Ruby Lustre Tile

This time it's one of William De Morgan's ruby lustre animal tiles in an appropriate frame, William De Morgan being a very famous potter of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. (I keep wanting to put a 'Pickering' in there, but no, that was his wife Evelyn, the painter). He made a whole series of animal tiles, hares and hedgehogs and owls and even one with a kingfisher spearing a fish; I'm not entirely sure what this thing is, but I'll bet he got it from a medieval manuscript. It has that naive little-kid feel to it (though his other animals were quite wonderfully naturalistic). I suppose we can just call it a 'monster' and leave it at that.

The frame is oak, with decorative copper studs in the corners.

The back has little hooks and eyes and a new piece of string, courtesy of Joe:

Now Joe just needs a wall.

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Both the tile and frame are out of matboard, again; I painted the lil monster on in acrylic, then gave it a coat of (of all things) Elmer's glue. I was looking for something thick and glossy; I tried gloss acrylic medium at first, but even thinned down it left obvious brushstrokes (I was using the kind artists use for painting, because it's what I had). It just wasn't the right consistency. But the glue worked fine, though it left a few bubbles in the 'glaze' (which is a real no-no in actual ceramics). Still, it's surprisingly convincing, I think, for all that it's just a piece of cardboard.

I made the little eyes out of earring loops that I twisted around (the wire I had was pretty soft, and I didn't trust it to hold its shape). The 'string' is a single strand of embroidery floss twisted and looped back on itself, then tied around the eyes, and glued down, so the weight (such as it is) isn't actually on the eyes themselves. I know in most one twelfth scale dollhouses paintings are simply glued directly on to the wall; I quite like miniatures to be 'workable' as much as they can be, though of course it's easier to get away with it at one sixth scale, because things like gravity actually start having a hold on things. Who knows, when I actually hang it in his living room (when I make his living room) I made end up yanking the eyes out and gluing it to the wall anyway. But for now, it's a thing unto itself.

Frame

Joe went antiquing again to furnish the house that he hasn't built yet, and this time he found an Arts and Crafts Movement picture frame, which is very excellent!

It didn't come with any art in it, but that's not a huge problem. Though maybe a mirror would go in there very nicely?

The frame is oak and has some simple mother-of-pearl inlays; he'll have to rig up something to hang it with in the back, as there's no wire, but you can see the old nail holes from where there used to be some:

It will be a very nice addition to Joe's (theoretical) Craftsman bungalow, I'm sure.

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It's made of mat board, of course, and is based on a real one I came across on an antique dealer's site when googling Arts and Crafts Movement library tables last night. The original one was actually just the frame for a piece of embroidery by Ann MacBeth, one of the artists of the Glasgow School if I'm remembering correctly. Here's a screencap of the original:

The 'mother-of-pearl inlays' on Joe's version are just some paper painted with iridescent white acrylic paint; I actually did cut out the bits from the frame and peeled off the outer layer to make space for the painted paper, so it's an inlay of a sort. It worked pretty well.

The finish is similar to that of the Stickley cube chair I made earlier, and it really is ridiculously easy. It's just layers of thinned down acrylic paint in several layers starting with yellow ochre, then mixing a bit of red in it to make it more orangey, then finishing with a layer or two of burnt umber. (If it's too brassy, tint the umber slightly purple). The key is to keep it pretty thin, and to use a fairly stiff brush so it makes lots of brush strokes, which will look quite remarkably like wood grain. Just make sure you don't follow the contours too much; just let it all be mostly parallel. Seriously, I kind of can't believe how realistic that looks, for so little effort.

Oh, and I didn't make the bevels; the mat board I'm using is left over from when I worked at a frame shop, and are the bits cut out of the center of other mats. So they pretty much all have beveled edges. They came in handy this time!

Anyway, if I had a working printer right now I'd totally print out Rossetti's drawing of Jane and his sainted wombat to go in it, because holy moly that thing is awesome.

Don't believe me? Like I could make that up:

Oh man.