ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997 TAG: 9704220028
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-22 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: JUDY SCHWAB / Special to THE ROANOKE TIMES
David Nickerson measures memories, then he captures them. He crafts miniatures of old houses and historic structures with a mix of scientific precision, artistic license and emotion.
A former Roanoke city school teacher and administrator, Nickerson moved to Blacksburg with his wife 3 1/2 years ago. Retired from teaching chemistry in the city schools, he spends most days in his garage shop in the quiet Preston Forest neighborhood.
Because his wife, Carole, works as a top aide in the president's office at Virginia Tech, his companion in the shop is his dog Kate. While Nickerson builds tiny houses in his garage workshop, Kate chases squirrels.
Nickerson's current fascination is Newport. The small gathering of buildings and families off U.S. 460 in Giles County is a mix of the old and new, mostly old. Although Newport was a thriving community before and during the Civil War, a fire on April 1, 1902, destroyed most of the town. Nickerson has a copy of the photograph of what was left of Newport. The buildings erected since the fire are nearly 100 years old.
He has completed miniatures of Newport's old school - now the recreation center, with rooms rented to local artists; the old general store - now housing a heating and cooling company; the Newport-Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, founded in 1850; the covered bridge; the old woolen mill; the slave cabin (only the chimney is left); and the Taylor house where Mary and Harry Taylor live and have the Gingerbread House, a crafts and collectibles shop.
Nickerson credits the Taylors for his inspiration about Newport. Shortly after arriving in Blacksburg, Nickerson went into the Emporium, which was a crafts store in the old general store, and showed Mary some of the miniatures he had
made of his family's homes. He said he was interested in doing some of the buildings in Newport but didn't know where to begin. Mary suggested the slave cabin. Although someone had burned it down, there was a print of it by Robert Turner Jr. in the store.
With only a stone chimney left of the cabin, Nickerson set to work in his usual way. He arrives at the scene with a camcorder and measuring tape and starts to examine the site, "unless, of course , going to offend somebody.
"I like to measure things. I want to get the architectural detail. I don't want just doll houses," Nickerson said.
After the careful measuring, Nickerson draws the buildings on graph paper, each square corresponding to a unit of measure. This is where the scientific method begins to falter. When asked what scale he uses he quickly said, "I knew you'd ask me that, and I don't know. There's a fair amount of accuracy, but it's not precise. I use artistic license."
The building starts with 1/16-inch plywood, and then it's a free-for-all as far as materials are concerned. Nickerson builds up a depth to the walls to achieve the detail of set-in windows. Wooden structures have tiny lapped siding of wood pieces. The old covered bridge has the interior timbers that can be seen in the real thing. The bridge even has the holes knocked into the outside that match the real one, which can still be seen down Virginia 601 or Clover Hollow Road.
Nickerson paints the pieces with acrylics, and his painting lessons with local artists Nadine Allen and Victoria Jordan Stone are evident in his results.
The windows look like they reflect the sky, the roof has the patina of age and rain, and the color of the wood on the miniature of the old woolen mill is exactly that matte grey of old paint-peeled siding.
The metal-roofed buildings are tin, and the trees outside the buildings are carefully selected parts from the trees around his house where the squirrels escape at Kate's barking.
The miniatures end up representing about half the building, just the size to put on a shelf. He makes two, one for the Taylor's Gingerbread house, where they take orders for him and one for himself so that he can duplicate them if necessary. The Newport pieces range in price from $75 to $150. It takes 50 to 100 hours to make one miniature. Nickerson considers this his hobby and is not bothered by the labor rate.
Nickerson made his first miniature when he was 17. His mother had some of those small house replicas popular today that are usually displayed over door frames. They are made from a flat piece of wood cut in the shape of a house and roof. Architectural details are painted on the front rather than meticulously built into the model as in Nickerson's pieces.
Although Nickerson grew up in Baltimore, he spent summers in a small town in Maine with his grandparents. His first miniature of the flat-wood variety and was done from memory because a forest fire had swept the area and burned 200 houses. That first piece conjured up the old casino where families gathered for entertainment. The one house left after the fire was his father's nanny's little cottage. The woman had soaked the house with a garden house for several days before the fire arrived. That house, with some additions is the one Nickerson's family still uses when they go on vacation.
This combination of woodworking skill and interest in historical buildings seems to be in Nickerson's blood. In addition to the miniatures of houses and buildings his family has known and loved, his home displays impressive pieces of furniture made by his grandfather and photographs of houses that were special to his family. In fact, many of his miniatures were "done from the picture and my memory, and that's what's fun," Nickerson said. "I get into these things emotionally first."
One of the photos shows a house in Amherst, Mass., that was 200 years old when he was a boy. His grandmother was curator there, and he sometimes led tours as a child.
In the hallway of Nickerson's house is an eighteenth-century Hadley chest. While no one in his family built it, his grandfather did write the book that documents and explains the history of these New England hope chests.
Put all those influences together, add technique and talent and you get miniature buildings that capture the likeness and spirit of homes and buildings in miniature.
The Newport miniatures are on display at the Gingerbread House in the heart of downtown Newport on Virginia 42 across from the church. The shop is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. The covered bridge in Newby CNBport has been faithfully reproduced by David Nickerson (ran on
NRV-1). 2. Dave Nickerson (left) credits Mary Taylor (right) and her
husband, Harry, for his inspiration about Newport. He holds a
miniature of the Taylor house. 3. Dave Nickerson has reproduced the
front-half of the old woolen mill right down to the scruffy shrubs.
(B&W) 4. It was suggested by Mary Taylor that Nickerson make a
miniature of the slave cabin (left) in Newport. Using Robert
Turner's painting as a model, Nickerson recreated it in the form of
his front-half miniature. 5. Newport-Mount Olivet United Methodist
Church (above) was founded in 1850. The detail in the old Newport
High School (below) miniature includes window shades drawn at
different heights. 6. Nickerson with his miniature of Taylor's
Store, a landmark in Newport where Virginia 42 zig-zags through
downtown. 7. David Nickerson (left) credits Mary Taylor (right) and
her husband, Harry, for his inspiration about Newport. He holds a
miniature of the Taylor house. color.