Writers Abroad Magazine Issue 3 September 2015 | Page 40

WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE
Here is one of Jany’s articles to enjoy and remember her by:

On a Small Scale
An article by Jany Gråf

Years ago I picked up the miniature hobby again where I`d left off as a child: making
rooms in shoe boxes. No shoe box was ever safe from me. I still have a letter from my
five-year-old self to Father Christmas, asking him for a "dols houws". I never got one.
Not having room for a proper "houws" now, I started making room boxes, then
graduated to miniature scenes. Every dolls house should have a garden, or at least
flowers in vases. Plants and flowers are usually made of paper, textiles or Fimo (clay).
Unless you are a complete genius at fiddly things, and some people are, it never looks
absolu tely realistic.
I can`t remember exactly what triggered it off, but one day I had the idea of using real
plants in combination with miniature dolls house garden furniture. They too had to be
to scale — the usual dolls house scale is 1/12 — so only plants with small leaves that
do not grow to great heights would be suitable. Succulents came to mind, as did
miniature fir trees and even Bonsais. So I bought some large shallow pots and set to
work on our wind-blown terrace.
It was a steep learning curve, with a lot of trial and error. I had no idea how to go about
it, and no-one else I knew at the time could help. But in time I realised that I was looking
at every possible vessel as a possible planting pot, that it would be a good idea to
sieve the soil to make it as fine as possible, and that a kebab skewer made just the

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