, they could match the chosen decor. Again, there were some kits, mainly the four chairs for the table and Fimo came out again only this time desserts were made. Now for a couple of pictures.......






The next project was one I made as a Christmas present for my sister-in-law in Maryland. She collects music boxes and this was my version of Christmas music box. She loved it and I enjoyed making all of the holiday items to fill up the space in the windows.