After working nonstop on the Victorianna almost all year I decided to distract myself with a smaller project. In the early 2000’s I had a grand but short-lived plan to enter one of Miniatures.com‘s annual contests with a bar roombox. I bought some furniture and mini bottles but never got around to doing anything with them. Then in 2014 I found a handmade bar for $15 at a mini flea market — I bought that and a Chaplin Roombox to put it in.
These have been sitting on a shelf untouched ever since, until a few weeks ago I started thinking it would be fun to put little people in the bar. Houseworks makes these resin figures (or at least, they used to — they’re discontinued now) that are very lifelike, but never appealed to me in a dollhouse because of how staged they are. Here’s a scene HBS/Miniatures.com featured on one of their holiday catalogs:
I tend to think of dollhouses as living places — not frozen moments in time — so there’s something weird to me about having frozen people in the house. (I made an exception in the Little House Cabin, but those dolls are much more doll-like.) I work in the video game industry, where the subject of the “uncanny valley” often comes up — it’s when 3D characters look so close to human, but not quite, that they’re creepy. I’ve always felt that way about the resin dollhouse dolls, too.
Still, the idea of adding them to the bar got me excited. I liked that each of these people can have a little story that you can piece together based on what’s going on around them. And I’ll admit, once I found out they’re discontinued, finding each of the dolls I wanted to use became an irresistable challenge. I made a few impulse purchases the week before Thanksgiving, and the Blackbird Bar is now officially under construction.
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
