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The mysterious firescreen

July 13, 2022 / / 3 Comments

Just now I was clicking through old Ron Rhodes auctions on Live Auctioneers, because why not, and I came across this familiar-looking firescreen…

If you read my post about creating a stained glass cabinet for the Craftsman bungalow vignette, it’ll look familiar to you too!

The title of this lot was Kummerow & Wyatt Dollhouse Lighting Miniatures and I immediately thought, “Shit, did I destroy a piece of Barbara Kummerow stained glass?!”

Here’s the auction description:

Floor lamp with Tiffany style shade attributed to Barbara Kummerow has a brass, wood and clay pole 5 1/4″H, Ginger Wyatt hand painted porcelain table lamp, adjustable height brass floor lamp, also includes a fireplace screen with tight cracks in enameled area

Okay, so it was grouped with lights made by Barbara Kummerow and Ginger Wyatt (I don’t know who that is) but not necessarily made by one of them. That makes me feel better.

My next thought was, “Wait, is this MY firescreen?!” (Which is now a cabinet.)

I can’t remember where I got the firescreen, but this auction happened in December 2021 and I’ve had it longer than that. Just in case I was wrong about that and time has lost all meaning, I checked the date on some pictures I took of the firescreen when I started working on the bungalow and they are dated 2020.

So unless my future self has perfected time travel and is now zipping around planting miniature items in my workshop just to mess with me, it’s unlikely this is the same firescreen. Then again, my inability to remember where I got it sort of supports that theory.*

This leaves the question of who did make these firescreens…? It seemed like a one-off craft project to me, as opposed to an artisan piece, but I guess not. I hope I didn’t destroy something valuable.

If anyone reading this knows anything about the mysterious firescreen(s), please satisfy my curiosity!

Update July 15, 2022: The mystery has been solved!

*Note to my future self: if you are out there and have in fact perfected time travel, I would love to get my hands on the Jim Marcus Russian Embassy that I missed out on in 2019, and the Carlson Victorian Mansion that I badly wanted to buy off Craigslist back in 2018 but didn’t have space for. I have a much bigger workshop now!

A 1:12 Mansard Victorian, and new (to me) Bauder-Pine furniture

June 25, 2022 / / 3 Comments

When I was working on my big post about Bauder Pine, I chatted with a woman named Ginger who said she had the same Mansard Victorian house as me, but hers is 1:12 scale. She told me Frank Moroz, who was Pat Bauder’s partner at Bauder-Pine, built it for her in the seventies. She had trouble emailing me photos so I didn’t mention it in the post.

A few weeks ago I was browsing Philadelphia Craigslist because I like to torture myself by looking at ads for dollhouses too far away for me to actually buy for no good reason and I stumbled across a familiar-looking dollhouse. Lo and behold, it’s Ginger’s Mansard Victorian! She’s trying to sell it and her son posted it on Craigslist for her. I reached out again, and Ginger gave me permission to post the photos here.

This house is very similar to mine, except the wing on the left doesn’t have bay windows, and the porch has angled corners (which I actually like better than the square corners on mine). It also has the cupola, which is missing from my house but can be seen on Phyillis Tucker’s Mansard Victorian featured in the September 1986 issue of Nutshell News.

The left side dormer is a door rather than a window, leading onto the rooftop deck.

Another difference is that the wings on my house have doors on the ground floor, but in Ginger’s house these are double windows. Hers has a door on the second floor of the main house that leads out to the balcony above the porch.

The house is electrified, and it looks to be nicely finished inside and out.

This was Bauder-Pine’s flagship house in half scale, but this is the only 1:12 version that I know of. The dimensions are 66” wide x 48” tall x 24” deep. As I mentioned in my other post, Frank modeled it after the house across the street from Pat Bauder’s house in Langhorne, PA.

The Craigslist ad has been taken down, but as of right now the house is still available. If anyone reading this is in the Philadelphia area and interested in buying it, contact me and I can put you in touch with Ginger and her son.

Speaking of the Mansard Victorian, I got a sidetracked by the Craftsman bungalow, but I am planning to dive in soon. I’m planning to furnish it with as much Bauder-Pine and Cassidy Creations furniture as possible, so I was psyched when this grouping of Bauder-Pine furniture turned up on eBay. I paid $100 for the lot.



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Craftsman bungalow – right window paneling & stained glass cabinet

June 21, 2022 / / 9 Comments

I can’t remember where or when I got this Mission-style thingie. I’m not even sure what it is… probably a 1:12 firescreen? But I’ve had it for a while, and when I started working on the Craftsman bungalow vignette I pulled it out thinking I could do something with it.

Update July 15, 2022: I now know that the Mission-style thingie is a firescreen created by Barbara and Lew Kummerow. See the posts here and here for more info.

I thought about putting a fireplace and built-in cabinets on the side wall, and using the firescreen’s stained glass panels as cabinet doors. But the window placement prevented a fireplace in the middle of the wall, and the spacing wasn’t good for a fireplace with one cabinet next to it. So I paneled the side walls instead.

But I still liked the cabinet idea, and decided to build one into the space next to the front door.

I popped the stained glass out of the firescreen. The stained glass is just paint with no plexiglass behind it, and some of it pulled off when I removed the panels.

In order to build the cabinet to fit between the door and the window, first I needed to put up the window trim. I lay a scrap piece on top of the two headers to make sure they lined up.

Then I built a cabinet to fit inside the space. This is 3/8″ deep and the same height as the rest of the paneling. The top piece doesn’t go back to the wall (because it overlaps the trim), but you can’t see the very back, so I left it that way rather than notching it.

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