Recently I was in Denmark to take part in the Miniature in Tune summer school. It was a lot of fun and I will show you what I made in one of my next posts. During the evening sale at the school I found two lovely miniatures based on well known pieces of Scandinavian design.
The first thing I saw was this child's chair. The chair is based on the Tripp Trapp chair, which grows with the child, from newborn to adult. The original (full sized) chair was designed by Peter Opsvik from Norway. The miniature version was made by Kurt Jensen from Denmark.
The real chair recently received the award 'Best Norwegian Design of the last 100 years' from Aftenposten and the Norwegian Design and Architecture Center.
The little wooden monkey hanging from the back of the chair is based on a 1951 design by Kay Bojesen of Denmark. The miniature cheeky monkey was again made by Kurt Jensen from Denmark.
At one of the beautiful stores in Odense I was given a catalogue with designs by Kay Bojesen (that's him in the photo on the left). I was struck by how familiar most of the designs are and that the designs are much earlier than I had expected. The baby rattle is from 1932!
(All photos are from the catalogue)
The chair and monkey join the circus in the child's bedroom in my Canal House. They fit right in! The wonderful circus play set was made by the lovely people of Reina Mab Miniatures from Argentina.
They gave me a little gift of two tiny dolls (just visible in the photo below left) dressed in the local dress of the native people of part of Argentina (and Bolivia, Peru and Chile), the Aymaras.
The circus is a delightful addition to the ferris wheel (also made by Reina Mab) which I have had for a while now. This bedroom is becoming a place where kids will spend hours playing with all the wonderful toys. And if not the kids, I will!
