Noted Morrisburg artist, Margi Laurin, discovered ways to use the COVID months to start activities which, she says, have “utterly captivated me.” MORRISBURG – COVID-19 closed down almost all conventional venues for artists.Īt the same time, ironically, this pandemic has also motivated many artists to venture into new creative territories. Those articles can now be found online at morrisburgleader.ca. Previously featured were artists Jan Mills, Elsie Gallinger, Gene Ward, Karen Fisher, Anne Barkley, Dorothy Adlington and MiSun Kim-Hunter. Many of the artists also discuss how they perceive the future of the arts post pandemic.
#CREATIVE MINIATURIST SERIES#
Furniture maker Ann High also created a beautiful hand-carved rocking cradle which plays a large part in the story.The Leader’s Wendy Gibb has undertaken a series of articles focusing on the visual artists who live and create here in our own community, discussing with them how their work and experiences may have been “influenced” by the “new reality” of a COVID world. Miniature specialists Mulvany & Rogers created the miniatures for the BBC drama after researching designs from original paintings of the period but also had to copy the actual furniture and decor hired by the set decorators and props suppliers of the film set including a lute, a bird cage, Nella’s bedroom chair. Successful Dutch artists painted murals in the “game room” and “tapestry room”. The dollhouse contains nine rooms and is about three times larger than the one we see on screen in The Miniaturist. The cabinet itself is made of tortoiseshell and decorated with pewter inlays by a French craftsman. The house on display in the Rijksmuseum contains handmade wicker and upholstered furniture, sculpted ceiling reliefs, real marble flooring, tiny little plates, chairs, pillows, spinning wheels, baskets and fireplaces. She was so proud of her house, she had it portrayed in a painting. The real Petronella ordered her miniature porcelain from China and commissioned cabinetmakers, glassblowers, silversmiths, basket-weavers and artists to furnish her dolls’ house: an extremely expensive hobby. What makes Petronella Oortman’s dolls’ house so unusual is that all the pieces were made precisely to scale, in the same way and using the same materials as their regular counterparts. It cost her as much as a real house and would more than likely have been used as a way to show off and share her aspirations to friends and visitors rather than as a toy. The real Nella was a wealthy widow by the time she married silk merchant Johannes Brandt and followed the fashion in Amsterdam in having a large cabinet built for her so that she could decorate it with expensive miniatures between 16. The real dolls’ house of Petronella in The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Hooked and inspired, she began to undertake extensive research on 17th-century Amsterdam, studying books, Dutch Golden Age paintings, maps and wills. Burton was inspired to write the original book while on holiday in Amsterdam, where she discovered a fascinating dolls’ house in the Rijksmuseum owned by the real life Petronella Oortman.
The story is based on a real miniature house. Otto with the dolls’ house in The Miniaturist These pieces of furniture eerily seem to predict the future.
She orders some new realistic mini furniture for the dollhouse from a local specialist craftsperson – a miniaturist – but additional furniture for the miniature house mysteriously arrives and continues to do so throughout the story, each piece being identical replicas to the contents and people of her new home in the Gouden Bocht (Golden Bend) area of Amsterdam. Petronella Oortmand is given a dolls’ house as a wedding gift by her new husband the wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. This drama tells the story of a young girl called Petronella Oortman (played by Anya Taylor-Joy who we loved in The Witch) who is given a dolls’ house, a replica of their nine room home in miniature, as a wedding gift by her new husband the wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. Set in 17th Century Amsterdam and based on Jessie Burton’s best-selling novel, The Miniaturist aired recently on the BBC in two parts. The real dolls’ house and furniture that inspired The Miniaturist