Thursday, 26 December 2013

Boxing Day musings

Just in case you find yourself here for the first time I thought I'd let you know how my blogs work.  I have one for each project.  Some are sold (!), some are finished and some are just ideas with maybe some bits of collecting being done for them;  but there will always be one blog with a project in process. 

I do one 'build' in the summer when I am in the UK and one in the winter in the USA.  

At the time of writing my 2013 summer project was Chocolat.  That project is finished and will appear in a series of articles in Dolls House & Miniature Scene magazine next year.  

I am now in Naples in Florida for the winter and my current project is one of a set of three, quarter scale, houses.  The blog for this is My Quarter Life.  So, until I return to the UK in April and begin my 2014 Summer project the quarter scale blog will be the active one.

I do sometimes nip in and out of the others for some reason or another but, in the main the two active blogs will be the current project and the Dolls House Shows blog.

Thursday, 3 October 2013

My final Bentleys Post


Bentleys sold last week to a lovely lady who I know will cherish it and use it well.  Local too which meant she was able to pick it up within an hour or so of the bids on EBay finishing.  That was really good.  She would have liked it as it stood, complete with fixtures and fittings but sadly I had already sold some of them.  She did take a lot of what I had left though and has been back since for some more, so I hope she has a good start on her 'new' shop.

This blog will remain up for her and anyone else to visit but won't be added to by me.  Goodbye to (my) Bentleys and Ellen, Daisy and the others, just as in real life the shop has gone on to new owners and I wish them all well.

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

Sixty Years of Lino





If you are looking for lino (from 1910 to 1970) check out this site: Retro Miniatures


It is a new kid on the block - born today! and is absolutely fabulous. There are masses of choices and printed on brilliant material - looks just like lino - you can have gloss or matt finish and is really affordable. She also offers - Lino rugs!!! and fuzzy rugs and even Wall Lino - yes, trust me, it was a big deal once.

Sunday, 8 September 2013

Pick up from Miniatura?

Are you going to Miniatura?  
Do you want this shop?  
I can meet you there with it so you don't have to pick it up from Bury.


£190

You can turn this into any shop you want - the name comes off easily.  It is fully lit and decorated with 2 quality lit fireplaces and wiring and bulbs in place for two other fires.  This photo shows counters in place - they are not offered with the shop but ask if you are interested in buying them - they would be £50.  The cost of the initial house and the materials used to complete it is well over five hundred pounds, so you save all that and the hours needed top make it.






Saturday, 7 September 2013

Photo albums

I have 58 web albums out there and have just discovered today that the link I have been happily posting here there and everywhere does not take you to them!  Apparently the (not-so) wonderful Picasa web albums doesn't have a single link to 'all albums' which you can pass out to folk - only a single link to each album.  Aaaaarrrggh!  This meant I have to sort out 58 albums between 11 blogs - and, believe me, it is a laborious process.  I have made a start and some blogs, like this one, are sorted.  

The irony is that when you get to a single album all you have to do to access all of them is click on the heading which says 'Marilyn Ormson's Gallery'.

Monday, 2 September 2013

Shopping

I am selling off my stash.  The first forty items from about two hundred are up and ready to go.  Click here Lilliput Minis.  There is a link in the right hand column for it too.

Monday, 26 August 2013

Follow by email

I have a lot of people on a list for each blog that I send an email to each time I do a new post.  If you are one of them and reading this would you please just click on the Follow by email link on the right.  It is totally safe and private, you are just making a link between me and you so you are notified automatically when a new post is added.  I know from having this long list of email folk that many people don't like signing up for the Followers part of blogging or adding me to an RSS feed - thank you to all those that do.

Friday, 28 June 2013

Farewell to Bentleys


I have just made a new album for Bentleys called Finished Project.

Have a look if you want to see how the rooms turned out.  There are a few things still needed such as blinds and drapes (!) which are a pretty big omission and then fiddly things like the odd painting or mirror.  Also I never did do the left hand window dressing - mea culpa.

It is no use trying to convince myself I will return to it and finish it off.  Once I have moved on to the next thing (currently Chocolat) the previous project is defunct for me.  Bentleys will actually be sold next summer to make way for the 2015 project - Starfish Cottage.  My RL house only has room for two houses at a time and Chocolat will have moved into Bentleys place when Starfish Cottage is wheeled in.  It happened this way with Wentworth Court and I find I am content to let them go.

It has been a process of discovering that I really love making an idea concrete and then I have no interest in continuing to collect things for it or 'playing' with the building.  I build a frozen moment in time and when that's pretty much there I seem to be done with it.  So, Bentleys will probably be partially stripped of its contents even before I leave this year as I can see one or two things that will move on to Chocolat.  Stupid buying two of something? 

It was the second dolls house I have done and I loved it all.  The research was fascinating and I discovered so many things I would have thought I couldn't do along the way.  No farewell is easy but many of them have to be done whether we like it or not.

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Knitting! sort of

No, you must not laugh... this is my first attempt at 1/12th knitting.... and probably my last.

The big holes are not dropped stitches they are created by (accidentally) knitting below the stitch.  As it is nigh on impossible see the thing, that is hardly surprising.  I was working with size 19 needles and a single embroidery thread!

I began working with what was described as a beginner's garter stitch shawl pattern - full of PSSO and YON and M1... not that any of the knitting codes phase me as I am a fairly skilled knitsmith, BUT they have to be joking as far as this stuff goes for a beginner.  I had ten attempts as I wasn't going to be beaten and then... I was beaten.  



I scrapped that and did a basic cast on, enough to look wide enough, and proceeded to knit one row and on the next row decrease one stitch at each end of the row.  I repeated these two rows until I ran out of stitches. Now that's what I call a shawl for a beginner. By guess and by God it made a small shoulder shawl of sorts.  Right scale for its size and a good scale for the fabric texture.  

I might come back to it and put a fringe on.  It will probably be OK for what I want it for, which is to hang on a hook on the back of the kitchen door as daisy's shawl for nipping back and forth to next door (home). It will only be a bit of screwed up something or other, looking vaguely like a shawl.









Just so you feel sorry for me and see how I suffer for my art, this is what my poor finger looked like by the time I had finished.  Those nasty thin number 19 needles are lethally pointy.

Pictures in Minis - Benetleys - Made by me

Sunday, 14 April 2013

Where have I been?

I cannot believe I haven't been in here since March; I had to keep checking that was so. 

Sadly it is time to pretty much leave the Bentleys blog and move on to Chocolat as the current one.  This is my third summer and Chocolat is my third project so any shared project ramblings really need to fit in that chronology.  As with Wentworth, my first summer's project (2011) I will no doubt pop in and out of here as I add bits and bobs to Bentleys to finish it off.  I still have quite a lot to do but, as I said the rest will have moved on to Chocolat and the summer of 2013.

These are things for Bentleys which I bought at Pudsey on the 13th April





You will have to scramble over to Chocolat and even My Quarter Life to see the rest of my purchases but this  little  shadow box will probably be stripped out and the contents used in the shop.  I hope to redo the box in another way.  Right now I am considering collecting foody/kitchen things and hanging it in my kitchen.  Not sure but there is no rush and for now I am just enjoying it perched on my work table.  This was the first of my Children in Need Purchase for the princely sum of a fiver - what a bargain.










Sunday, 3 March 2013

Dolls House and Miniature Scene... and me!

Now the Wentworth series has finished I thought I might let you know when the stuff I have written/am writing will appear in Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine.  None of these dates are cast in stone of course.  If you click on any names mentioned it should take you to more information.

I hope this list is useful in case there is one particular one you are interested in and you don't already subscribe to the magazine.  You can buy a single copy direct from DH&MS if you don't have a dolls house shop/bookstore to order from.  

That said, here comes some bald promotion for the magazine on my part:  I spoke to a couple of people at the Orlando show who are totally in love with the iPad version.  It means you get to carry loads of magazines around for quick reference (or a slow read) and are able to really zoom in on the details you want to look at.  It does mean you miss out on any freebies which get included with the magazine now and then, but you can still print out any free printies or patterns so you don't lose out on those.  Obviously you can also have a download to your computer and there's no postage to pay which is great for my American chums.



Smallsea Museum, Carmel


California Dreamin'

May (?) issue 
on sale o/a 21 March





Minuette Dollhouse Miniatures










Sarasota Show Review

May issue 
on sale o/a 21 March 







Quarter scale kitchen by Grandgirl Miniatures



Orlando Show Review

June issue 
on sale o/a 18 April









Quarter Source





The Quarter Source  
(Karen Benson)

August issue 
on sale o/a 20 June








Pick your own from Clara's Cuties





Clara's Cuties 
(Clara Lauderdale)

September issue 
on sale 25 July










JMG Engraving LLC



JMG Engraving LLC  
(Jon Gower)

October issue 
on sale 22 August

I cannot believe I don't have a single photo of John's work.  I know I couldn't get near his table during the show - there was such a level of interest in his stuff.  I have stolen this from his website.  Thank you Jon.  I think it is quarter scale.












Oen's Refuge


The Enchanted Woodland Faery Dollhouse Company  
(Melissa Chaple)


November issue 
on sale o/a 19 September










Chocolat

(under discussion) 
maybe good to start it in Lent 2014?  

All I have to do is actually build it and dress it during the summer at home.

Not the world's most exciting picture.... if only you could see the ones that reside in my head.






Under construction



Jeremy Paul Precision Replicas
(Jeremy Paul)

December 2013

on sale o/a 24 October








French Salon (Quarter scale)






Petworth Miniatures 
(Gayle Baillargeon)

February 2014 
on sale 19 December





I have a zillion more ideas bubbling under.............


[The o/a dates shown here are because I am not sure of them.  If it doesn't have o/a it means that Lucie gave me the on sale date, so I know those are correct]

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Orlando Miniature Festival

Apologies for being off the radar for a while but we have back to back visitors through February and March, so I am snatching time where I can.  


Nice spacious room especially before the crowds arrive
It seems ages ago now (so much 1:1 life happening in between) since I went to the Molly Cromwell second Florida show of the season, this time held in Orlando.  Anyone considering these two shows and maybe thinking if you have done one you will have done both will be very pleasantly surprised.  Even if the vendor was at Sarasota most of their wares probably weren't.  These are people creating new stuff every minute, so the 'repeat' level is so very low, it would be hard to find.  Half of the room is filled with completely different people with more exciting stuff for the serious shopper to go at.  Again I used every minute of my two day shopping trip in the showrooms going round and round and discovering new bits and bobs on each tour.  There is so much to look at.


Jeremy Paul's breathtaking house
As before, the show is surrounded by really wonderful workshops.  They ran through Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday.  Fabulous people making fabulous things.  I would have liked to do at least three of them.  One of these days .....

It is held in a large convention-type hotel, slap-bang centre of Orlando on International Drive; so if your stay is part of a long break in Orlando you can fit in a load of Orlando attractions too.  We took advantage of the great discounted rate for Molly's visitors and stayed in the International Palms Resort.  As before this made our life super-simple.

It was a lovely two days of soaking up the very best of mini-world.


Val Casson's stunning work
I was kind of 'working' too as I was writing a review of the show for DH&MS and scouting out people to write extended pieces on.  I now have three from Sarasota and four from Orlando to do.  Right now I have work going on through the rest of 2013 and into early 2014.  I love doing it, so I don't feel any kind of pressure or concerns. It is a real joy to be writing, which I love, and such a bonus to be writing about another passion - minis.  What could be better?  Even nicer it seems that everyone I meet is gracious and helpful. 


Grandgirl quarter scale
If you are a reader of Dolls House and Miniature scene magazine look out for these people as the articles appear and support them and shows like Molly's.  It is a real worry that another of my  passions - cyber world - is sort of taking over.  It is easier to trawl the web and order on line than travel to shops and shows.  Not only is that nothing like the hands-on experience of what there is to offer out there but so much more will disappear.  There are classes and groups all attached to the physical world of mini collectors which would disappear.  Creating our projects is pretty much a solitary occupation and it is great that there is a chance for some social camaraderie created by the shops and shows.  I also feel very strongly about supporting as many of the smaller shows as you can possibly get to.  I am sure there are many, many people like me who would love to visit the huge shows worldwide but can't afford the travel involved and, in the main, can't afford the very beautiful things that places like Chicago, Paris and Kensington offer. 

As with all these things I am sure you think that you - one person - can't make a difference but four thousand one-persons really does!!

Here are my purchases.  As you can see my 'snatch' supports my argument that it is still worth the trip even if you can't afford a lot of things.  The pleasure is in the doing of it.


All from one supplier.  I am sorry I can't locate his name as I am writing this during our third (!) Orlando visit this season. We are staying with our friends here for a week before they fly home.  My list of what I bought and from whom is back in Naples!  I will try to remember to come back into this post and do a rewrite in a week or so.  (footnote 1 March)  Thanks to Val Casson for letting me know it was from Dominick Manella.  Nice man and lovely old/antique eclectic bits and bobs.

I bought a small Lincoln desk for somewhere?  Pestle and mortar, small sterling silver kettle, sugar sifter and ewer; all probably destined for Chocolat.  Interestingly the sugar sifter was labelled as an English mufineer - ironic in that mufineer seems to be an American name for a sugar-sifter.




The four sticks at the top are very thin two-sided sticks of various grades of sandpaper for getting into those awkward little spaces.  For 15 cents each I thought they were a bargain.

The little palette knife might be useful for Fimo?

The yellow glue spreader has been on my hit list for ages.  We used them by the zillion in school but I haven't seen them any where.  The pointed end will always be useful.  Only a mini person could say that!  The other wooden handled thing is one of those double-ended ball bodger thingies.  I broke my other one, so have paid a bit more for this one in hopes it survives me!

These came from Trims and Things by Drucille Conrad.

You can meet the residents of Starfish cottage over on its blog if you want to.  I even have some bits for the new Quarter projects; their photos are on the quarter scale blog. Better still all my photos from the show are in my web albums (links for all these in the right hand column). 

Friday, 25 January 2013

The Sarasota Show

Last weekend I did my first overnighter dolls house show. The Sarasota Festival of Dollhouse Miniatures (19th and 20th January 2013)

Molly Cromwell's shows are certainly events.  They are actually usually spread over four days, as was this one.  There are some terrific classes on Friday and Monday and the show itself is over the weekend.   I am ruminating on signing up for a class next year; I have really been bitten by this mini bug.

The show is held in The Ramada Waterfront Hotel so it is more than convenient to stay there and flit from room to show.  Even better if you have non-mini folk with you - often known as 'husbands' - as they can do their own pootling around (bar and swimming pool) and you don't need to make complicated pick up/drop off arrangements with each other.  The hotel offers bed and breakfast and at a discounted rate if you are going to the show and it is a true discount. My other half is the very best at scouting discounts - he did his Expedia and Kayak et al mooching around and the Molly discount still came in at the lowest rate.  It is probably the best rate in Sarasota and right where you want to be.

This is a small show - under 50 stalls - but there are hours of interest to be had.  I have written a piece for DH&MS magazine (prob May issue) so I don't want to say the same things twice by writing it all again here.  I chose six of the best vendors to highlight which was no mean task.  There were at least a dozen absolutely outstanding artisans there.  The whole show is about stuff you can't just buy in a shop.  Ninety per cent or more is actually made by the people there, so each piece really is (pretty much) a one off; miss one and you have missed it.  

 If you opt for the General Admission on Sunday  ($7) there will still be tons of wonderful things to buy,  but if you are travelling a long way and staying overnight you should buy the great value weekend preview ticket ($18).  This is what I did this year as we had planned to stay over and build in other things that we wanted to do on the way up and down between Naples and Sarasota.  So rather than do a rushed mini shopping trip this is a way to have a really nice inexpensive weekend break with a dolls house show thrown in for good measure.

The preview ticket buys you what it says - Saturday preview/early sales, a pizza and sodas get together after the sale with a chance to meet each other and the vendors , prize draws and, of course you get to come back again Sunday for the 10am - 4 pm General Admission show.  Actually with the preview badge/ticket you get to go in at 9.30am!!  What a bargain.

Instead of showing you the vendors I chose for the magazine article I'll just share what I bought with you.  You can see all the show pictures in the Sarasota web album.


My first stop at a stall was the True2Scale couple.  

 It is hard to see from my photo of their stand in the web album all the lovely things they do as mostly they are packages like these.  Please go to their site and have a look around.  Here's what I bought from them.  

I have been wanting the pitcher and forsythia that they sell for ages and I still want to fit in their lovely Eiffel tower display stand in Chocolat - it might happen; but I managed to resist it for now. However  I didn't manage to resist the lovely dishes and decals, even though I have no idea where I can use them! The cake boxes will certainly have a home.  I intend to just manage with these few on top of the counter along with a stack of unassembled ones in the shop ready to be made up and filled with the best French (chocolate) patisserie for each customer. I chose their pretty white ones in hopes that my pretend flattened boxes look like a match.



I then trotted off to the stall I should have gone to first -  Ron's (Dollshouse Shop, Orlando) to trade four of my five Little Women for something else.  I had decided before the show I wanted a better pretty pleater.  I have just followed a curtain workshop with Hazel Dowd and had mentioned to her how I couldn't get on with these contraptions and I asked if it was worth binning it and buying a silicone (?), rubber (?) one I had seen and she agreed whole-heartedly.  She said she had had hers for a zillion years (she did actually state a number but I have forgotten) and they are great.  It looks better to me than wood, as it is flexible and less likely to cling on to the fabric fibres. Ron had kindly brought one along for me.  I added in these three cute cake stands and a five dollar bill and we were done and dusted.


I snagged a sweet little cash register for Bentleys.  I didn't really want want one in the shop as most of Ellen's business is done by ordering goods and then settling accounts as they go along, but she is branching out into selling bits and pieces like collars, hat and dress trims, perfume and gloves directly from the shop to the casual shopper and so she probably needs a cash register.  This was labelled as $15 but the trader let me have it for the same price as his two clunky, ugly ones which were $12.  It just needs a bit of judicious photocopying of old money signs to go in the display area. The cash drawer opens too.  I suppose I need to find out if Ellen's 1911 shop would have had one like this...... time to Google National Cash registers!


I had the usual 'I am weak for fabric' itch that got scratched a teeny bit on Saturday and Sunday.  Gulliver's Emporium has the nicest of stuff and for silly prices.  Sadly, a note on her stand said her business is closing and she was open to offers for her stock.  I wish, I wish.  It is the oddest thing, when given a basket full of lace trims the first piece I pick up - right out of the middle, under layers of other stuff is (probably) the most expensive.   Sooooo lovely - old, French,  silk lace, ecru-coloured trim.  I was a good girl and put it back.  Talk about champagne taste and beer pocket, it seems I also have an inbuilt champagne magnet.  Everything I bought was only a couple of dollars each - and less!!  I have to be firm with myself as I just seem to collect fabric and trims and do nothing with them.  I just covet them.  Her colours are lovely and her patterns perfectly scaled.  The fabrics are fine silk and cotton.  I have a lovely cotton lawn here.  She also had the last of some very fine silk velvet.  I averted my eyes.


I snagged a pair of shoes for $5.  I don't recall the name of the seller. Poor, poor photo - bad lighting and magnification too large.  They look very dainty in the flesh.  I actually stopped to look at the wonderful plants and flowers on the stall - made by the vendor's mother-in-law, she told me.  I wish I had picked up a card or noted her name so I could find her again.
[footnote 1 March:  They are from Clara's Cuties]

These are destined for Bentleys Salon.  I bought them for Vianne in Chocolat but then remembered that her daughter complained that she wasn't like everyone else's mother because she only ever wore red or coral shoes.  Chocolat's loss is Bentleys gain.



I bought this trio from a very kind gentleman, on Marie's Miniswho agreed to model them for me on his hands to show their scale (the photo ended up out of focus!).  They sell very nice floral items and fruit and veg and many related items.  There is an on-line link to contact them but not a shop on line.  Again things bought for one place will probably end up in another.  The bowl of nuts was for Chocolat; I then remembered it is set in Lent so seasonally they are more suitable for the October setting of Bentleys.  The hyacinth is for Chocolat to help pin down the timing.  The jug and bowl may just join my Little Women stock of Victoriana for an (as yet) undreampt of project.


From Feather Your Nest I got this little set for $34 which I thought was a good price as I had been looking at the stools in various places at around eight dollars plus.  It was absolutely bought for Chocolat as there is something like it in the movie BUT my Chocolaterie project may be in the throes of veering away from the original so this could end up in Starfish Cottage or maybe just kit-bashed for Chocolat.  I put a cup and saucer on it to give you a sense of scale.



And now for something completely different ...........



Shows for a lot of people are a great excuse for meeting old friends and making new ones with a shared interest.  For me, they are purely a shopping-for-goods-and-ideas expedition.  Those who know me know I will run a mile from any socialising - not out of snottiness I am just very nervy about meeting new people.  Shy seems such a feeble word - I would prefer to have a full blown phobia.  Any way I avoided reminding anyone I had met them before, didn't go to the pizza party and then, blow me down, ran straight into a lady who my neighbour had tried to 'set me up with'.   My dear friend next door here in Naples knew someone who knew someone who was into miniatures and she emailed my details through the grapevine to connect us.  Susan Werner and I went politely through the motions and let the 'hello' fade away.  At the show Susan spotted the accent and the name and introduced herself.  She was exceedingly nice as are most strangers when you get to know them!  Her work is very special.  I loved so many of her things.  She seems to be very capable in all kinds of media.  Needless to say I mostly craved her chocolates.  Her Etsy shop seems to be under construction but maybe her Blog - Tabitha Corsica  will let you find a way to contact her if you are interested in her work. Click on this picture to enlarge so you can see the excellent detail.

Seeing these chocolates did confirm what I begin to think is going to be a problem for me.  If properly in scale a chocolate is going to be something like 1/12th of an inch which is bordering on invisible.  Chocolat will take thousands of them to make any impact on the window and shop displays and will simply be a zillion tiny flecks when they are en masse.   I am veering towards making the shop a chocolaterie and a (chocolate cake) patisserie with a few seats for customers to eat a cake or drink a cup of hot chocolate.  This way the number of chocolates required gets reduced.  I really have to master the art of polymer clay next summer, like everything else in this business I have never done any.

So that's pretty much the tour round the show, spending all my pocket money with me.  

I seem to be in all sorts of organisational dilemmas right now which is very bad news for a pedantic control freak.  In this game I am often doing 'stuff' which affects more than one project - taking a trip to California, buying things at a show, writing for a magazine.  I am already having computer filing  traumas trying to put material away tidily.  There is an effect on my Blogs too.  For example, this show visit is written up here because, chronologically, I am working on Bentleys but some of the things I want to share cross over into other projects or just dollhousing generally.  I already have to divide my recording of the actual day between my Clavering Blog (my diary) and the mini Blogs and I am endlessly finding myself having to leave stuff out of Clavering because it is being written about somewhere else and vice versa.

When I was typing this post for example, I also had Clavering, Chocolat and Starfish Blogs open and have copied and pasted bits and pieces across to them.  I now understand why many mini bloggers just have the one blog and simply record what they are doing chronologically whether it is minis or not.  I decided against that because most folk following the diary would rather stick pins in their eyes than read about minis and mini followers couldn't care less what I was doing last month.  So, for those of you who are looking at all my mini blogs I am sorry there is so much (or too little!!) crossover.  It is the best I can do.   I am open to suggestions.






Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Re-instated photos.

Re-instated....   Please make it be true.....

For the second time I apologise profusely for screwing up the photos and making them disappear from my Blogs by re-jigging them in albums.

I have been sufficiently punished during the last couple of days as I have been laboriously replacing the ones that went missing here in Bentleys.  This post is the hundredth one for this project so you can imagine how many squares filled with exclamation marks had to be removed and how many photos I had to scan through to find the appropriate one to fill the various spaces.  I am feeling a little frayed round the edges.

I promise to check Chocolat and Starfish Cottage tomorrow.... I just can't face them today.

I am sorry but I won't be sorting out Wentworth Court.  It has left me now and I don't feel quite so possessive of it.  If you look at that one and wish it had photos, it does but they are all in web albums.  There is a link to web albums on every Blog where you can see more photos than I can put in a single post.

A final appeal to your kindness, if you see any missing (or wrong!) photos when wandering through my stuff please let me know so I can correct it.  Happy wanderings.

Sunday, 6 January 2013

Goodies by default

If you read my other blogs you will know that I have had to give up on the Hillside project.  This means I have quite a few things which have been bought very particularly for Little Women - such as five little women.  If you want to see the latest stuff, they are in the Minis - All Projects album.  Link is in the right hand column.  There are a couple of things I am certain will find a home in Bentleys (maybe more when I get back and think about it).

Firstly there is the beautiful little throw and dressing table which I have already shown you in Hillside and then there is this exquisite trunk.




The little soft metal tag threaded through the trunk handle shows a price of fifty dollars, which isn't surprising as it is so beautifully made.  The hasps and lock and corners are perfectly in scale.  The decorations are just beautiful and the inside is lined with a removable tray.  Even the tiny hinges have been set in correctly.  I loved it when I saw it and it was described as being a chest by K. Hecrradel, which I googled but didn't find any information on.  The opening price was five dollars.  I placed my bid and won at the starting price, so with another five for postage I had snagged a beauty for just ten dollars.  I wish the person who sold it could take some comfort thinking that it has gone on to someone who loves it so much and will treasure it.