Aim Imag Issue 35 June July 2011

The AIM Magazine’s Dear Reader
Editorial Team: Here in AIM’s virtual ‘global’ office, all is now quiet…
Bea Broadwood (Editor) Over heated laptops have been switched off, bulging
office@petite-properties.com notepads have been closed and flattened desk chair
Vicky Guile (Assistant Editor) cushions have been plumped.
vicky@njdminiatures.com In short there has been an audible (collective) sigh
Celia (of Oberons Wood) rippling quietly across four continents and countless time zones as
mail@sorceresshollow.com the hardworking editorial team members finally step away from their
Helen Woods desks and look forward to a well earned summer break!
woods1@orcon.net.nz
Janet Smith However, with the editorial team disappearing into the sunset, there is no
desertminis@gmail.com need to panic!!
Jean Day
In order to cover the editorial team’s need for their annual holidays,
jday1@shaw.ca
‘stay-cations’, rehab visits or private time in a darkened room, rest
John Day
jdayminis@shaw.ca assured that before clocking off and supported by the talented members
of AIM they have pulled out all the stops to put together this fantastic
Kathi Mendenhall
sewminipatterns@att.net ‘summer’ edition of the AIM magazine, which we hope will tide you all
Peiwen Petitgrand over until the next issue of the AIM imag is released on the 1st August!!
oiseaudenim@gmail.com
So in the meantime, and as is now customary, as editor it is once my
Sally Watson
privilege to welcome you all to the 35th edition of the AIM Magazine,
spwatson@ntlworld.com
which as you will see is packed full of exciting projects, articles and not
Barbara ‘Babs’ Davies
Kim Murdock forgetting all your favourite regular columns and features too – and of
Lesley Shepherd course all for FREE!
Pamela J
But for now, as several deck chairs, floppy sun hats and many rounds of
Freelance Editorial Team Members: iced Pimms beckon, the editorial team and I hope that you will all enjoy
Agnes Turpin this ‘Artist’s Life’ inspired issue and rest
Catherine Davies
assured the AIM magazine will be back
Eileen Sedgwick
Jennifer Matuszek on August 1st - rejuvenated, refreshed
Julie Lawton and quite simply better than ever!
Lidi Stroud
Marianne Colijn
Cheers!!!
Mo Tipton
Nancy Keech
Stephanie Kilgast
Bea Broadwood
Please note Editor (& General whip cracker)
AIM is an active association www.petite-properties.com
to which all members
June / July 2011
contribute.
Artisans In Miniature June/July 2011 11
Artisans In Miniature June/July 2011 ??
The Artist’s
Model.
By AIM Member, Jane Laverick
I did not start out to make artist’s models,

although as I am an artist, I suppose a
model was inevitable.
Like many doll artists working in miniature, my

primary interest was in costume history. I am old
enough to remember my grandmother having
full-body, boned, laced corsets that she wore as a
sort of exoskeleton. She claimed to be unable to
think without her corsets and put them on over
her nightie if I was ill and needed looking after
during the night. So when I began making
glass-eyed dolls for people to dress, because I’d
wanted them and couldn’t find them, I assumed
they’d be wearing nighties, corsets, directoire
knickers, fluffy slippers and a red flannel bandage
on their dodgy knee at the very least. It took
exactly one customer to get me to the artist’s
models, in their underwear, or even, birthday
suits.
She was a nice miniaturist of a certain age who fell in love with my tribute to Paul McCartney, which
actually looks much more like my son; family members cropping up in all my early dolls. This doll had
glass eyes, a turning porcelain head, torso and lower limbs in porcelain and the upper limbs in wired
chamois leather, which is how I made all my early dolls. It had a cork pate so you could stick hair straight
on and was bendily obliging and easy to dress. I thought. The very next show the lady turned up at my
table carrying a brown paper bag. She poked the doll’s bald head up, keeping the bag discreetly gathered
round the neck. I thought she was going to do an amazing costume reveal, but no: ‘I haven’t got round to
dressing him yet,’ she said, ‘but I just thought you’d like to know he’s all right. He’s sitting on the spare
room bed wearing this paper bag.’ And off she went. The next show she appeared and again apologised
that Paul McCartney was sitting on her bed dressed in a paper bag. For many years she made a point of
seeking me out to tell me. I could usually spot her coming about three aisles away. I must be thick – it
took about three more years of this apologetic torture for me to realise I had to invent a doll that looked
good naked and came with hair that could be combed.
Almost the instant I put the articulated wigged porcelain dolls on my stand, customers were telling me
about the artist’s models and what they were getting up to. Is it because they’re all static that they’ve
developed Windmill Theatre Syndrome, do you think? Or is there just a little of the puerile art student
in all of us, that just can’t wait to get making a cast of another student’s bosom ‘for artistic reasons.’ It’s
certainly been a preoccupation of artists throughout history; even before the fall of Rome sculptors
were supposing they could ‘do’ Calpurnia much better with her toga off. Then there have been all the
painters who thought that Bath Night would be a better
seller if it was renamed The Dropped Towel.
Draperies, of course, are also extremely classical;
nothing will inspire you to paint Aphrodite
half as well as your girlfriend nearly
wearing a bed sheet.
Models, in my limited experience, are quite eager to

join in. I was dolling my cousin for a room box he
was commissioning for his wife. I wanted to
know if he had any requests. ‘Oh yes,’ he ordered,
‘I’d like chest hair and a six pack, please. Look.’
He lifted his jumper to expose a flat and
featureless chest, explaining that it would
be a six pack when he’d worked out.
So there he is, like any male model in the buff,
strategically placed behind a bit of eighteenth
century fretwork.
Although I make articulated porcelain dolls with
brushable hair in 12th and 24th scales in the buff,
fully clothed and in their underwear,
the best seller is always the doll with the
directoire knickers and the lace-up corsets.
She’s the logo I give away as a badge to
readers of my website.
Is it because eroticism in a model is all
about the promise, am I endlessly
recreating my grandmother, or is there,
even, a slight possibility that I might,
occasionally, be perpetrating art?
Judge for yourself at
Text & Photographs ©
www.janelaverick.com Jane Laverick 2011
Formatted By
Jane Laverick Bea (Fiona) Broadwood

OrArtisan?
By AIM Member, Regina Passy-Yip
Artisan (English), Artigiano (Italian), Artesão Having grown up speaking a language of Latin
(Portuguese), artesano (Spanish), Artisan origin, this question always hung around in my
(French), the same word in different languages, thoughts.
comes from the Latin word “Ars”, meaning ca-
I thought that artisan was a simple person, who
pacity, craftwork. The same word “Ars” is the
working with his hands, and selling his products
origin of Art (English, French), Arte
under the sun and rain in the little market of
(Portuguese, Spanish, Italian).
souvenirs on the beach or in the town square,
Before the Renaissance, craftsmen (artisans) with tight economy.
were closely tied to the economy, many were
And, the artist, well he is "The" artist! He has a
merchants, and that's where the word
name. What he does takes his name, its grife, is
"craft" (artesanato/Portuguese, artigianato/
a signed piece. It is not necessary to get rich
Italian, artisanat/French, artesanía/Spanish)
from his work, but surely his work (sold in art
comes from. Until then the art was still rarely
galleries with air conditioning) costs far more
separable from the economy, so the word "art"
than the work of the artisan sitting under the
was synonymous with "technical", or "produce
sun. And, forgive me the artists, I do not always
something".
understand the works exhibited in galleries.
From the Renaissance, some artisans were sup- The art must reach the person inside the soul,
ported by noble patrons only to produce a truly touching his feelings, bringing back memories
"pure art”. Then, came the art as we know it and sensations. Therefore, the music, as well as
today, as well as the category of those who delights the ear, must instigate other senses,
came to be called "artists". registering a mark. Why, after hearing J. S.

Bach’s "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring”, I find Semi-industrial Artisan is who works from
myself humming the same Melody? Because molds or other processes and semi-industrial
it's rich, it impresses my soul. reproducing dozens of same pieces.
Artisan-artist: the one that is for his creativity,
The first time I saw the painting "The Scream”,
originality, grace and skill produces pieces that
painted in the nineteenth century by Munch,
cause deep feelings of admiration in those who
definitely I did not like it. However, with the
observe them.
course of time that image never left my mind.
The miniaturist is an artisan-artist, because he
Why? The twisted colors of that image per-
causes feelings of admiration from the work
fectly convey the scream of terror. That was
done with his own hands.
how I understood that art must not always be
To finalize let me borrow a phrase from
pretty, but it has to convey something and
Leonardo da Vinci:
leave its mark.
Back to miniatures, I want that the observer of “Where the spirit does not
my miniatures to be so impressed; that after a work with the hand
week he finds a friend and tells what he saw;
and after a year still remembers, though
there is no art”.
imprecisely, a miniature scene touched by the www.reginapassy.com.br
sensibility of the details, the perfection of the Photographs by Debbe Mize
www.cdhm.org/user/trisscade debbem032@gmail.com
parts.
Researching the subject art and handicraft, I Text © Regina Passy-Yip 2011
realized that there are three sorts of artisans:
Pure Artisan, who works in series, often with Photographs © Debbe Mize 2011
the aid of rudimentary tools and mechanisms,
Formatted by Bea (Fiona) Broadwood
producing dozens of pieces,
focusing more on the
utility of the parts.
By AIM Member Jane Laverick
At school I believed I couldn’t paint for toffee, or even a C-

right from the early days where you stuck the giant hogs
hair brush loaded with runny green paint on the giant
sheet of white paper and watched as the trickle obeyed
the laws of gravity and ran down the paper to the groove
in the easel. I ‘learned’ a painting for O level and scraped
a pass and it was at this late stage of life that it was discovered I couldn’t actually see, which explained
why I’d been turning out stuff like a post impressionist three sheets to the wind on an overcast day
with a bucket over his head. At this stage I quite sensibly gave up, confining my efforts, once I had my
own home, to painting walls and ceilings, at which, I have to say, I excel, though to be fair a wall is the
size of canvas it’s hard to miss.
Several years into miniatures, which I, with my contact lenses out, could see in microscopic detail, I
began making dolls. Dolls require faces and faces require painting, which I found remarkably similar to
doing my own make up. I assembled a huge artist’s morgue of photos of faces and bodies and mar-
velled at all the differences and similarities which everyone else had quite got over in childhood,
where I was mainly recognising people by contextual clues and voices.
Fifteen years into painting faces on heads I thought I might have a go at flat faces and began to copy
famous paintings. To my utter amazement they looked like people. In a flash I had the slightly
inspired, or so I thought, idea of painting miniaturist’s portraits so they could hang themselves in their
own dolls houses. To do this I took a photograph of willing subjects at Miniatura, painted, varnished
and framed the pictures by the next show when they could buy themselves if
they liked the results or not if they didn’t.
I was completely unprepared for the emotive nature of the subject.

Some people adored the results; I was praised, patted, hugged and
wept over. They returned show after show bringing relatives,
photographs of long passed family members, spouses and children.
Others utterly loathed the result, they took one look and flung the
portrait down with cries of disgust, or backed away muttering and
shaking their heads; one lady actually ran screaming into the crowd, goodness knows why,
she was normal looking and I
thought I’d done quite a good
likeness of her. The other
problem I hadn’t allowed for
was the average age of the
commissioning miniaturist
and the length of time
between shows. Some had given
the house away or changed era but many simply
forgot to come back.
So I gave up portrait painting but

the confidence and practice it
had given me meant that I
finally arrived at the place
everyone else had got to
aged five; I began
painting the world
around me. I don’t
think I would do it full size
but I love it in miniature,
yet I know I am acquired by full size
collectors who hang my pictures in their real
houses. This might be something to do with the price, my varnished framed original oil paintings are
only £15 (if I don’t like them) or £18 (if I do and I’m hoping to put anyone off buying them by this
whole extra three pounds).
You can get lost for days in a painting and I often do; I
paint them flat on top of a box so the green paint does-
n’t run down depressingly. I have a massive collection
of small brushes, a mitre chopper for the frames and an
old dinner plate for the paint blobs. Every picture is dif-
ferent and each is as absorbing as starting on a new
house.
Jane Laverick
www.janelaverick.com
Text & Photographs © Jane Laverick 2011
Formatted By Bea (Fiona) Broadwood
CLICK…on Artisans In Miniature
How did you find the Online Magazine??
Did you follow a link?
Did a miniature friend tell you about it?
...and do you already know about the Artisans In Miniature Website,

and the talented members who have all helped create this Online magazine.?
If not, copy, paste and CLICK now – www.artisansinminiatures.com and come and
meet us all. Founded in 2007 by Bea (Fiona) Broadwood of Petite Properties, the
website has been created in order to showcase the fantastic work of the individual
professional international artisan members who create beautiful and original scale
miniatures for sale to the public. Together they form the Artisans In Miniature
association.
Since its launch the AIM association has rapidly grown and now boasts membership of
around 300 professional artisans, including some of the most talented within the
miniature world!
On the website you will find further information about them and their work;
however, please note new pages are constantly being added and there are many
members who are not yet included on the site...
If you are a professional artisan who is interested in joining the association, you will
find all the information there.....
We have lots of links…to Fairs and Events Organizers…Magazines…Online Miniature

clubs….Historical reference sites…..Workshops…and more… it’s all there!
If you’d like to contact us, copy, paste and CLICK...

we’d love to hear from you!
www.artisansinminiature.com
Artisans In Miniature 8
Artisans In Miniature ? Artisans In Miniature June/July 2011 93
www.petite-properties.com
Bea Broadwood
Written & Formatted By AIM Member

Bea (Fiona) Broadwood
Text & Photographs © Petite Properties Ltd 2011
Artisans In Miniature
“An association of professional artisans,
dedicated to promoting a high standard
of excellence in original handcrafted scale miniatures…”
artisansinminiature.blogspot.com
The AIM Association was set up in 2007 in order to
The way in which provide a global platform for professional
AIM Association membership miniature artisans who wish to actively promote
their work and actively take part and support the
is offered has changed! opportunities and promotional facilities which AIM
uniquely offers for free: notably including...
 The AIM online forum
Due to an overwhelming uptake of
 Monthly FREE AIM magazine
membership over recent months, as  AIM Member's online directory
from July 31st 2010 the AIM Association  AIM website
now has limited membership places  AIMs facebook & social networking pages
 The AIM blog.
available…
AIM membership is only available for professional miniature artisans,

selling quality handmade miniatures to the public.
Membership is reserved for artisans who wish to

showcase & promote their work,
through active participation within the AIM Association.
Please note; A waiting list has now been introduced regarding
new membership applications.
AIM is completely FREE to join and completely FREE to be part of.
So… if you are a professional miniature artisan and you would like to find out more about joining the
AIM Association, please email AIM’s Membership Secretary: Tony for more information:
tonybroadwood@aol.com
Or alternatively visit our website… www..artisansinminiature.com
This issue would not have been possible without the generous
contributions from the following AIM members…
Many thanks therefore go to...
Alison Brand Janet Smith Pat Carlson
Annamarie Kwikkel Janine Crocker Pearl Hudson
Barbara Brear Jean Boyd Peiwen Petitgrand
Barbara Stanton John & Jean Day Regina Passy Yip
Bea Broadwood Julia Clay Robin Brady-Boxwell
Beatrice Thierus Kathi Mendenhall Sally Watson
Carol Lester Kathy Brindle Sandie Coe
Carol Mittlesteadt Kay Brooke Sarah Maloney
Celia Of Oberon’s Wood Kimberly Hofmaster Sharon de Vries
Cheryl Clingen Lilli Goczal Susan Robbins
Cornelia Koehler Linda Master Teresa Thompson
Cousin Pertunia Louise Goldsborough Vicky Guile
Debbe Mize Lynn Jowers Viola Williams
Eileen Sedgwick Malcolm Smith Wilga van den Wijngaart
Frances Powell Margie Parus
Francesca Vernuccio Margot Ensink
Helen Woods Montse Vives
Jane Laverick Naomi Machida
Janet Granger Natalia Antonelli
See you in August!!

Please Note:
The projects included in this publication are not suitable for children under the age of 14.
The miniatures featured in this magazine are collectors items and therefore unsuitable for children under 14.
All projects are undertaken at your own risk. AIM does not accept responsibility for any injury incurred.
All articles and photographs used in this magazine are copyright of their authors.
The AIM magazine’s content is for private use only and it must not be reproduced in part or in full for commercial gain in any form.
Each artisan contributor is responsible for their own work / contribution to the AIM magazine
and retain full responsibility for their published work.
The authors/self publishers cannot be held legally responsible for any consequences arising from following instructions,
advice or information in this magazine.
http://artisansinminiature.blogspot.com/

Aim Imag Issue 35 June July 2011

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Aim Imag Issue 35 June July 2011

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The AIM Magazine’s Dear Reader

I did not start out to make artist’s models,

Like many doll artists working in miniature, my

Models, in my limited experience, are quite eager to

Jane Laverick Bea (Fiona) Broadwood

Artisans In Miniature June/July 2011 54

At school I believed I couldn’t paint for toffee, or even a C-

I was completely unprepared for the emotive nature of the subject.

So I gave up portrait painting but

...and do you already know about the Artisans In Miniature Website,

We have lots of links…to Fairs and Events Organizers…Magazines…Online Miniature

If you’d like to contact us, copy, paste and CLICK...

Written & Formatted By AIM Member

AIM membership is only available for professional miniature artisans,

Membership is reserved for artisans who wish to

See you in August!!

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