Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9412080002
SECTION: HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE PAGE: HGG-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the early 1930s when they were children, Lucy Hazlegrove and her sister received a dollhouse from their grandparents. It was made to order by a carpenter in Chicago, said Hazlegrove, and was the same kind of Victorian home in which they lived in St. Louis, with French and Spanish continental influences.
"The dollhouse looks like a bastard Tudor house with palladian windows; the roofing is made out of slate-colored leather; and it originally came with miniatures, made in Germany, with bisque-faced dolls of that period," she said.
Hazelgrove said the dollhouse was really her dollhouse, that she was the one who cared for it. By the time she got it back from her sister's children it needed renovation, repair and many new furnishings. Her daughter, Sarah, loved it too, so Hazlegrove started filling it up again.
"We'd dress it up for Christmas, and when our house opened up for Garden Week, the dollhouse was on display, too," said Hazlegrove. When she traveled to England, she saw what they were doing with dollhouses, and "began to feel less apologetic about being an adult with a dollhouse."
Hazelgrove began replacing the furniture with fine miniatures, and began looking for new people to replace her original family of mother, father and two daughters - reminiscent of her own childhood home.
Now, the house has been repainted. The new bisque-faced dolls include three girls and a boy, just like the Hazlegrove family of today. The children wear smocked dresses. The dining room wall, once sporting a mural that Hazlegrove, a painter and sculptor, did herself, has now been revamped.
"I scraped the oil paint off the walls, and Harry Carter of Bowles, Nelson, Powers did the inside to look like scenic wallpaper. I put wainscoting in the dining room, and have hung petit point Christmas stockings on the fireplace in the parents' room upstairs."
In addition, Hazlegrove has needlepointed and petit-pointed area rugs, reproduced some of her own home's finest paintings for the dollhouse, and is still looking for a really good dining room rug.
"Women love tiny things; it's the child in them, and I would work on the dollhouse when I was under stress," she said. It's a way of centering herself, she added.
Hazlegrove also said she has faithfully kept a record of the dollhouse purchases, which Cynthia Draper, owner of the dollhouse shop, Mini Things, urges clients to do.
"In my classes, I recommend starting out by establishing a book - a record of purchases with photos for insurance companies. I have people who are true collectors who don't tally anything," she said, but items can range from 80 cents to an $8,000 table.
"A lot of people do it because it represents what they want out of their real house - their dream home - and because they've never had one as a child. This is interior designing. There are some Virginia Tech interior design students who come in to do dioramas for their spring project. I even have gardening things. There's a world out there in miniature," said Draper.
Draper, who still has the dollhouse she received when she was 13 years old, said dollhouse collections are nothing new. There are still houses around from the 1500s, she said, but dollhouse furnishings were not properly scaled until the late 1970s.
To start a collection for a child, she advises to wait until they are about 5 or 6 years old, and then encourage the child to have fun with it.
"Let kids fingerpaint it, and as they get older, you can renovate, take off the wallpaper, add on wings, and redecorate," she said.
Draper sells punch-out dollhouse kits that are relatively inexpensive, but her assembled wooden houses are all nailed together, "so you could stand on it and it wouldn't break," she said. Those range in size from 24 inches wide and 1 foot deep to 54 inches wide and 40 inches deep.
Although when she started her business five years ago she did carry houses that were die cut and glue-together (inexpensive), she said she found they weren't substantial enough.
"I always carried nailed-together, finished houses as well as kits," she said, and she and her husband will also take order for custom-designed and built houses. She has customers who come back year to year to add on rooms, and she keeps a wish list for customers who have their eye on particular pieces that they'd love to have waiting for them to unwrap on a holiday.
Sam Putney of Roanoke Rails, Inc. said a lot of people love their obsessions and collections. Anything from an inexpensive ballcard to a $100,000 Cadillac can be collected.
"If you're projecting to the future, you are preserving and enhancing value," he said. The other reason for collecting is the sense of acquisition.
Putney said he has loved trains from the time he was 2 years old and received his first electric train set. But he advises that in shopping for a train for a child, the best approach is to purchase non-collectibles they can use and enjoy. You may not even want to buy an electric set until the child is 6 or older.
There are many inexpensive - and some cheaply made - train sets, he said. One good one is the HO Scale Electric Train Set, which is about two times as large as the N scale (1/160 ratio). O gauge trains, he explained, are generally called Lionel, and are usually reserved for the serious collector. Well made, plastic trains will hold their value and stand up to playing, said Putney.
But in his business, limited-run HO brass steam locomotives for $200 to $2,000 are also available. The important thing, he advised, is to talk to shop owners and also determine what is best for the person you are buying for. In addition to trains, scenery, tables and accessories can be given for holiday presents. Putney's son, whose train set is assembled in the Roanoke Rails shop, comes in occasionally to fiddle with it, rearrange things and continue in the family tradition.
In the railroad town of Roanoke, one thing is sure: Train collectors definitely won't be alone.
Another very popular item to start and perpetuate collections with is ornaments. The owner of Ornamentally Speaking, Ken Murphy, said his store carries a lot of Czechoslovakian, German and Polish ornaments. According to Murphy, there are three basic companies his store carries that distribute new ornaments in limited editions for the Christmas season. Old World Christmas has glass ornaments which range from $4 to $60. Department 56 produces pewter snowbabies, porcelain villages (which they don't carry), resin ornaments and mercury glass ornaments.
Christopher Radko, a designer in Poland, makes ornaments out of old molds and has become so popular, said Murphy, that Radko has established factories for his ornaments in Germany and Italy as well as Poland.
"These glass ornaments are ornate, and a little larger than most," said Murphy. He added that they retail for about $8 to $50.
He said that while he hasn't really run into people who have started collections for others, some will buy everything that's new, "because companies will stop production on things and they become very sought-after.
For instance, Old World Christmas offers a glass Santa nightlight, introducing a new one each year, and every three years stops production on one. They are now about $40 each.
by CNB