...to uplaod something....anything...haha

 

i also really need to edit this.

 

i'm out of town at a library right now and i just got my film from forever ago developed and since i don't have any editing junk until next week i thought i'd post this just for now....

 

...wow, that was a mouthful! haha

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This shot took me ages in my kitchen this evening and involved two tripods, a Nikon 60mm micro lens, a Helios 44 lens, two tripod stands, an Ikea mood lamp, a lightpaitingbrushes.com fibre optic brush and quite a large amount of OCD!!

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, grew up. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price* biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry occasionally at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. We find ourselves at the rear of the house in Ada’s cosy kitchen. It’s Wednesday, a free afternoon for Edith, usually kept sacrosanct for Edith to spend it doing something pleasurable with her best friend and fellow maid-of-all-work, Hilda, perusing shop windows or shopping for trimmings at Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery in Whitechapel. Yet today, Edith and her fiancée, Mayfair grocer’s delivery boy Frank, who also has managed to arrange to have Wednesday afternoon off until four o’clock, have come to Harlesden together. The couple and Ada have been shopping down on the Harlesden high street at Woolworths*. The trio, well rugged up against the cold December weather, come into the terrace through the back door off the scullery, leading from the small courtyard garden, laden with festive Christmas decorations.

 

“Oh, thank you so much for all your help today, Mum!” Edith sighs with relief as she places a box of Christmas baubles and a box of Christmas crackers onto the kitchen table. She then turns to Frank as he places Ada’s shopping basket full of Christmas decorations next to the box of crackers. “And thank you for your help, carrying Mum’s basket for her, Frank.”

 

“Anything for my best girl,” Frank replies, his cheeks flushing red at his fiancée’s compliment as he smiles at her. “And my future mother-in-law, of course!” he adds hastily as he glances at Ada, as she hangs her red velvet hat decorated with flowers and feathers on a hook near the kitchen door.

 

“Of course!” Ada agrees as she adds her heavy winter coat, cold from the December chill in the air from their walk back from the Harlesden high street on the hook beneath her hat. “Yes, I must say it’s lovely to have a spare set of hands today, Frank love. I’m most grateful.”

 

“It’s a pleasure Mrs. Wat… I mean, Ada.” Frank stumbles, blushing more. He sighs. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to calling you Ada, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

Ada chuckles as she turns around and faces her daughter and future son-in-law, smiling broadly. “Oh, you’ll get used to it soon enough, Frank love.” She walks up and stands next to him, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. “It took me an age to get used to being called Mrs. Watsford after I married George. Mrs. Watsford, to me anyway, was always George’s mother. When George and I were first married and we went anywhere socially, if anyone mentioned Mrs. Watsford, referring to me, I never answered, always thinking they were talking to, or addressing my mother-in-law, until George gave me a gentle husbandly prompt.” She chuckles again at the thought.

 

“Well, I’ll keep trying… Ada,” Frank says, emphasising her name. “And I’m sure you’re right.”

 

“You’ll also learn, Frank, that Mum is always right,” Edith giggles. “Even when she’s not!”

 

Frank smiles and joins in, his good-natured and easy chuckles intermixing with Edith’s girlish laughter as they echo around the small Harlesden terrace house kitchen.

 

“Aye! Aye! Less of your cheek, Edith!” Ada chides, wagging her finger at the young couple, yet smiling as she does, indicating that she isn’t really cross with them. “You too Frank! Is that how you repay my generosity at paying you a compliment?”

 

“Ahem!” Frank clears his throat and suddenly stands a little more upright. “No Mrs… err… Ada.” He turns and glances at his fiancée, a gormless grin on his face.

 

“You’re both awful!” Ada laughs. “Although Edith is right. I am usually right… in the end.”

 

“She’s right, Frank!” Edith acknowledges her mother as she proceeds to hang her handbag over the knob on the top of her favourite ladderback chair drawn up to the table before removing her black dyed straw cloche that she decorated herself with feathers and purple satin roses from Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery.

 

“Oh, don’t put it there, love.” Ada cautions her daughter. “I keep telling you, it might get spoiled, if you hang it there. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe.”

 

“And I keep telling you that it will be fine, Mum.” She pats the hat with satisfaction. “Besides, with all these new Christmas decorations from Woolworths, there isn’t really much room on the table.”

 

“As I just said, Edith love: I am usually right… in the end.” She wags her finger admonishingly at her daughter again. “You’ll see. One day you’ll regret hanging it there.”

 

“Yes Mum!” Edith acknowledges her mother, rolling her eyes. “But not today.”

 

“Now!” Ada claps her hands together, clasping them in anticipation. “Who wants tea then?”

 

Edith looks at Frank and Frank looks at Edith, both smiling broadly.

 

“Oh, I do!” Edith exclaims.

 

“I do!” Frank concurs.

 

“And I know I do,” Ada agrees. “That walk from Woolworths in High Street** may not be far, but it’s so cold out there today. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t get a dusting of snow*** a bit later.”

 

“If you can see it through the dense fog out there.” Edith remarks disparagingly.

 

Ada turns and stokes the dying embers in the range to bring it back to life before adding a scoop of fresh coal to it. “Be a good girl, and set the table, will you, Edith love? I’ll see to the tea.”

 

Edith walks over to the big, dark Welsh dresser that dominates one side of the tiny kitchen and picks up pretty floral teacups and saucers from among the mismatched crockery on its shelves: one of her mother’s many market finds that helped to bring elegance and beauty to Edith’s childhood home.

 

“Biscuits too, Mum?” she asks cheerfully.

 

“What kind of a question is that, Edith love?” Ada gasps. “Your dad would be furious if we didn’t serve up some of his biscuits from the factory. Besides, what kind of hostess would I be, if I didn’t offer Frank a biscuit of two?”

 

“Thanks Mrs. Wat… Ada.” Frank says, looking to Edith.

 

Edith smiles indulgently and momentarily allows herself to reminisce about years past as she reaches for the familiar McVitie’s**** Petit Beurre***** biscuit tin, its lid battered and the pattern on the top worn and chipped from years of use.

 

Ada turns back to Frank. “Sit down, Frank love.” She gestures with a flapping hand for Frank to settle down in a chair at the kitchen table. “You’ve earned a chance to put your feet up after carrying my basket for me.”

 

“Oh, it was a pleasure, Ada.” Frank says, slipping in at the table as Edith starts to set down the tea things. “It will put us in a festive mood if it does snow.”

 

“Help yourself to biscuits, Frank.” Edith says, opening the tin and placing it in front of her fiancée.

 

“Thanks Edith.” he replies gratefully, picking up a Chocolate Homewheat Digestive******, taking a hungry bite out of it, crumbs spilling onto the blue and white floral plate directly in front of him.

 

Edith finishes setting the table, whilst Ada pours hot water from her large kettle hanging on the hob into her old, glazed Brown Betty******* teapot, before setting it on the table to steep.

 

“So,” Ada asks with a groan, settling comfortably into her own round backed Windsor chair. “How’s your grandmother then?”

 

Frank swallows his mouthful of biscuit before replying, “It’s a slow recovery, but Gran’s definitely improving, thanks Mrs. Wat… Ada.”

 

“It’s so awful having influenza at any time in life, but at her age,” Ada tuts and shakes her head. “Poor Mrs. McTavish. George and I were talking about it when Edith told us she was poorly. She must have caught it going home from the Lyon’s Corner House******** the afternoon of the party George threw for yours and Edith’s engagement. He feels terribly guilty.” She pauses. “We both do, Frank love.”

 

“Oh, it wasn’t your fault, Ada!” Frank insists. “It was cold enough for a dusting of snow that day too, and even with her fox fur collar, I guess she still wasn’t quite well rugged up enough. It was just unfortunate that she caught a chill.”

 

“And you did say she was improving, Frank.” Edith adds helpfully.

 

“Yes,” Frank chuckles. “She was telling me how to make our pot of tea the other day when I visited her after Edith and I had been to the Premier********* over in in East Ham, to see ‘A Girl of London’**********, so that’s a marked improvement.”

 

“She’s very particular on how Francis makes her tea.” Edith adds cheekily, using Frank’s proper name, which he loathes and thinks unmanly.

 

“Edith!” Frank exclaims as his face flushes with embarrassment as he looks at his fiancée, who feigns innocence as she blows a kiss to him over the table.

 

Unaware of the teasing going on between the pair, Ada remarks as she pours Frank his tea, “Well that’s a good thing, Frank love.”

 

“And it’s a very good thing you and Mr. Wat… George, are doing Ada,” Frank says, indicating to all the Christmas decorations they have brought back to the Harlesden terrace with them. “Uprooting Christmas festivities from here as we’d originally, planned and moving them at short notice to Gran’s house. All these lovely new bright decorations,” He fiddles with a box of green and gold baubles in a brightly patterned box and a boxed green tinsel garland. “Will add some festive cheer to Gran’s house, and I know she is looking forward to having Christmas at home, even if she isn’t well enough to help cook the Christmas turkey herself.”

 

“Ahh,” Ada scoffs with a beatific smile and a dismissive wave of her hand as she passes Frank his cup of tea. “You’re welcome, Frank. It would be too much to expect Mrs. McTavish to travel all the way to us, even if it isn’t far from the Tube************ station either way, in her poorly condition. Besides, it wasn’t even my suggestion. Edith should take credit for that.”

 

Edith remains silent, but smiles proudly as she munches quietly on a jam drop biscuit*************.

 

“That’s true Ada. Credit where credit is due**************, Edith,” Frank acknowledges his fiancée. “It’s very good of you to think of Gran’s comfort and health first.”

 

“Oh, that’s alright, Frank!” Edith replies breezily as she finishes her mouthful. “I think anyone else would think the same.”

 

“Not just anyone, Edith - you!” Frank insists. “You are so kind and caring, and that’s one of the many reasons that I love you.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith exclaims with a beaming smile. “You are sweet. I love you too!”

 

“Frank’s right, Edith love.” Ada adds kindly. “You are a very good girl to think of Mrs. McTavish and her needs when she hasn’t been well. The lady you have grown up to be makes your dad and me proud, love.”

 

“Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Edith reaches across the table and picks up a boxed angel dressed in a white lace gown with gilt cardboard wings and a halo destined for the top of a tree. “Gran’s not been well, and after all, she does have a parlour every bit as large as our kitchen, so big enough for all of us, especially since Bert won’t be home this Christmas.”

 

“He was lucky to get shore leave last Christmas, Edith love.” Ada tempers. “That was two Christmases in a row we had him home for. We knew we couldn’t have been lucky enough to have had him for a third.”

 

“I know, Mum.” Edith replies. “He just better make sure he gets shore leave for our wedding!”

 

“He will, Edith love. Nothing will stop Bert being here for your big day, when it happens.” Ada insists.

 

*Woolworths began operation in Britain in 1909 when Frank Woolworth opened the first store in Liverpool, as a British subsidiary of the already established American company. The store initially sold a variety of goods for threepence and sixpence, making their goods accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy upper and middle-classes. The British subsidiary proved to be very popular, and it grew quickly, opening twelve stores by 1912 and expanding using its own profits to become a fixture on the high street. The stores became a beloved British institution, with many shoppers assuming they were originally a British company. In 1982, the United Kingdom operations underwent a management buyout from the American parent company, becoming Woolworth Holdings PLC. This followed the American parent company\'s sale of its controlling stake to a local consortium. Later, in 2000, the company\'s parent (by then known as Kingfisher Group) decided to restructure, focusing more on its DIY and electrical markets. The general merchandise division, including Big W stores, was spun off into a separate company called Woolworths in 2001. Unable to adapt to modern retail trends, the company faced increasing competition and financial difficulties. The last Woolworths stores in the United Kingdom closed their doors in December 2008 and January 2009, marking the end of an era.

 

**Woolworths at 37-41 High Street in Harlesden was was the eleventh UK store and the third London store. It opened in 1911 and closed in 1991 at the end of its lease. The original store was rather smaller, expanding to the below frontage in two stages in the 1920s and 1930s. The outlet took a little longer to get established than the first two London stores Brixton and Woolwich, possibly because of the middle-class pretentions of Harlesden at the time when housewives might have been ashamed of shopping in a store that’s byline was selling goods for threepence and sixpence, but had built such a large clientele by the 1930s that it was doubled in size.

 

***It snowed in London in 1925, with significant "snowy northerlies" occurring in late November. While heavy snowfalls were reported in the midlands and north of England in December of that year, London experienced a period of dense fog in December, as well as a very mild, windy, and wet January at the start of the year.

 

****McVitie\'s (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price\'s first major biscuit was the McVitie\'s Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie\'s Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie\'s were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie\'s holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

*****The Petit Beurre, also known as Véritable Petit Beurre (VPB), is a type of shortbread from Nantes, France. The biscuits of the Lefèvre-Utile company are the most commercially successful variety, although its name is not exclusive to Lefèvre-Utile . It was invented in 1886 by Louis Lefèvre-Utile in the city of Nantes and was inspired by some English products of the time.

 

******McVitie & Price introduced the chocolate digestive biscuit in 1925, which was the primary chocolate biscuit variety they offered at that time. It was a variation of their original digestive biscuit and was named the "Chocolate Homewheat Digestive". Other flavored chocolate biscuits like mint, orange, or those with chocolate chips inside did not exist in this early period.

 

*******A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.

 

********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons\' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

*********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

**********‘A Girl of London’ is a 1925 British silent drama film produced by Stoll Pictures, directed by Henry Edwards and starring Genevieve Townsend, Ian Hunter and Nora Swinburne. Its plot concerns the son of a member of parliament, who is disowned by his father when he marries a girl who works in a factory. Meanwhile, he tries to rescue his new wife from her stepfather who operates a drugs den. It was based on a novel by Douglas Walshe.

 

***********One of the most famous Christmas decorations that people love to use at Christmas is tinsel. You might think that using it is an old tradition and that people in Britain have been adorning their houses with tinsel for a very long time. However that is not actually true. Tinsel is in fact believed to be quite a modern tradition. Whilst the idea of tinsel dates back to Germany in 1610 when wealthy people used real strands of silver to adorn their Christmas trees (also a German invention). Silver was very expensive though, so being able to do this was a sign that you were wealthy. Even though silver looked beautiful and sparkly to begin with, it tarnished quite quickly, meaning it would lose its lovely, bright appearance. Therefore it was swapped for other materials like copper and tin. These metals were also cheaper, so it meant that more people could use them. However, when the Great War started in 1914, metals like copper were needed for the war. Because of this, they couldn\'t be used for Christmas decorations as much, so a substitute was needed. It was swapped for aluminium, but this was a fire hazard, so it was switched for lead, but that turned out to be poisonous.

 

************People started calling the London Underground the "Tube" around 1900, after the opening of the Central London Railway. The railway\'s deep, cylindrical tunnels resembled tubes, and a newspaper nickname for it, the “Tuppenny Tube”, due to a flat fare of two pence, helped the term stick. Over time, the nickname spread to refer to the entire system.

 

*************A jam drop biscuit is a classic buttery, shortbread-style cookie with a thumbprint-like indentation filled with jam before baking.

 

**************The phrase "credit paid where it\'s due" means to praise someone for their accomplishments or good work, even if you may not like them or have other negative feelings toward them. It is an expression of fairness that acknowledges merit when it is deserved. It was likely popularised by American statesman Samuel Adams, who wrote "Give credit to whom credit due" in a letter in 1777. The expression\'s origin can also be traced to a biblical parallel in Romans 13:7 and reflects a long-standing principle of giving praise or acknowledgement to those who have earned it.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene with its festive overtones is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Ada’s kitchen table is covered with boxed Christmas decorations. The boxed tinsel garland and the tree top angel were a gift to me last Christmas from my Flickr friend BKHagar *Kim* who also collects 1:12 miniatures. She picked these up at a house auction as part of a large miniatures collection. The red box containing hand painted Christmas ornaments were hand made and decorated by artists of Crooked Mile Cottage in America. The patterned green box of red and green baubles at the front of Ada’s basket to the right was hand made by Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The box of Christmas crackers is a 1:12 miniatures made by artisan Ken Blythe. I have a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my miniatures collection – books mostly. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! Sadly, so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. As well as making books, he also made other small paper based miniatures including boxes of goods. The box is designed to be opened, and each one contains gaily coloured Christmas crackers made from real crêpe paper. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

Ada’s shopping basket comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

Sitting on the table in the foreground is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. There are several biscuits on the plates as well. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. Also in the foreground there are are non-matching teacups, saucers, a milk jug and sugar bowl, all of which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. The Brown Betty teapot in the came from The Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom.

  

Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. Edith’s green leather handbag also came from her collection.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

the last few pages of Ragtime

bookmarks

hefeweizen

water glass

fruit bowl

evening light on the kitchen table

More food .

Asheville, North Carolina, 2020

I only make it once a year, which considering the 10 eggs it calls for, is probably a good thing.

I see the recipe every day, though, it's posted on a metal cabinet in our dining room. It connects my home to the homes & kitchens of my memories.

  

Arnolfini, Bristol

Anyone who follows my photostream knows that I love and collect 1:12 size miniatures which I photograph in realistic scenes. The artifice of recreating in minute detail items in 1:12 scale always amazes me, and it’s amazing how the eye can be fooled. Part of that artifice requires making sure that everything is in place as if the inhabitants of a room have just stepped out and will return at any moment, and I often spend far more time setting things up and adjusting the position of items, sometime by millimetres, to make it just right.

 

As well as photographing the miniature room as a whole, I sometimes photograph individual items within the tableau. On occasion it is so I know what is set where in a room if I decide to recreate it later, but more often than not it’s because I think the miniature artisan item deserves its own focus, be it a hand made hat, a hand painted teapot or a realistic biscuit tin containing biscuits.

 

The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 20th of November is “collage”, and whilst I have toyed and made a few different collages, I decided to use this one, to show some of the finer details that go into making a scene realistic. I hope that you like my choice for the theme this week, and that it makes you smile.

 

The details I have displayed around the main photograph are from top left to top right in an anti-clockwise direction:

 

A black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers, which was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

The shelves of the Welsh dresser in the background are cluttered with different patterned crockery which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s (when this scene is set) when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a jar of Marmite and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans. Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion. Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity.

 

Sitting on the table in the foreground of the main photo is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

In the foreground on the table there are several packets of Edwardian cleaning and laundry brands that were in common use in the early Twentieth Century in every household, rich or poor. These are Sunlight Soap, Robin’s Starch, Jumbo Blue and Imp Washer Soap. All these packets were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884 by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme) and introduced to the market in 1904. It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight. Before the invention of aerosol spray starch, the product of choice in many homes of all classes was Robin starch. Robin Starch was a stiff white powder like cornflour to which water had to be added. When you made up the solution, it was gloopy, sticky with powdery lumps, just like wallpaper paste or grout. The garment was immersed evenly in that mixture and then it had to be smoothed out. All the stubborn starchy lumps had to be dissolved until they were eliminated – a metal spoon was good for bashing at the lumps to break them down. Robins Starch was produced by Reckitt and Sons who were a leading British manufacturer of household products, notably starch, black lead, laundry blue, and household polish. They also produced Jumbo Blue, which was a whitener added to a wash to help delay the yellowing effect of older cotton. Rekitt and Sons were based in Kingston upon Hull. Isaac Reckitt began business in Hull in 1840, and his business became a private company Isaac Reckitt and Sons in 1879, and a public company in 1888. The company expanded through the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. It merged with a major competitor in the starch market J. and J. Colman in 1938 to form Reckitt and Colman.

 

Sitting atop a stack of neatly folded 1:12 size linens sits a wicker sewing basket. Sitting open it has needles stuck into the padded lid, whilst inside it are a tape measure, knitting needles, balls of wool, reels of cotton and a pair of shears. All the items and the basket, except for the shears, are hand made by Mrs. Denton of Muffin Lodge in the United Kingdom. The taupe knitting on the two long pins that serve as knitting needles is properly knitted and cast on. The shears with black handles in the basket open and close. Made of metal, they came from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue cotton reel and silver sewing scissors come from an E-Bay stockist of miniatures based in the United Kingdom.

 

In the foreground on the table there is a packet of Edwardian soap that was in common use in the early Twentieth Century in every household, rich or poor. This is Imp Washer Soap. The packet was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Imp Washer Soap was manufactured by T. H. Harris and Sons Limited, a soap manufacturers, tallow melters and bone boiler. Introduced after the Great War, Imp Washer Soap was a cheaper alternative to the more popular brands like Sunlight, Hudsons and Lifebuoy soaps. Imp Washer Soap was advertised as a free lathering and economical cleaner. T. H. Harris and Sons Limited also sold Mazo soap energiser which purported to improve the quality of cleaning power of existing soaps.

 

Sitting on the large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of a copper kettle and a steel iron. The kettle’s lid may be removed.

 

Sitting on the table is a cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

Wickham Place is the London home of Lord and Lady Southgate, their children and staff. Located in fashionable Belgravia it is a fine Georgian terrace house.

 

Today we are below stairs in the Wickham Place kitchen. The Wickham Place kitchens are situated on the ground floor of Wickham Place, adjoining the Butler’s Pantry. It is dominated by big black leaded range, and next to it stands a heavy dark wood dresser that has been there for as long as anyone can remember. In the middle of the kitchen stands Cook’s preserve, the pine deal table on which she does most of her preparation for both the meals served to the family upstairs and those for the downstairs staff. And here we are before the range at the pine deal table where Mrs. Bradley the Cook is going to give her scullery maid another cooking lesson by having her prepare vegetable consommé for the second course for the upstairs dinner this evening.

 

“Agnes. Agnes.”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Bradley?” Agnes scurries over from the sink.

 

“I think you’ve earned the right for another cooking lesson.”

 

“Oh! Oh really Mrs. Bradley! Your famous soufflé?”

 

“Heavens girl!” the older woman cries, throwing her careworn hands in the air. “Do you really think me a loon? I’ve told you before. You need to learn the basics of plain cooking before I can teach you anything fancy. And a clear consommé of vegetables will be fancy enough for you.”

 

“That sounds very fancy Mrs. Bradley.”

 

“That’s because them who eat upstairs,” she raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Like their fancy names for their finely cut vegetable soup.”

 

“Vegetable soup, Mrs. Bradley?” Agnes’ shoulders slump.

 

“Now! Now! Buck up my girl!” the Cook says as she steps towards her enormous range to stir a pot over the flame with her wooden spoon. “Don’t think of it as vegetable soup. Think of it as,” She flourishes her spoon through the air. “Consommé.”

 

Agnes goes to the pine deal dresser on the left hand side of the range an takes out the big copper stock pot and under Mrs. Bradley’s instruction, fetches carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, leek, a clove of garlic and thinking it might also go in, a radish.

 

“Did I say a radish, girl?”

 

“No Mrs. Bradley.”

 

“No radish in vegetable consommé, Agnes.”

 

“But it’s a vegetable, Mrs. Bradley.”

 

“So’s an artichoke, but you aren’t putting that into it either girl!”

 

“No Mrs. Bradley.” Agnes says with an apologetic tone.

 

“Now, get chopping girl! Small pieces mind. We don’t want upstairs choking on big chunks of potato, now do we?”

 

“No, Mrs. Bradley.”

 

The theme for the 11th of September “Looking Close… on Friday” is “vegetables”. This tableaux is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood like the ladderback chair and the teapot on the dresser in the background. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

All the vegetables and garlic clove seen on Cook’s deal table are artisan miniatures from a specialist stockist of food stuffs from Kettering in England, as are the onions hanging to the right of the range. He has a dizzying array of meals which is always growing, and all are made entirely or put together by hand, so each item is individual.

 

The kitchen knife with its inlaid handle and sharpened blade comes from English miniatures specialist Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniature store.

 

The copper stock pot, the copper pan and the pots on the range in the background are all made of real copper and come from various miniature stockists in England and America.

 

In front of stock pot containing carrots and parsnips is one of Cook’s Cornishware white and blue striped bowls. One of her Cornishware cannisters stands to the left of the pot. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.

 

To the right of the stock pot and Cornishware bowl stands a silver Art Nouveau cup which is a dolls’ house miniature from Germany, made in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. It is a beautiful work of art as a stand alone item and is remarkably heavy.

 

The jars of herbs are also 1:12 miniatures, made of real glass with real cork stoppers in them.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

Our snack before we started baking the most ridiculously chocolate cookies we've ever had.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. We have travelled east across London, through Bloomsbury, past the Smithfield Meat Markets, beyond the Petticoat Lane Markets* frequented by Lettice’s maid, Edith, through the East End boroughs of Bethnal Green and Bow, to the 1880s housing development of Upton Park. It is here that Frank’s closest and only surviving relation lives: his elderly Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish. Edith and Frank have just become officially engaged after Frank proposed to Edith in the middle of a photography studio in Clapham Junction on Wednesday, a carefully planned ruse with his friend who works at the studio, where Frank presented Edith with a dainty silver ring her bought from a jewellers in Lavender Hill** Edith wasted no time telling her parents, Ada and George, that day, but the pair of them decided to tell Mrs. McTavish together on their Sunday off.

 

Getting out at Upton Park railway station, the pair exit the polychromatic red and brown brick Victorian railway station with its ornate finials and elegant quoining walking out into the bright summer sunshine. The glare of natural light after being in the London underground blinds them momentarily. Before them the busy high street shopping precinct of Green Street stretches in either direction to their left and right, the noisy thoroughfare chocked with a mixture of chugging motor cars, lorries and the occasional double decker electrical tram. Even horse drawn carts with placid plodding old work horses unperturbed by the belching of their mechanical usurpers join the melee of trundling traffic going in either direction. People bustle past them on the footpath, going about their Sunday business cheerily, many off to the nearby Queens Road Market.

 

“Come on.” Frank says comfortingly as he sees his fiancée’s nervous face, grasping Edith’s hand. “Cross with me and you’ll be safe.”

 

Taking his proffered hand gratefully, Edith takes a deep breath as the pair cross the busy thoroughfare of Green Street, weaving their way through the traffic. Reaching the other side safely, the pair head west a short distance before turning down the elm tree lined Kings Road, which is flanked to either side with identical polychromatic cream and red brick two storey Victorian terraces with grey or painted stone dressings. As Edith looks at their façades over the top of their low brick fences, familiar to her now, each one with a small bay with two windows downstairs and two upstairs, a recessed porch and front door with a window above that, she remembers how the first time she walked down Kings Road with Frank beneath the shade of the elm trees, she noticed the slight flutter of several sets of lace curtains in the downstairs and imagined the owners eyeing her with suspicion. Now she has been down Kings Road so many times with Frank and been introduced to so many of them, she knows the names of some of the suburban housewives peering out from the comfort of their front rooms.

 

“Hullo Mrs. McClintock!” Edith says brightly, waving to a woman standing at her window in a floral sprigged patterned dress who waves back cheerfully in recognition of Edith.

 

“Remember how nervous you were the first time we came to see Gran?” Franks asks Edith, putting his arm comfortingly around her and drawing her to him.

 

“How could I ever forget that?” Edith replies with a chuckle that is a mixture of both relief and nervousness as she remembers. “I was sure that Upton Park was going to be full of grand houses, and your Gran was going to be some grand Victorian lady, like old Mrs. Hounslow, my parents’ landlady, all dressed in black with lace trimmings.

 

“That makes me laugh.” Frank guffaws. “Gran was quite chuffed about being presumed to be a high-and-mighty matron!”

 

Edith sighs and allows herself to fall into Frank’s protective embrace and press against his side as they walk. The familiar scent of him: a mixture of soap and the grocery shop, is comforting and familiar to her now.

 

“I told you that you had nothing to worry about, and that Gran was as nervous as you. Not that she’d ever tell me.”

 

“And you were right, Frank.” Edith sighs. “Thank goodness!”

 

They stop in front of a terrace behind a low brick wall just the same as all the others, its front door painted black and a small patch of lawn, devoid of any other vegetation filling the space between the street and the house.

 

“Come on then, Edith.” Frank says with a winning smile. “Let’s go tell Gran our good news.”

 

After walking through the unlocked main door and walking down the black and white lino lined hallway of the terrace, the couple let themselves into Mrs. McTavish’s ground floor flat and walk into her kitchen, a cosy room dominated by a big black range and featuring a dresser that is stuffed with all manner of mismatched decorative china and a panoply of cooking items, just like Edith’s mother’s Welsh dresser in Harlesden. The walls are covered with cream coloured wallpaper featuring dainty floral sprigs. Several framed embroideries hang around the room and a cuckoo clock ticks contentedly to the left of the range. A rug covers the flagstone floor before the hearth. A round table covered in a pretty lace tablecloth has several mismatched chairs and stools drawn up to it. On the table itself stands a healthy looking aspidistra which obviously benefits from the sun as it filters through the lace curtains at the large kitchen window. Just like her mother’s table when guests come to call, a selection of decorative blue and white crockery has been set out, ready for use. A shop bought Dundee Cake***, still with its ornamental Scottish tartan ribbon wrapped around it, sits on a plate. A sewing work table with a sagging floral bag for storage beneath it stands open, its compartments filled with needles, thread, wool, buttons and everything a sewer and knitter needs. And there, in her usual place in her very old and worn brown leather wingback chair sits Frank’s Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish.

 

“Och my bairns!” Mrs. McTavish enthuses in delight when she receives the exciting news from the happy pair, her voice thick with her Scottish brogue. “Och! I’m so happy for you!”

 

Sitting in her old, worn leather wingback chair with the tartan rug draped over the back, the old Scottish woman with her wrinkled face, reaches out and grasps Edith’s hands as the younger woman crouches down before Mrs. McTavish. Edith can see her eyes, buried amid a myriad of wrinkles sparkling with tears of joy.

 

Edith squeezes Mrs. McTavish’s thin and gnarled fingers tightly. “I knew you’d be happy for us, Mrs. McTavish.” She says with a beaming smile.

 

“Och! How could I not be?” the old woman chortles back. “I’m getting my greatest wish.” She looks across to her grandson as he fiddles with her white china kettle, placing it next to the hob on her old black coal consuming range, and smiles lovingly. “My Francis is getting wed, at last! And not before time, I might add, Edith dearie!” She glances back at Edith and says in a staged whisper quite loud enough for Frank to hear, “I’ve been telling Francis for months to propose to you!”

 

“Oh Gran!” Frank gasps with embarrassment as he turns from the range to face his grandmother. “How many times must I ask you to call me Frank. I’m Frank now, not Francis!”

 

“Och! What onsense!” the old Scottish woman says sharply, leaning forward in her seat and slapping her grandson’s forearm lightly. “You’ll always be Francis to me, my little bairn! It was the name your mither**** and faither***** gave you when you were baptised, so Francis you’ll be.”

 

Frank rolls his eyes at Edith, who tries to stifle her girlish giggle as she does. “Francis is a girl’s name, not a boy’s one.”

 

“Nonsense bairn!” Mrs. McTavish says again. “Must I keep reminding you about Francis Drake the great Elizabethan explorer? Hhmm? He was no lady!”

 

“And must I keep reminding you, Gran, that we don’t live in Elizabethan times.” Frank retorts with a shake of his head.

 

“That’s enough cheek from you, my bairn!” Mrs. McTavish replies with another gentle slap. “This is your Gran you’re talking to.”

 

“Yes Francis.” Edith says with a cheeky smile. “Be polite and respect your elders.”

 

“You keep out of this, my girl!” Frank laughs, wagging a finger at his fiancée, looking lovingly at her.

 

“Och! Ignore him, the silly bairn! You’re a good girl, Edith dearie.” Mrs. McTavish says happily. “You’ll be such a good influence on him.”

 

“I’d like to think that we are both a good influence on one another, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith replies. “Frank and I believe in an equal partnership. Don’t we Frank?”

 

“We do, Edith.” he answers simply.

 

“Just so, dearie.” Mrs. McTavish agrees. “So it was with my husband and I, and Francis’ parents too.”

 

“So, you’ve been telling Frank to propose to me for a while have you?” Edith asks, standing up from before the old woman, picking up a bright brass tea canister and a teaspoon from the small pedestal table drawn up to Mrs. McTavish’s chair and handing them to Frank.

 

“Aye, that I have dearie.” the old Scotswoman replies. “But he just kept fobbing me off, telling me some nonsense that it just wasn’t quite the right time.”

 

“He said the same thing to me a number of times, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith laughs. “We had the most beastly argument about it the day we went up the Elephant****** to do some window shopping.”

 

“And I was right.” Frank replies with a tone of justification in his voice. “It wasn’t the right time then, as it happens.” He opens the canister and spoons in fresh tealeaves into the china pot.

 

“Remember to add an extra scoop for the pot, bairn*******.” Mrs. McTavish reminds her grandson.

 

“How many times have I made tea for us in my life, Gran?” Frank laughs lightly. “If I don’t know that by now, after all these years and the many pots I’ve brewed, then I never will.”

 

“Just making sure, bairn.” Mrs. McTavish nestles back into the padded back of her chair. Then she thinks for a moment, her eyes flicking as she sits forward again. “And don’t stir that pot with…”

 

“I know, Gran, with the handle*****.” Frank replies. “It’s bad luck.”

 

“Aye! That it is, bairn.” The old woman turns to Edith. “Once the tea is made, you must stir it with the bowl of the spoon, Edith dearie, and not the handle, or it will be nothing but strive for you when you get wed!” She nods emphatically with a stern mouth that has retracted to nothing but a think line across her old, weatherworn face.

 

“I’d already partially paid of your silver ring, Edith and had it engraved that afternoon we spent up the Elephant.” Frank goes on, picking up the conversation about the timing of his proposal to Edith. “I wanted to give it to you when I proposed, so it really wasn’t the right time to do it. I just wanted everything to be perfect for you.”

 

“I know that now, Frank.” Edith assures him. “And it was perfect. It was perfectly wonderful, and it is a day I shall always remember for the rest of my life!” She sighs happily.

 

“I should hope you would, Edith.” Frank answers with a good natured chuckle as he returns the canister to his grandmother’s table. “After all, it isn’t every day that you get a photographic portrait sitting and a proposal all in the one day!”

 

“I’ll say Frank.” Edith looks down fondly upon her new silver ring, gleaming on her ring finger.

 

Edith has decided not to tell Lettice of her engagement, only announcing it once she and Frank have set a date for the wedding, a decision her mother, Ada, is very much in agreement with, worrying that the engagement may make Lettice see Edith as a liability rather than the valued maid-of-all-work that she currently is. To stop the ring from getting damaged by the hard work she does, during the week Edith has taken up wearing it on a small chain around her neck, but every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday she has off, Edith slips it back onto her ring finger proudly once she is out of sight of Cavendish Mews.

 

“I’m still sorry that it is only silver, dear Edith.” Frank goes on as he fills the teapot with boiling water from Mrs. McTavish’s gleaming copper kettle.

 

“I keep telling you, Francis,” she emphasises Frank’s real name as she speaks, indicating that this the point she is about to make, she does not want to again. “That a silver ring is good enough for me. In fact, it’s more than enough. I wasn’t expecting an engagement ring at all.”

 

“Well,” Frank blushes. “All the same, you shall have a gold wedding ring. Edith can wear Mum’s wedding ring, can’t she Gran?” He turns and looks hopefully at his grandmother as she sits in her chair. “You still have it, don’t you?”

 

“Och!” the old woman scoffs dismissively. “Well of course I do, bairn!” She hooks her thin, wrinkled fingers into the lace collar of the white blouse and fishes out a small golden chain about her neck, upon which hang two golden rings. “Your mither’s and your faither’s.” She smiles. “Better than lying and going to waste in the ground, bairn. Edith can wear your mither’s, whilst you can wear your faither’s, and that way they remain the pair that they are.”

 

“Oh Mrs. McTavish!” Edith gasps. “I couldn’t…”

 

However, the old woman holds up a hand, stopping Edith from speaking any more.

 

“Help me will you, Edith dearie.” She indicates with gesticulations that she cannot unfasten the clasp of the chain by herself with her old hands. “And Francis.” She holds out a pretty knitted tea cosy that was sitting on the arm of her chair to her grandson. “Cosy!”

 

“Thanks Gran!” Frank says gratefully, slipping it over the teapot.

 

Obediently, Edith walks up to Mrs. McTavish, and with the dexterity of her nimble fingers, unfastens the clasp of the chain. The old Scottish woman holds up her right hand to catch the two rings in her palm as Edith carefully lowers the chain.

 

“Good girl.” Mrs. McTavish says with a sigh, looking at the two golden rings which gleam warmly in the light filtering through the kitchen window.

 

“Mrs. McTavish…” Edith begins again, only to be silenced by the old woman’s raised palm again.

 

“Mum and Dad would want us to have them and use them, Edith.” Frank assures her, as he swirls the cosy covered teapot in his hands before filling the dainty blue and white floral cup next to his grandmother with brackish red tea. “They’ll be looking down from above on our wedding day and smiling.”

 

“I don’t know, Frank.” Edith answers in a doubtful voice.

 

“You know, when Francis’ parents were taken by the Spanish Influenza,” Mrs. McTavish begins, looking earnestly at Edith. “I was broken hearted. Aye, I was.”

 

“Oh I can only imagine, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“Eileen was my only daughter, and she and Bernard were a fine couple.” The old woman’s eyes mist up a little as she continues, glistening with unshed tears that threaten to spill from her lids. “They would want these rings to have a continued life, and I’m sure they couldn’t have wished for a happier one than that of their Francis and his new wife.” She reaches out her left hand and squeezes Edith’s clasped hands. “It’s just a natural progression of their rings’ lives. So, no arguing, Edith dearie.” Blinking back her tears she smiles, albeit a little morosely. “Alright?”

 

“Alright Mrs. McTavish.” Edith acquiesces quietly.

 

“Och!” the Scottish woman scoffs again. “We’re going to have to do something about that too!”

 

“About what, Mrs. McTavish?” Edith asks.

 

“Yes Gran, about what?” Frank echoes as he takes the top over to the round dining table and fills his and Edith’s cups with tea.

 

“All this Mrs. McTavish business!” she replies, shaking her hands in front of her as if shooing away her name. “Mrs. McTavish this. Mrs. McTavish that. You can’t very well go on calling me Mrs. McTavish, Edith dearie, now you’re marrying my Francis.”

 

“That’s a good point, Gran.” Frank opines. “I hadn’t really considered that.”

 

“Well, luckily,” the old woman says sagely. “I did!”

 

“You’ll be a part of the Leadbetter family, Edith.” Frank says. “It’s true, you can’t go on calling Gran, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“Well, I’ve been calling you Mrs. McTavish… err… Mrs. McTavish,” Edith replies apologetically. “Because that that was what Frank and I decided upon on that first day I met you.”

 

“We did and all!” Frank laughs. “In the hallway, just out there, before we came in.”

 

“I can’t call you Nyree, even though it’s such a lovely name, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith says. “It wouldn’t be right. You’re more senior than I am. It isn’t respectable.”

 

“Och what rubbish!” Mrs. McTavish replies, swatting the air at Edith’s remark. “Of course you can. And no-one has called me Nyree for a long time. Not really since my husband died in 1912, so it would be quite nice to be called that again.”

 

“No,” Edith insists. “It wouldn’t be right.”

 

The trio fall into silence for a few moments whilst they contemplate the question at hand. Only the quiet ticking of the cuckoo clock hanging on the wall by the range and the crackle of the range itself breaking the quiet as it settles thickly about them.

 

“Why not Gran, then, Edith?” Frank finally says, breaking the silence. “Like I do. What do you think, Gran?”

 

“Aye!” Mrs. McTavish agrees with a smile broadening on her face. “That’s a grand idea, Francis. You’re more than just a pretty face, my sweet bairn.”

 

“Thank you Gran.” he says with pride, for once not minding her calling him by his real name.

 

“Do you think you could call me, Gran, Edith dearie?” Mrs. McTavish asks Edith.

 

“Well,” Edith contemplates the suggestion. “I’ll have to get used to it, and I might not always do it to start off with.” She sighs. “Habits can be hard. However, I’d love to… Gran.”

 

A cosy kitchen this may be, but it is not quite what it seems, for it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Dominating the room is the large kitchen range which is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water). The fringing hanging from the mantle is actually a beautiful scalloped ribbon that was given to me one Christmas time by a very close friend of mine.

 

Mrs. McTavish’s intentionally worn leather wingback chair and the sewing table are both 1:12 artisan miniatures. The inside of the sewing table is particularly well made and detailed with a removable tray made up of multiple compartments. Beneath it, the floral fabric lines the underside and opens up into a central bag. Both pieces come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The sewing items which sit on its top also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop and various online specialists on E-Bay. The tartan rug draped over the back of the chair I have had since I was about six. It came with a blanket rocker miniature I was given for my sixth birthday.

 

The sewing basket that you can see on the floor next to the pedestal table I bought from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house furnishings. It is an artisan miniature and contains pieces of embroidery and embroidery threads.

 

On the small pedestal table next to Mrs. McTavish’s chair comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop, as does the bright tea caddy, the blue and white china teacup and saucer and the spoon rest on its top. The spoon comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

On the wall just behind Mrs. McTavish’s chair hangs a hand painted cuckoo clock. It has been made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

The tea cosy on the arm of Mrs. McTavish’s chair, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot on the side of the range, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in the United Kingdom, as does the copper kettle on the hob.

 

The coal scuttle, containing real coal is a beautiful example of canal barge ware from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Narrow boat painting, or canal art is a traditional British folk art. This highly decorative folk art once adorned the working narrow boats of the inland waterways of Britain. Canal ware, barge ware, or gift ware, are used to describe decorated trinkets, and household items, rather than the decorated narrow boats.

 

In the background you can see Mrs. McTavish’s dark wood dresser cluttered with decorative china. I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

The rug on the floor comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

Just a nice warm cup of Christmas spirit!

 

Going For 4 In-a-Row ~ 366 ....

 

Thanks to everyone who views this photo, adds a note, leaves a comment and of course BIG thanks to anyone who chooses to favourite my photo .... thanks to you all.

The perfect match!!

 

7 Days of Shooting Week #36 A Good Match Focus Friday ....

 

Thanks to everyone who views this photo, adds a note, leaves a comment and of course BIG thanks to anyone who chooses to favourite my photo .... thanks to you all.

Explore - March 29, 2009 (#66)

 

A spring impression from my kitchen table - blue hyacinths and pink broom.

 

It has been a week busy with work again and an invitation to Getty Images for some of my photos (I wonder if any of my contacts received an invite too? I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts!).

 

Thanks to all. Have a great Sunday and beautiful week ahead!

 

The fragrance of spring...

I did a 2 photo collage here, as I showed the most used props for the LPS Blythes, and the most used props for the bigger girls. 💕❤️

Theme of The Week - Selective Color

 

He´s got his basket in the kitchenwindow. Here he dozes during the day or eagerly watches the birds outside.

He´s an old wise cat, who knows that the rest of the kitchentable beyond the dishdrainer is forbidden area. So he keeps to his end, and when he thinks the birds outside are getting too provocative he rushes out ... and never wonders why they always manage to escape. He´s not THAT wise ...

Een heerlijk verfrissend glas prosecco met lime en munt op de receptie van De Twee Vreemde Vogels

 

Thank you for EXPLORE

I really dig the space Lego sets.

During our last hot spell --HOT & HUMID--

I dug out some Legos and sorted pieces. I wanted to make some sort of 'scene' and this is what happened.

 

I sat at the breakfast table. I am always amazed at how neat things can look when just peering through the lens.

 

BTS in comments....

for Mortal Muses

 

bless you bokeh, for your ability to dress up kitchen mess

This image was taken on Sunday 12th July up at the Pontypool / Blaenavon station where the WWII re-enactment took place.

 

My thanks to all the people that very kindly posed for me today ... and also for Jeff (Jeffda2) for yet another great day out !

Succulent plants, also known as succulents or fat plants, are water-retaining plants adapted to arid climate or soil conditions. Succulent plants store water in their leaves, stems and/or roots. The storage of water often gives succulent plants a more swollen or fleshy appearance than other plants, also known as succulence. In addition to succulence, succulent plants variously have other water-saving features.

Sylvan Lake home and garden tour

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today it is Tuesday, and we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve. Lettice is hosting a luncheon for her future sister-in-law Arabella Tyrwhitt who will soon marry her eldest brother Leslie. As Arabella has no sisters, and her mother is too unwell at present to travel up to London from Wiltshire, Lettice has taken it upon herself to help Arabella select a suitable trousseau. So, she has brought her to London to stay in Cavendish Mews, so from there she can take Arabella shopping in all the best shops in the West End, and take her to her best friend Gerald Bruton’s couturier in Grosvenor Street for her wedding dress. Edith is busy, rushing about the room between the stove and the deal kitchen table in the centre of the room, banging copper pots and porcelain serving dishes alike as she starts to serve the luncheon of a roast beef with vegetables and gravy.

 

“Lawd!” exclaims Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman* who comes on Tuesdays and every third Thursday to do the hard jobs. Her eyes drifting to the white painted ceiling above as she struggles through the door leading from the kitchen to the hallway carrying her tin bucket and mop, she asks, “Ow many’s in there to make that kinda racket?”

 

“Shh!” Edith gasps, raising her left index finger to her lips whilst she holds a cleaver in her right. “Mrs. Boothby please.” she hisses. “They’ll hear you.”

 

As a raucous peal of girlish laughter erupts from behind the green baize door that leads from the kitchen to the dining room, the old Cockney looks sceptically at Edith. “I doubt that deary. All they ‘ear is their bloody selves.”

 

“Here, let me help you with that,” Edith says kindly as she takes a few steps over to Mrs. Boothby and grasps the handle of the bucket, her skin brushing against the far more careworn hands of the older woman.

 

“Ta dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says in relief.

 

The pair awkwardly manoeuvre the bucket of dirty water over to the white enamel sink and hoist it up onto the draining board with a concerted effort.

 

“I can take it from ‘ere, dearie.” the old woman says thankfully.

 

Edith steps back to the deal kitchen table where she starts to slice the roast beef she has just taken from the oven into thick medallions. As the cleaver cuts into the juicy browned flesh, revealing the soft pink inside, steam arises from it, teasing the maid with its delicious smell. She sighs quietly as she closes her eyes for a moment and hopes that there will be some remnants of the been from the noisy luncheon going in in the dining room.

 

“There are four of them, Mrs. Boothby: Miss Lettice, Miss Tyrwhitt, Mrs. Palmerston and Mrs. Channon, so hopefully there will be some leftover beef for us. If there is, I can pack half up for you to take home if you like.”

 

The old woman sniffs the delicious aroma drifting about the kitchen appreciatively as she tips the dirty grey water down the sink. “Oh ta, dearie!” she says enthusiastically. “I’d like that. I can ‘ave beef sandwiches when I go to Lady Landscome’s tomorra.”

 

“Doesn’t Lady Landscome feed you, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith looks across the kitchen at the old woman in shock.

 

“Well, she tells ‘er cook Mrs. Appleby to feed me, but the old trout’s so snooty like ‘er mistress that she don’t fink I deserve much more than bread ‘n drippin’, rather than the real food she serves ovvers on the staff. I’s just the old char what comes up from Poplar to do all the dirty and ‘ard jobs she and the over maid won’t do.”

 

“That’s awful, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says in outrage.

 

“Your old mistress, Mrs. Plaistow’s cook is no better to my friend Jackie.”

 

“Yes, but Mrs. Plaistow’s a mean old thing who keeps a close eye on the accounts, Mrs. Boothby. Cook only served meat to us once a week, occasionally twice if we were lucky, and it was never good stuff. I got a better feed at home with Mum and Dad than I ever did at Mrs. Plaistow’s.” She sighs as she begins to transfer the medallions of beef onto the white porcelain serving platter. “I feel very lucky to work for a lady like Miss Lettice.”

 

“She’s not a bad ‘un, far as mistresses go.” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “Certainly, compared to the likes of your Mrs. Plaistow.”

 

“I can’t say I’ve had a lot of experience of mistresses, Mrs. Boothby, but I think just about anyone would be better than her!”

 

“Oh I wouldn’t bet on that, Edith dearie. There’s plenty as bad as ‘er, or worse, let me tell you. An’ that Miss Tyrwhitt ain’t too bad neither.” She nods sagely. “She said ta to me today for washin’ the floors when she walked into the ‘allway, and she apologised for walkin’ across the clean floor. Nice surprise that was. What she stayin’ ‘ere for anyway?”

 

“Miss Tyrwhitt has come up from Wiltshire, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Ain’t Wiltshire where Miss Lettice is from?”

 

“Yes. Miss Tyrwhitt lives on the neighbouring estate to Miss Lettice. They grew up together, and she’s going to marry Miss Lettice’s eldest brother, the future Viscount Wrexham. That’s why she’s here. Miss Tyrwhitt doesn’t have any sisters, only brothers, so Miss Lettice has brought her up to London to take her to Mr. Bruton’s frock shop in Soho to get a wedding dress and other things for her trousseau.”

 

“If the girl comes from a good family like Miss Lettice, shouldn’t she ‘ave ‘er own ‘ouse to stay in?”

 

“I think her parents have a house in Curzon Street**, but I think they might think it a bit of a waste to open it up and engage servants just for Miss Tyrwhitt for a few weeks. Apparently, her mother is poorly, so she hasn’t come up to London. Besides, I think Miss Lettice enjoys having a house guest, especially one as nice as Miss Tyrwhitt.”

 

“Well, I ‘ope she don’t become a snooty up-‘erself woman when she becomes viscountess or whatever and lose ‘er nice manners.”

 

“Yes, she apologised to me too last night when she and Miss Lettice went out to the Embassy Club and she left clothes strewn across the bed which I had to put back in the wardrobe.” Edith smiles to herself as she places the last medallion on the platter. “Not that I mind. Those dresses of hers are so beautiful, all covered in lace and beads.”

 

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Boothby says with a cocked eyebrow as she rests her left arm on the edge of the bucket as she rights it. “Did you try any of ‘em on then, dearie?”

 

“Good heavens no!” Edith blushes before falling silent.

 

“But?” the old Cockney presses.

 

“But I must confess, I did hold one or two up against me as I stood in front of the mirror, before I put them back in the wardrobe.”

 

“I see.” chuckles the old woman knowingly.

 

“Well, a girl has a right to dream, doesn’t she Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks as she turns from the table and steps over to the stove where she withdraws a pot from its top.

 

“Course you do, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby assures her younger friend as she steps aside, making room for Edith as she uses the lid of the copper saucepan to drain the sliced green beans inside. “A pretty girl like you, what’s steppin’ out wiv a nice chap like Frank Leadbetter deserves to know what ‘er weddin’ dress might look like.”

 

Bustling back to the table, Edith begins scooping the beans onto the platter beside the beef, just as another burst of female laughter emanates from the dining room. “Oh it’s hardly a dream of a wedding dress, Mrs. Boothby.” She lowers the saucepan onto the cutting board as she thinks. “At least not yet. We’ve only been walking out together for a little while now.”

 

“Don’t cha want to marry ‘im?”

 

“Well, I hardly know yet, do I? Once I get to know Frank a bit better, then I’ll decide whether I marry him or not, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“So, what was you thinkin’ as you paraded before the mirror like a princess, then?” Mrs. Boothby asks. “If you wasn’t thinkin’ about your weddin’ dress.”

 

Edith turns and puts the empty saucepan back on the stove and picks up a copper skillet in which mushrooms are frying in butter. “Well, I was just thinking about how beautiful it would be to wear one of those dresses to the Hammersmith Palais***.”

 

“Ahh, so you was bein’ Cinderella then, was you?”

 

Edith nods a little guiltily.

 

“You’d look quite a picture, I’d imagine, dearie. But I fink you’d look a picture in your own frocks. Your Ma taught you well. Youse quite good wiv the needle ‘n thread.”

 

Edith scatters mushrooms and butter sauce atop the beans. “Compared with those dresses, my frocks are so ordinary, Mrs. Boothby. It’s a wonder Frank wants to take me dancing.”

 

“Nah! Don’t talk such rubbish!” Mrs. Boothby strides across the room and grasps Edith by the shoulders. “There’s an old sayin’ that clothes make the man.”

 

“Yes, I’ve heard it.” Edith says, her head downcast.

 

“But it don’t say nuffink ‘bout a woman though, do it?”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“What I mean is, youse as pretty as a picture in your maid’s uniform, so just imagine ‘ow much more beautiful you look in one of your own frocks. You wear the frock: it don’t wear you! ‘Old your ‘ead ‘igh my girl, just like what I do when that nasty Mrs. Appleby feed me bread ‘n drippin’ ‘cause she finks I ain’t worth more than that. You are beautiful, just like Cinderella was, and if I know Frank even a little bit, I know ‘e’d be proud to take you dancin’ at the ‘Ammersmith Palais no matter what cha was wearin’!”

 

“Oh you’re right, Mrs. Boothby. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. I have a lot to be thankful for.” She steps away from Mrs. Boothby and turns her back on her, busying herself stirring a small pot on the stove before removing it from the flame gas ring.

 

“Course you do, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby watches Edith pour thick brown gravy into a blue and white gravy boat. “An’ youse as much right to dream as what anyone else does, but just remember to ‘ang onto reality, cos dreams we wake up from, but reality’s ‘ere to stay.” She smiles at Edith, who looks her in the eye and smiles back.

 

“You’re right Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Course I am, dearie. I’s always right, even if others don’t fink I am. Youse got some ideas from Miss Tyrwhitt’s frocks, and as I said youse a dab ‘and wiv a needle ‘n thread. Why don’t cha make your own frock to go dancin’ in. Frank’d be mighty proud to go dancin’ wiv a girl what made ‘er own fashionable fancy dancin’ frock.”

 

“That’s a good idea, Mrs. Boothby. I might just do that.”

 

“That’s my girl!” Mrs. Boothby says, grasping Edith’s chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand lovingly.

 

Another volley of laughter breaks into their friendly moment.

 

“Well, thinking of reality, I’d best serve luncheon before Miss Lettice thinks to poke her nose in here.” Edith sighs. “I have enough trouble keeping her out of my kitchen as it is.”

 

*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

**Curzon Street is a beautiful street lined with Georgian houses in Mayfair, where amongst other famous people, novelist Nancy Mitford (then Mrs. Peter Rodd) lived.

 

***The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

This busy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Edith’s deal table is a panoply of things as she readies luncheon for Lettice and her guests. The mahogany stained serving tray, the gravy boat of gravy, the chopping board, napkins and cutlery all came from an English stockist of 1:12 artisan miniatures whom I found on E-Bay. The sliced roast beef, beans and mushrooms on a white platter, which look almost good enough to eat, I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street shop that specialised in dolls, doll houses and doll house miniatures. The cleaver comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures Shop in the United Kingdom. The jars of herbs are also 1:12 miniatures, made of real glass with real cork stoppers in them. I have had them since I was a teenager too.

 

To the left of the tray is a box of Queen’s Gravy Salt. Queen’s Gravy Salt is a British brand, and this box is an Edwardian design. Gravy Salt is a simple product it is solid gravy browning and is used to add colour and flavour to soups stews and gravy - and has been used by generations of cooks and caterers. It is an artisan miniature made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England

 

In front of the Queen’s Gravy Salt to the far bottom left of the picture is one of Edith’s Cornishware cannisters. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.

 

Edith’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and easier to clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

 

The Deftware cups, saucers and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot. Also on the dresser sits a rolling pin, and some more pieces of Cornishware including bowls and another canister.

 

Of course, no kitchen would be complete without some kitchen pantry staples of the 1920s, so also on the dresser you will see a tin of Lyall’s Golden Treacle, a tin of Peter Leech and Sons Golden Syrup and a box of Lyon’s Tea. All three were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. In 1859 Henry Tate went into partnership with John Wright, a sugar refiner based at Manesty Lane, Liverpool. Their partnership ended in 1869 and John’s two sons, Alfred and Edwin joined the business forming Henry Tate and Sons. A new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool was opened in 1872. In 1921 Henry Tate and Sons and Abram Lyle and Sons merged, between them refining around fifty percent of the UK’s sugar. A tactical merger, this new company would then become a coherent force on the sugar market in anticipation of competition from foreign sugar returning to its pre-war strength. Tate and Lyle are perhaps best known for producing Lyle’s Golden Syrup and Lyle’s Golden Treacle. Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War. Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J. Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in Britain, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J. Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying an unexpected call on her beloved parents whilst her mistress is away visiting her own parents in Wiltshire. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Usually even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house. Yet with her father’s promotion, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now, and today, rather than soap and starch greeting her on the street, she can hear familiar laughter.

 

“Mum!” Edith calls out cheerily as she opens the unlocked front door and walks in. “Mum, it’s me! Is that Bert with you?”

 

She takes a deep breath and holds it with anticipation as she runs down the narrow corridor with excited footsteps past the front room and down into the kitchen, which serves as the heart of Edith’s parent’s home. Bursting through the kitchen door she beams and gasps with delight, for there at Ada’s old and worn round kitchen table sits her mother and her brother Bert. Edith’s little brother works aboard the SS Demosthenes as a dining saloon steward, sailing between England and Australia. Australia was where Bert spent Christmas 1922, so he wasn’t with his family for Christmas. Yet now, just like in the postcard he sent from Queensland showing a bird called a kookaburra inside the shape of the great southern continent surrounded by yellow wattle flowers, he is home on shore leave.

 

“Bert!” Edith gasps in delight. “You’re home!”

 

“Hullo Edith!” Bert says with an equally happy smile as he leaps out of the comfortable Windsor chair usually inhabited by their father and enfolds his sister in an embracing hug.

 

“Oh Bert.” Edith presses herself against her brother, the comforting smell of their mother’s lux soap flakes filling her nostrils. Pressing her hands against his hips, she breaks their embrace and pushes herself back. “Let me look at you then!”

 

Although a year younger than his sister, Bert is taller than Edith now, after a final growth spurt when he was in his late teens. Dressed in one of their mother’s home knitted jumpers and a pair of grey flannel trousers his skin looks sun kissed after spending a few days ashore in Melbourne during the height of summer in the southern hemisphere before sailing back, and the sun has given his sandy blonde hair some natural highlights.

 

“The sea air agrees with you, Bert.”

 

“More likely the Australian sun!” Ada remarks as she picks herself up out of her own chair with a slight groan. “Just look at those colourful cheeks and those freckles.” She waves her hand at her son lovingly. “We don’t usually see them until high summer.”

 

“Hullo Mum!” Edith walks up and embraces her mother. ‘How are you?”

 

“Oh, I’m grand now our Bert is home, and you are too, Edith love.” Ada says in reply, a broad smile gracing her lips and a happy brilliance in her brown eyes. “Now, put that basket down and have a seat. I’ll pop the kettle on and brew us a fresh pot.” She begins to bustle around the great blacklead range and moves the heavy kettle onto the hob. Turning back to the table she picks up the beautiful, glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid, which Edith bought for her from the Caledonian Market**, and makes a grand sweeping gesture to show Edith it’s presence. “See Edith, a special occasion calls for the use of my special teapot.”

 

“Any day should be a special enough day for you to use that pretty teapot that Edith gave you, Mum.” Bert says, sitting back down at the table.

 

“That’s what I tell her!” Edith agrees.

 

“But then it wouldn’t be a special teapot any more, would it?” Ada says, stepping behind Bert and going to the small tough sink the corner of the kitchen where she turns the squeaky taps and rinses out the pot. “No. It’s a special teapot for special occasions.” She takes up the yellow tea towel with red stitching that hangs over a metal rail above the range and dries the pot. “I used it on Christmas Day didn’t I, Edith love?”

 

“Yes,” Edith agrees. “But you haven’t used it a day since then.”

 

“That’s because there hasn’t been a special occasion worthy of using it,” Ada defends. “Until Bert came home, that is.” She gently squeezes her son’s left shoulder.

 

“I give up!” Edith throws her hands in the air. She shucks off her black three quarter length coat and hangs it on a hook by the back door. She then places her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s usual seat.

 

“Oh I told you, Edith!” Ada chides. “Don’t put your pretty hat there, love.” She walks over to the Welsh dresser that dominates one wall of the crowded kitchen and pulls out the battered tea cannister. “It might get damaged. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe. You know Edith made that, don’t you Bert?”

 

“Yes, I do, Mum.” Bert acknowledges cheerfully. “Our Edith is the cleverest girl I know.”

 

“I keep saying Mum, the hat’s nothing special. And besides, I didn’t make it. It came from Petticoat Lane***, just like my coat, and it’s not new. I simply decorated the hat with bits and bobs I picked up from a Whitechapel haberdasher Miss Lettice’s char****, Mrs. Boothby, told me about.”

 

“Well, homemade or not, it’s still too pretty to hang there.”

 

“It’s my hat, Mum. I always hang it there and it’s always fine, and I promise you, it’ll be fine there today.”

 

“Well, suit yourself, love. You’re an adult now, just the same as Bert.” Ada remarks dismissively but looks at her daughter doubtfully as she scoops out some black dried tea leaves and puts the heaped spoonfuls into the pot. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

“So,” Bert sinks back into his seat and toys with his teacup decorated with pink roses, slowly turning it in its saucer. “What’s the gossip with you then, Edith? How’s your Frank then? Mum says that she and Dad haven’t met him yet.”

 

“It’s become quite the mute point.” Ada remarks as she turns back from the dresser and folds her arms akimbo, frowning at her daughter.

 

“And I hope,” Edith defends herself, challenging her mother’s steely stare. “That she told you why.”

 

“I did!” Ada says crisply.

 

“Word is you’re meeting his mum soon, Edith.” Bert says excitedly.

 

“Well, not his mum. His parents died of the Spanish Flu, but I’m meeting his Granny, who is a bit like his surrogate mum.”

 

“That’s nerve wracking.” Bert replies.

 

“I know! I’m so nervous.” Edith confides, lowing her voice as she leans across the table conspiratorially and reaches for the battered McVitie and Price biscuit tin.

 

“That’s why I can’t get a girl to come home here.” Frank says with a wink and slight indicating nod to their mother. “Imagine meeting Mum.” He lifts the lid off the tin for his sister and lets her make her selection. “They’re all too scared of her.”

 

“Cheeky!” Ada says, laughing good naturedly and swatting her son with the tea towel. “Any girl would be lucky to have me as a prospective mother-in-law.” She shuffles her shoulders and tilts her head upwards as her face forms into a dignified expression. “Or boy.” she adds with undisguised meaning and importance.

 

“So, me and Frank are just fine, thanks Bert. We’re just tickety-boo.*****!” Edith tells her brother before popping a biscuit into her mouth.

 

“Tickety-boo!” Bert enthuses. “You are up on all the latest small talk and phrases, living with your Miss Chetwynd up in Mayfair.”

 

“She comes home with new phrases all the time.” Ada places the freshly refilled cottage ware teapot down on the table between them all. “Goodness knows I can’t keep up with her. It’s the influence of all those fine ladies and gentlemen and moving picture stars that frequent Mis Chetwynd’s flat.”

 

“Moving picture stars? Really” Bert asks excitedly.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith scoffs, flapping her hand playfully at him. “I only answer the door to them, or serve them tea. And Miss Lettice has only had one moving picture star to tea since I’ve been there: Wanetta Ward.” She sighs. “She’s so beautiful! She works for Gainsborough Pictures******. You’re more likely to have a longer conversation with a moving picture star on board your ship as a dining saloon steward, Bert, than ever I will at Miss Lettice’s.”

 

“I doubt that. There aren’t that many moving picture stars sailing between Australia and home, well none that I know of. Although they are mad for moving pictures over there. There are picture houses everywhere, and they even make their own films there, just like here.”

 

“Anyway, I’m not the interesting one, Bert.” Edith says, seeing a way to turn the conversation to her brother and his news. “You are. Tell me about life on the ship this voyage.”

 

A short while later over tea and biscuits, Edith is brought up to date with Bert’s latest adventures on board his ship, and the interesting people he has served as a first-class saloon steward.

 

“Oh!” Ada suddenly gasps. “Bert! Aren’t you going to give Edith her present?”

 

“Present?” Edith asks with a querying look to her brother.

 

“Yes, Edith love. Don’t you remember Bert wrote it in his last postcard to us?”

 

Edith casts her mind back a few weeks to when her mother showed her the postcard Bert had sent from Australia.

 

“Right you are Mum!” Bert agrees. “So Edith, on Christmas Day, the Second Officer, Mr. Collins, organised a trip for we lads and some of the girls on the ship’s staff who were away from home for Christmas and that were at a loose end. A lot found their own amusements in Melbourne. It’s such a big and vibrant city, full of fun things to do. But about twenty of us didn’t have anywhere to go, so we said yes.”

 

“What did you do, Bert? What had Mr. Collins organised?” Edith asks in suspense.

 

“Well, Mr. Collins was born in Melbourne. Well no, actually he was born a few hours outside of Melbourne in the country at a place called Yarra Glen. It’s quite famous and lots of toffs go there to holiday, not that was where Mr. Collins took us.” Bert quickly adds, seeing the excitement in his sister’s face. “No, Mr. Collins was born on a farm out there – something they call a cattle station – and he took us all out there for a picnic on his parent’s station.”

 

“But a station is a railway station.” Edith mutters, shaking her head, her face crumpling in disbelief.

 

“Well in Australia there are railway stations and cattle station, which are big farms. So, Mr. Collins packed us all into a railway carriage at Flinders Street Railway Station and off we went. We left at ten in the morning and we didn’t get to the railway station at the Yarra Glen until nearly midday.”

 

“Was it hot?” Edith asks. “You always say Australia is hot around this time of year.”

 

“Well it was, but it was alright because we opened up our window in our carriage and poked our heads out so we could look at the passing countryside, so we had a nice breeze. The countryside is so different to here. It’s all yellow grasses and funny trees with washed out leaves: no real greenery at all so to speak, but it’s still really beautiful in its own way.”

 

“Hmph!” Ada snorts from her chair. “Nothing beats the Kentish countryside for beauty.”

 

“Well I guess beauty is a subjective thing, Mum.” Bert goes on, “Mr. Collins was telling us on the train trip down that sometimes travelling artists set up camp on his parent’s property just so that they can paint the landscape.”

 

“Fancy that, Frank!” Edith enthuses. “Did you like it?”

 

“Oh yes! It’s very pretty, in a foreign kind of way. Not many flowers. But we saw jumping kangaroos from the train on the trip down. They sat in the grass and watched us pass, and then some of them just up and jumped away. They can move very quickly when they jump. Anyway, we finally pulled into Yarra Glen. We had to wait whilst a big party of toffs and all their mountains of luggage were taken care of and packed up into cars. Mr. Collins says that there is a famous opera singer who lives out there, named Nellie Melba*******.”

 

“I’ve heard nellie Melba sing before!” Ada exclaims, dropping her pink and yellow floral teacup into her saucer and clapping her hands.

 

“You have, Mum?” Edith asks, the look of lack of comprehension on her face matching her brother’s as they both look to her.

 

“Well, not live of course!” Ada says, taking up her cup of tea before continuing. “But once when I was at Mrs. Hounslow’s, I heard her sing. She was playing records on her gramophone, and I asked who it was, and she invited me to stand in her parlour and listen to her recording of Nellie Melba sing ‘Ave Maria’.” Her children pull a face at the mention of their landlady, the rich and odious old widow whom they both grew up hearing about regularly, and seeing on the rare occasions she would deign to stop by to collect their rent in person, rather than her rent collector. “Now don’t be like that, children! Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.”

 

“And neither you, nor she will ever let us forget it.” Bert drones, rolling his eyes.

 

“Now I won’t have a bad word said about her, Bert.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her son. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years, especially during the war when things were hard. You should be grateful to her. We all should be.”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the ceiling above. “Enough about old Widow Hounslow! Go on with your story, Bert.”

 

“Well,” Bert continues. “Miss Melba must have been home and hosting a big house party, but once they were all packed off, we were ushered to a charabanc******** which took us out to Mr. Collins’ family farm. Once we got to the house – which they call a homestead – Mrs. Collins, Mr, Collins’ mum, had picnic baskets for us, full of delicious sandwiches and pies and cakes. There was even beer and stout for us to drink. When Mr. Collins lead us away from the house to where we were to take our picnic, he took us to a place where there was a stream, so we could dunk the bottles of beer and stout into it to keep them warm. We tethered them to the bank with string he gave us. And so, we sat under these big trees with white bark and ate and drank and had a jolly time of it, all at Mr. Collin’s expense.”

 

“That was nice of him, Bert.” Edith remarks.

 

“It was! We were ever so grateful. He had brought a cricket bat and stumps from the house with him, so we played some cricket after luncheon until it got too warm, and then we sang Christmas carols.”

  

“It must have felt odd, singing Christmas carols in the summer sunshine.”

 

“Not really Edith.” Bert replies. “Christmas is Christmas all over the world, no matter what the weather, if you are in high spirits.”

 

“And the gift?” Ada says, patting her son’s arm as a reminder.

 

“So, when we were walking back from out picnic by the stream, I was carrying one of the picnic baskets, and I noticed what a pretty painted lid it had. When we arrived back at the homestead, I asked Mr. Collins’ mother about it. It turns out that Mr. Collin’s brother and his wife live on the property as well. She cooks for the farmhands and helps keep house for old Mrs. Collins, and she also makes picnic baskets from the reeds growing around the stream we used to keep our beer and stout warm. Her husband carves the lids and she paints them, and she sells them in Yarra Glen.” Bert reaches under the table and pushing his seat backwards, he stands up and places a picnic basket on the table. “So this is for you. It’s the picnic basket I brought back to the house, and then brought all the way from Australia for you. A belated Merry Christmas, big sister.”

 

Edith gasps and raises her hands to her mouth as a smile fills her face. The beautiful picnic hamper sitting proudly on the table has woven pale reed sides and two hinged lids on the top, both painted with stylised leaves and creamy yellow daisies.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith gasps, as tears well in her eyes. “Oh it’s lovely!” She gets up and hurries over to her brother and embraces him. “Thank you so much!”

 

“I’m so glad you like it, Edith.” Bert replies. “I got more than a bit of ribbing from the other chaps on the sailing home. They took up calling me ‘Basket Bert’.”

 

“Oh they didn’t, Bert?” Edith cries. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Nothing for you be sorry for, Edith, but I afraid that I think it will stick,” Frank adds. “However it’s worth it, if you like the basket. I thought if things were still going well with Frank, you two might use it to go on a picnic in summer.”

 

“Oh, I will Bert!” Edith replies as she runs her hand along the thin and elegant handle. “It’s wonderful! Thank you so much!”

 

*The SS Demosthenes was a British steam ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship which ran scheduled services between London and Australia via Cape Town. It stopped at ports including those in Sydney and Melbourne. She was launched in 1911 in Ireland for the Aberdeen Line and scrapped in 1931 in England. In the First World War she was an Allied troop ship.

 

**The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

***Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

****A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

*****Believed to date from British colonial rule in India, and related to the Hindi expression “tickee babu”, meaning something like “everything's alright, sir”, “tickety-boo” means “everything is fine”. It was a common slang phrase that was popular in the 1920s.

 

******Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in Shoreditch, London which began operation in 1919. By 1920 they had a two stage studio. It is here that Alfred Hitchcock made his entrée into films.

 

*******Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town. Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. She succeeded in London and Paris. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera. She returned to Australia frequently during the Twentieth Century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house, “Coombe Cottage” built for her in the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne.

 

********A charabanc or "char-à-banc" is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, more common in Britain, but also found in places like Australia during the early part of the Twentieth Century. It has benched seats arranged in rows, looking forward, commonly used for large parties, whether as public conveyances or for excursions.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The central focus of our story, sitting on Ada’s table, is the wicker picnic basket that Bert brought home for Edith. In truth it is not Australian made, but was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside.

 

In front of the basket stands Ada’s cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched rood and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

Surrounding the cottage ware teapot are non-matching teacups, saucers, a milk jug and sugar bowl, all of which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

Sitting on the table in the foreground is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.

 

Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

Continuing my adventures at the kitchen table in the dark shooting circuit boards and squeezing an eye in the middle of the chip. Mid exposure lens and tripod swaps, all shot in one photographic exposure etc etc.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. We have travelled east across London, through Bloomsbury, past the Smithfield Meat Markets, beyond the Petticoat Lane Markets* frequented by Lettice’s maid, Edith, through the East End boroughs of Bethnal Green and Bow, to the 1880s housing development of Upton Park. It is here that Frank’s closest and only surviving relation lives: his grandmother. As Edith and Frank’s relationship has deepened over the past few months, Frank has been anxious to introduce his sweetheart to his grandmother, but he has wanted to wait for the right moment to do so. And so, today is the day!

 

Getting out at Upton Park railway station, the pair exit the polychromatic red and brown brick Victorian railway station with its ornate finials and elegant quoining. Even though the day is grey and overcast, the glare of natural light after being in the London underground blinds them momentarily. Before them the busy high street shopping precinct of Green Street stretches in either direction to their left and right, the noisy thoroughfare chocked with a mixture of chugging motor cars, lorries and the occasional double decker electrical tram. Even horse drawn carts with placid plodding old work horses unperturbed by the belching of their mechanical usurpers join the melee of trundling traffic going in either direction. People bustle past them on the footpath, going about their Sunday business cheerily, many off to the nearby Queens Road Market.

 

Edith looks across the road to the ramshackle collection of two and three storey buildings constructed over two centuries. Their canvas awnings fluttering in the breeze help to advertise a haberdasher, a lamp shop, a chemist, a boot repairer, a grocers, an electric sanitary laundry and a bakery. She smiles at the banality of it all and sighs with relief. Having never been to Upton Park before, Edith didn’t quite know what to expect. As she stands on the pavement, she cannot help but feel nervous about meeting Frank’s grandmother, her stomach roiling with anxiety and tension. However, seeing the similarities between the Upton Park high street and her own home high street in Harlesden, Edith feels a little easier. Up until this moment, she has been worried that Frank’s grandmother might be far grander than she or her family. Even the fact that the area she lives in has a park in its name suggests grandeur, so the ordinariness of her surroundings gives her hope and eases her apprehension a little.

 

“Everything you need is right here.” Frank remarks as he notice’s his sweetheart’s keen eye taking in her surrounds. “All it really needs now is a cinema**. Come on.”

 

The pair cross the busy thoroughfare of Green Street, weaving their way through the traffic, and head west a short distance before turning down the elm tree lined Kings Road, which is flanked to either side with identical polychromatic cream and red brick two storey Victorian terraces with grey or painted stone dressings. As Edith peers at their façades over the top of their low brick fences, she notes that each house has a small bay with two windows downstairs and two upstairs, a recessed porch and front door with a window above that. As they walk underneath the elm trees, Edith notices the slight flutter of several sets of lace curtains in the downstairs windows as suburban London housewives, no doubt alerted to the pair’s approach by their footsteps on the concrete footpath, peer out from the comfort of their front rooms.

 

“So, back before the war and the Spanish Flu, it used to be five of us here in Kings Road.” Frank chatters brightly, the heightened false joviality indicating his own underlaying nervousness at this very important meeting between the two most important women in his life. “My Grandpop and Gran, Mum, Dad and me.”

 

“Is your Grandpop going to be there today too?” Edith asks, suddenly aware that there may be a person she has not considered in the equation of her visit. Frank has only ever talked about his grandmother and not a grandfather.

 

“Not unless we’re having tea in the West Ham Cemetery,” Frank replies, somewhat in alarm.

 

“Oh I’m sorry, Frank. You haven’t mentioned him before, so I assumed that… well…” She gulps guiltily.

 

“Don’t worry about it, Edith.” Frank reassures her, putting his arm comfortingly around her. “I think we’re probably both as nervous as each other about today.”

 

Edith sighs and allows herself to fall into Frank’s protective embrace and press against his side as they walk. The familiar scent of him: a mixture of soap and the grocery shop, is comforting to her and helps her to keep her mettle. She knows how important this meeting is, and she wants to impress upon Frank’s grandmother that she really does care for her grandson, as well as making Frank proud of her.

 

“Not that you have anything to worry about. You’re my girl, and I know Gran is going to love you. I bet she’s just as nervous as we are,” Frank goes on. “Not that she’d tell me so.”

 

They stop in front of a terrace behind a low brick wall just the same as all the others, its front door painted black and a small patch of lawn, devoid of any other vegetation filling the space between the street and the house.

 

“Well, here we are then.” Frank says, rubbing Edith’s arm consolingly. “Like I was saying before, before the war there were five of us here, but Grandpop died in 1912, and of course my parents went with the Spanish Flu, so it only left Gran and me, so the landlord divided the house. He said it was so Gran could stay because she was a good tenant, but I reckon he just wanted to make more money by turning upstairs into a second tenement.” He lets out a deep breath tinged with remorse. “Still, at least it did mean when I moved to live closer to work that Gran could manage on her own downstairs, and the neighbours upstairs are nice people who keep an eye on her.”

 

Frank releases Edith and grasps her forearms and looks her squarely in the face, admiring her beauty as she stands in her Sunday best plum frock, her three quarter length black coat and her cloche with the purple silk roses and black feathers. In an effort he knows is to impress his grandmother, her second-hand crocodile skin handbag hangs from the crook in her left arm. She nervously fiddles with the butchers paper wrapped around a bunch of yellow roses she bought as a gift for Frank’s grandmother from a florist outside Down Street Railway Station***.

 

“Come on then, Edith.” Frank says, bucking his sweetheart up. “Let’s get this over with.”

 

Walking through the unlocked front door, the pair find themselves in the black and white lino lined hallway of the terrace, with a flight of stairs leading upwards. The vestibule smells of a mixture of carbolic soap, boiled cabbage and fish. “Smells like Mrs. Claxton managed to get some fish for tea.” Frank observes.

 

The doorway that would have led into what was once the front room has been bricked up and paper pasted over it, however an original frosted and stained glass panelled doorway adjunct to the stairs which leads to the back of the ground floor of the terrace now serves as the downstairs tenement’s front door. Walking up to it, Frank knocks loudly and then calls out “It’s only me, Gran,” before opening it and walking in without waiting for an answer.

 

“Och! Is that you, my bairn?” a voice thick with a Scottish brogue calls as Frank eases Edith out of her coat and hangs it on a hook in the hallway alongside his own coat, scarf and hat.

 

“Yes Gran!” he replies. “And I’ve brought Edith with me.”

 

“Good! Good!” comes the reply.

 

“Wait Frank!” Edith gasps.

 

“What is it?” Frank queries.

 

“I… I don’t know what to call your grandmother. I can’t very well call her Gran, can I? That would be presumptuous of me.”

 

“Oh, that’s true.” Frank replies, cocking his head thoughtfully to one side. “Well, she’s my Mum’s mum, so she’s a McTavish. So best call her Mrs. McTavish, at least initially.” He gives her a reassuring wink before leading her further down the corridor and through a second frosted and stained glass door like the first and into a neat, cheerful and light filled kitchen.

 

Edith quickly assesses the room with flitting glances around her. The kitchen is bigger than her parents’ one in Harlesden, but similarly to theirs, the room is dominated by a big black coal consuming range and features a dresser that is stuffed with all manner of mismatched decorative china and a panoply of cooking items. The walls are covered with cream coloured wallpaper featuring dainty floral sprigs. Several framed embroideries hang around the room and a cuckoo clock ticks contentedly to the left of the range. A rug covers the flagstone floor before the hearth. A round table covered in a pretty lace tablecloth has several mismatched chairs and stools drawn up to it. On the table itself stands a healthy looking aspidistra which obviously benefits from the sun as it filters through the lace curtains at the large kitchen window. Just like her mother’s table when guests come to call, a selection of decorative blue and white crockery has been set out, ready for use. A shop bought Dundee Cake****, still with its ornamental Scottish tartan ribbon wrapped around it, sits on a plate, whilst a biscuit tin and a cannister of tea stand next to it. A sewing work table with a sagging floral bag for storage beneath it stands open, its compartments filled with needles, thread, wool, buttons and everything a sewer and knitter needs. And there, in a very old and worn brown leather wingback chair sits Frank’s Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish.

 

“Och, there you are, Francis my boy!” the old woman says with a growling enunciation of the letter r as she reaches up and grasps her grandson’s face in her hands, drawing him down for a puckered kiss on the lips.

 

“Oh Gran!” Frank gasps with embarrassment.

 

“What? Too big to be kissed by your old Gran, Francis?” she asks, the wrinkles and folds in her weathered and old face deepening in concern as she looks up into his fresh and youthful one.

 

“Francis?” Edith queries with surprise.

 

“I thought we had this discussion, Gran!” Frank protests. “I’m Frank, not Francis.”

 

“Och! Nonsense!” the old Scottish woman says sharply, slapping her grandson’s forearm lightly. “You’ll always be Francis to me, my little bairn!”

 

“Francis?” Edith repeats, unable to prevent a smile spreading across her face as she hears Frank’s real name for the first time.

 

“Now don’t you start.” Frank says warningly to his sweetheart, wagging a finger admonishingly at his grandmother at the same time, who smiles cheekily. “No-one will take me seriously if I’m Francis, so I’m Frank.”

 

“If you say so, Francis,” Mrs. McTavish replies, using his real name again, much to his irritation. Turning her attention to the stranger in the room, she addresses Edith, “And you must be Edith.” She smiles broadly, showing a set of slightly crooked and tea stained teeth. “How do you do, dearie.”

 

“How do you do, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith replies, smiling politely in return as she stands in the middle of the room. Frank tries to indicate something with his eyes, and remembering that she is holding the yellow roses that she bought, she presents them to the Scottish woman in the chair. “These are for you.”

 

“Och! How kind dearie!” she replies, taking them into her worn and gnarled hands which Edith notes as she passes them over, have rather long and elegant fingers. “I do so love flowers, and roses are a real treat. Thank you. They’ll brighten up the table. Will you Fr…”

 

“Gran!” Frank warns.

 

“Will you put them in some water, as-he-likes-to-be-known-now, Frank?”

 

“You are incorrigible, Gran!” Frank exclaims in exasperation, snatching the roses from his grandmother’s outstretched hands. He takes them over to the small trough sink underneath the window and finding a glass vase on the grooved wooden draining board, fills it with water and starts unwrapping the roses from their butchers paper housing.

 

“I bet he didn’t tell you his name was Francis, did he, dearie?” Mrs. McTavish asks Edith, indicating for Edith to take a seat in the Windsor chair, not too unlike her own at Cavendish Mews, that has been drawn up to the range.

 

“No, he didn’t.” Edith replies, inhaling the smell or carbolic soap which has obviously also been used in the neat kitchen. She also picks up the smell of coal dust and fried or baked potatoes coming from the range.

 

“Well you can hardly blame me, can you?” Frank calls from the sink. “Francis is a girl’s name, not a boy’s.”

 

“Nonsense bairn!” Mrs. McTavish says again. “What about Francis Drake the great Elizabethan explorer? Hhmm?”

 

“We don’t live in Elizabethan times, Gran.” Frank replies, putting the vase of roses on the table. He places a comforting hand on Edith’s shoulder before taking a seat in the high backed Windsor chair on the opposite side of the table to Edith.

 

“So, dearie,” Mrs. McTavish begins. “Frank,” She emphasises his preferred choice of name. “Has told me a bit about you, but he didn’t tell me whether you prefer to be called Eadie or Edith. What shall I call you?”

 

“Oh Edith is fine. No-one calls me Eadie.”

 

“Very good. So Edith, Frank tells me that he met you through delivering for the grocers that he works for up in the West End. Is that right?”

 

“Well yes,” Edith replies, prepared and yet at the same time not quite expecting the interrogation to start quite so soon after her arrival. “I work as a maid for the daughter of a viscount and Willisons is our local grocer.”

 

“And you’ve been a domestic since?”

 

“Since I was fourteen, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

The old woman nods and smiles pleasantly. “And you’re how old now, Edith?”

 

“She’s twenty-two.” Frank pipes up.

 

“Thank you, Francis,” the old woman addresses her grandson with wide eyes, this time deliberately using his proper name. “I was addressing Edith, not you. And were your parents in service too, dearie?”

 

“No.” Edith replies. “Well, my mother works as a laundress to bring in a little extra money, but my father works for McVitie and Price in Harlesden.”

 

“He received a promotion last year, to line manager.” Frank pipes up again.

 

“Och!” the old woman exclaims. “I’m addressing Edith, not you, bairn! Stop being a nuisance and interrupting. Make yourself useful and make us some tea, will you.” She points to a pretty blue floral teapot sitting in the shadows on a shelf at the side of the range over a small oven. “We can’t go having Dundee cake without tea, now can we?” she asks rhetorically.

 

Frank picks himself up out of his chair and walks around the table, reaching behind Edith to grab the teapot which he takes to the table. “Have you been cooking rumbledethumps*****, Gran?” he asks as he catches the same whiff of potatoes that Edith had smelt whilst sitting by the hearth.

 

“I have, bairn. I’ll give you some to take home to your landlady to heat up for you for your tea. That Mrs. Chapman could serve you a decent dish of rumbledethumps or two. You’re as skinny as a rake.” she observes before continuing her conversation with Edith. “And you were born in Harlesden then, Edith?”

 

“I was, Mrs. McTavish. So were both my parents. They met through a church picnic as they went to the same parish.”

 

“And what do you and my Fran… k, do, when you go out together?”

 

“I told you, Gran!” Frank mutters as he puts a third heaped teaspoon of tea from the red enamel and brass tea caddy into the pot. “We go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais****** and to the Premier in East Ham******* to catch a moving picture. I told you!”

 

“Och! Don’t keep interrupting, Francis!” the old Scottish woman exclaims, reverting back to his proper name yet again, this time in exasperation as she scolds Frank like a little boy. “And don’t forget to add an extra spoon for the pot********! And don’t stir that pot with the handle********* once the tea is made, or it will be nothing but strive for you!”

 

“No Gran!” Frank mutters in reply with slumped shoulders.

 

“We go to Hyde or Regent’s Park sometimes,” Edith adds hopefully, embroidering on Frank’s admission to their pursuits on their days off. “And listen to the band play under the rotunda, or visit the speakers********** and listen…”

 

“If they have anything decent to say.” Frank adds as he takes up the large brass kettle from the hob, only to find it nearly empty. He grumbles to himself as he goes and fills it at the tap.

 

“And sometimes we go to Lyon’s Corner House*********** in Piccadilly for tea, and sometimes we don’t go anywhere. We just sit in my kitchen at Cavendish Mews and take tea there.”

 

“Och! Doesn’t your mistress mind?”

 

“Miss Lettice is quite liberal and kind in that way, Mrs. McTavish,” Edith assures her. “But we usually only have tea in the kitchen on my days off if I know Miss Lettice isn’t going to be home. I don’t like to impose, nor abuse her kindness and generosity.”

 

“That’s very wise.” the old Scotswoman acknowledges.

 

“Oh Gran!” Frank groans loudly.

 

“What is it now, bairn?” she asks, bristling with mild irritation at her grandson’s constant interruptions.

 

“You’ve nearly let the range go out!” He investigates the canal ware************ coal scuttle and sees that it is nearly empty. “And there’s no coal.”

 

“Och, here!” With a groan she heaves herself out of her comfortable seat with the Scottish tartan blanket behind her head and reaches up under the ornamental fringe hanging from the mantle above the range and hands her grandson a small key. “Go and fill it up for me. There’s a good lad!” She smiles brightly and runs her hand lovingly along his cheek before patting it.

 

“You’ve been locking the coal store in the cellar?” he queries.

 

“There have been a few instances of coal theft in the neighbourhood lately.” Mrs. McTavish elucidates with a nod as she lowers herself back into her seat.

 

Muttering to himself, Frank leaves the two ladies alone in the kitchen. They both fall silent as they listen to his shuffling footsteps as he lugs the scuttle awkwardly out of the back door and heads for the coal cellar entrance.

 

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Edith asks knowingly after taking a few measured breaths upon the closure of the back door. “You knew the scuttle was empty and you let the fire die down.”

 

“I did, bairn.” Mrs, McTavish admits with a sigh. “And I used Francis’ real name because I knew he would ne have told you it. You’re a canny and clever wee lass aren’t you?” Her eyebrows arch over her glittering dark brown eyes. “I know, I’m a bit of a cheeky one, even at my age. I love Francis very much. He is, after all, my only real close family now with my daughter and son-in-law being gone these last few years.” she goes on. “But he’s so anxious that you and I should get along that he’ll do anything, say anything, to gild the lily about anything you are, say or do. I want to know the truth, without his interruptions and insistences.”

 

“Well, I hope I will please you, and that we will get along, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith leans across the space between them and grasps the older woman’s bony left hand as it rests on the arm of her chair with her right hand. “It is my fondest wish that we should. I only want to make Frank happy, I assure you.”

 

The old woman places her right hand over Edith’s and pats it gently, the worn and cool flesh of her palm sending a spark of energy though the younger woman. “I’m sure, dearie. And from what Francis has told me, and what you’ve shown so far whilst you’ve been here, I can tell you’re a nice lass, not racy or rude like some he’s met on his rounds.”

 

“No,” Edith muses, retreating and sitting back to her seat as she remembers meeting Vi at the Premier Cinema in East Ham just before Christmas. “No, I’m not at all racy, and I was raised to mind my manners. In fact I’m quite old fashioned and conservative, really.” She chuckles half to herself. “Or so Miss Lettice says.”

 

“Old fashioned and conservative isn’t always bad, dearie.” Mrs. McTavish answers as she snuggles back into the woolly warmth of the red, green and yellow blanket draped across the top of her chair. “So tell me, Edith, whilst my best lad is out of the room, what is it that drew you to him? He tells me that you sort of stumbled into courtship, or whatever it is you young people call it now. What is it about my Francis that you like so well?”

 

“Well, “ Edith thinks. “I suppose it’s because he is a bit old fashioned and conservative too. I like that he wants to do things correctly. He’s kind and thoughtful too, and I like that he is trying to better himself in little ways. I suppose I am too, in my own way.” Edith pauses before continuing. “I must confess that I do enjoy reading romance novels, Mrs. McTavish, but I’m under no illusions that Frank should sweep me off my feet with declarations of love or grand gestures of emotion. He told me just before Christmas when he took me out to the pictures, that he wishes that he could afford to buy me a brooch as a token of his affection, but I really don’t need it. He does little things for me, like pay for a deckchair when we go to Hyde Park, or gives me a box of chocolates now and then, and that’s more than enough for me.” She smiles. “We rub along well together, and I think we’re well suited, Mrs. McTavish. I love him and he loves me.”

 

“And what would you do, dearie, if Francis told you that he was going to do something that you did ne agree with?”

 

“Oh, I’m sure Frank wouldn’t do that, Mrs. McTavish. Like I said, he’s kind and gentlemanly.”

 

“Yes, but what if he did?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Well,” she thinks. “What if he decided to follow those Communists or Bolshevists or whoever it was killed the Russian Czar and created anarchy there?”

 

“Oh, he’s not a communist, Mrs. McTavish!” Edith assures her.

 

“Yes, I know he isn’t, dearie,” she answers patiently. “But what would you say to him if he were?”

 

“Well, “ Edith ponders. “I suppose I’d tell him that I thought it was a bad idea, and why. I’ve found you have to reason with Frank.”

 

The old woman sighs and Edith can see her body relax within the confines of her old fashioned high necked Edwardian print dress. “Well that’s all I need to know, Edith.” She raises a hand to her chest and starts massaging it comfortingly. “I won’t always be around, and to know my Francis has met a nice girl who will help love and support him, and reason with him if he looks like he might get himself into trouble makes me very relieved.”

 

Edith wonders if she has just passed Mrs. McTavish’s test. Suddenly all the anxiety and fear that had been roiling around in Edith’s stomach starts to disperse.

 

“Did you make the fringe above the fireplace, Mrs. McTavish?” Edith asks, pointing to the beautifully embroidered floral scallops of duck egg blue and tan.

 

“I did my dear, and the tablecloth too.” She points proudly to the snowy white cloth on the table. “My clan comes from Perthshire, and I make bobbin lace – a skill which I learned from my mother, and my mother learned from hers.” She reaches to a small black pillow covered in dangling wooden bobbins sitting on an old pedestal table next to her. Edith stands up and steps over, crouching before the Scotswoman as she places the pillow in her lap and begins moving the bobbins deftly beneath her elegant fingers, creating a little bit more lace. “Snowflaking************* goes back in my family for as long as anyone can tell.” She indicates to a basket in front of her sewing table.

 

Edith follows her hand and sees a froth of beautiful white lace sticking out from it. With careful reverence she reaches into the basket and touches the rolls of lace, lace doilies and lace trimmed pillowcases inside.

 

“My mother does a little bit of lacework, Mrs. McTavish, but nothing like this.”

 

“Well, I make lace for some of those dressmakers who make the fancy frocks for the likes of your mistress up the West End.”

 

“Miss Lettice has a friend who makes frocks, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith remarks. “Maybe you make lace for him.”

 

“Maybe I do, dearie.”

 

A loud thud, followed by the bang of the back door and a few more smaller thuds indicate that Frank has returned from the coal cellar. Huffing he groans as he dumps the large canal ware scuttle full of crumbling black coal onto the hearth tiles. “You…” he puffs. “You didn’t need… to give me the key… Gran. The box was… unlocked.”

 

“Oh? Was it, bairn?” Mrs. McTavish asks, her eyes glistening cheekily as she looks to Edith. “Well, there you go. Must have forgotten to lock it last time I was down there.”

 

“Well,” Frank replies. “Luckily… no-one broke in… and stole your coal, Gran. And I’ve… locked it up for you… so it’s… safe as houses************** now.” He replaces the key back on the little hook beneath the fireplace fringe, and looks down at his sweetheart and his grandmother. He pauses for a moment to catch his breath before asking, “So, how are my two best girls getting on, then?”

 

“I think we’re getting along just fine, Francis.” Edith says with a cheeky smile.

 

*Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

**It was not until five years after this story that the Carlton Cinema on Green Street opened its doors on the 29th of October, 1928 with the Fritz Lang film “The Spy” (Spione) starring Willy Fritsch. The Carlton Cinema was a project of exhibitors Clavering and Rose who employed noted cinema architect George Coles to convert the old St. George’s Industrial School building into the auditorium of the new cinema. The outer walls, now with original windows and doors bricked up were retained and a splendid new facade in an Egyptian style was built on Green Street. It was faced in multi-coloured tiles manufactured by the Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company similar to the George Coles designed Egyptian style Carlton Cinema, Islington. Inside the entrance led to a long connecting corridor which contained a cafe, and through this into the auditorium, which was set well back from and parallel to Green Street. Inside the auditorium, seating was provided for 2,117 in a semi-stadium plan, (a raised area at the rear, but with no overhanging balcony).

 

***Down Street, also known as Down Street (Mayfair), is a disused station on the London Underground, located in Mayfair. The Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opened it in 1907. It was latterly served by the Piccadilly line and was situated between Dover Street (now named Green Park) and Hyde Park Corner stations. The station was little used; many trains passed through without stopping. Lack of patronage and proximity to other stations led to its closure in 1932. During the Second World War it was used as a bunker by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the war cabinet. The station building survives and is close to Down Street's junction with Piccadilly. Part of it is now converted to a retail outlet.

 

****Dundee Cake has strong association to the geographical area through the marmalade makers Keillers of Dundee. Keillers used their surplus orange peel from their marmalade production to create the Dundee Cake. The cake was made as a rich buttery sultana cake flavoured with orange peel and almonds. Some Scottish bakers decided they didn't like glazed cherries in their fruit cakes (usually a staple in most fruitcakes) and so they baked a cake with blanched almonds instead.

 

*****Rumbledethumps is a dish that is popular in the Scottish border regions and is perfect for using up leftover mashed potatoes and excess vegetables. Often referred to as the Scottish version of bubble ‘n squeak, rumbledethumps recipes usually contain turnip and cabbage, but really any vegetable leftovers could be used. The vegetable mixture is topped with cheese and then baked until bubbling. The dish can be made the day before and heated up and whilst it can be eaten on its own, makes a nice accompaniment for a hearty stew.

 

******The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

*******The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

********The traditional measurement when making that we give is one teaspoon per person, and one extra spoon for the pot. Although not confirmed by anyone else, my Grandmother always told me the one spoon of tea leaves per person rule is based on the assumption that in polite society, a sitter only ever drinks one cup from the pot, before the pot requires replenishment. The tea weakens after its first use, but by adding an extra spoonful of tea leaves, when replenished for a second time, the tea should still be strong and flavoursome enough for the enjoyment of the sitters.

 

*********A Scottish superstition states that it is considered bad luck to stir tea with anything other than a spoon, as the handle of a fork or spoon is said to stir up trouble for the improper stirrer.

 

**********A Speakers' Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed. The original and best known is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park in London. Historically there were a number of other areas designated as Speakers' Corners in other parks in London, such as Lincoln's Inn Fields, Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park. Areas for Speakers' Corners have been established in other countries and elsewhere in Britain. Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers' Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police intervene only when they receive a complaint.

 

***********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

************Narrow boat painting, or canal art is a traditional British folk art. This highly decorative folk art once adorned the working narrow boats of the inland waterways of Britain. Canal ware, barge ware, or gift ware, are used to describe decorated trinkets, and household items, rather than the decorated narrow boats.

 

*************Lace made by hand using bobbins is properly called bobbin lace, but colloquially it is known as snowflaking, Depression lace, or chickenscratch, indicating that it was a way to make something out of nearly nothing.

 

**************John Hotten argued in his Slang Dictionary of 1859 that “safe as houses” may have arisen when the intense speculation on railways in Britain — the railway mania — began to be seen for the highly risky endeavour that it really was and when bricks and mortar became more financially attractive.

 

A cosy kitchen this may be, but it is not quite what it seems, for it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Dominating the room is the large kitchen range which is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water). The fringing hanging from the mantle is actually a beautiful scalloped ribbon that was given to me at Christmas time by a very close friend of mine.

 

Mrs. McTavish’s intentionally worn leather wingback chair and the sewing table are both 1:12 artisan miniatures. The inside of the sewing table is particularly well made and detailed with a removable tray made up of multiple compartments. Beneath it, the floral fabric lines the underside and opens up into a central bag. Both pieces come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The top comparts are full of sewing items which also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop and various online specialists on E-Bay. The tartan rug draped over the back of the chair I have had since I was about six. It came with a blanket rocker miniature I was given for my sixth birthday.

 

The sewing basket that you can see on the floor beneath the sewing table I bought from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house furnishings. It is an artisan miniature and contains pieces of embroidery and embroidery threads. Also inserted into it is an embroidery hoop that has been which embroidered by hand which came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The lidded wicker basket also beneath the sewing table was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside. In this case it contains various lace doilies, some of which I have obtained from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom and one that I bought from the same high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house furnishings that the sewing basket came from.

 

On the small pedestal table next to Mrs. McTavish’s chair sits a black velvet pillow used for making bobbin lace. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom, and so too does the table.

 

On the wall just behind Mrs. McTavish’s chair hangs a hand painted cuckoo clock. It has been made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

In the background you can see Mrs. McTavish’s dark wood dresser cluttered with decorative china. I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

Like the dresser, the round table and the Windsor chairs I have had since I was a child. The cloth on the table is hand crocheted antique lace which I have had since I was seven years old. The decorative china on the table also come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. So too does the tea caddy, the aspidistra in the white pot and the floral teapot on the range. The biscuit tin with the decorative lid featuring a Victorian man and lady comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The Dundee cake is a 1:12 artisan miniature made of polymer clay with a real piece of tartan ribbon around it, made by Polly’s Pantry who specialises in making food miniatures. The vase of yellow roses came from an online stockist on E-Bay.

 

The brass pieces on the range all come from different online stockists of miniatures.

 

The rug on the floor comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve. It is early morning, which is always Edith’s favourite time of day, for before Lettice arises, she can get a lot of her household chores done without interruption and without interrupting her mistress. With the airing, dusting and straightening of the flat’s main rooms done, as the clock nears eight, Edith can focus on preparing Lettice’s breakfast.

 

If Lettice were at her family home in Wiltshire, as an unmarried lady she would not be permitted to have breakfast in bed, that luxury reserved for married women like her mother only. However, in London, and under her own roof, no such stricture applies, so Edith sets about preparing her mistress’ breakfast tray. Sighing with satisfaction as she takes in a breath of cool morning air through the open window, the young maid stands at the deal pine kitchen table and places a pretty floral edged plate, and egg cup onto the dark wooden tray where they join a sliver salt shaker and pepper pot. She listens to the chirp of birds as she turns around and goes to the kitchen’s cutlery drawer and withdraws two spoons and a knife which she adds to the tray. Morning is the only time she really hears the birds, as within an hour, the streets around Cavendish Mews will be busy with the splutter of motor cars and the chug of buses and their noise will drown out the pretty songs of the birds who make their homes between the chimney pots and in the gardens of the surrounding Mayfair houses.

 

The sound of the brass kettle boiling on the stove breaks into her consciousness, and Edith turns and takes it off the hob. She picks up a small brass pan and adds water from the kettle and covers it with a lid and places it over an unlit burner.

 

Going to the meat safe near the back door Edith withdraws one of the bottles of milk left at the back door of the flat by the milkman even before she was out of bed, and a white carboard box with blue writing on it that proudly advertises eggs from Alexander Auld, by appointment to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. “Why on earth the Prince of Wales needs eggs from Aberdeen in Scotland is beyond me.” she mutters to herself as she lifts the lid and takes out a pristine white egg from the box. “Eggs are eggs. They all taste the same, no matter where they come from.” Her beau Frank Leadbetter, who is the delivery boy for Mr. Willison the local grocers, told her that if the Prince of Wales wanted Scottish eggs, who were they to question it, and always adds that she should feel lucky to eat eggs from the same farm that the Prince’s eggs come from. She shakes her head as she takes the egg over to the stove and puts it into the pot of freshly boiled water.

 

Returning to the table she pours creamy white milk into a jug that matches the egg cup and plate and places it on the tray. She picks up the jar of Golden Shred Orange Marmalade* and scoops orange jewel like gelatinous preserve from the jar and deposits it into a silver preserve pot. “Blast!” Edith mutters as a stray drop falls from her spoon and lands on the left cuff of her blue and white striped morning uniform where it seeps and bleeds into the fabric. Scraping what hasn’t been absorbed into the pot, she goes to the sink, runs the cold water tap and soaks a cleaning cloth under the clear stream before sponging the mark before it sets. Returning to the table, shaking her left arm half in irritation and half in a pointless effort to dry her now damp cuff, she puts the lid on the preserve pot.

 

She returns to the stove and takes up the kettle and pours hot water over the scoops of Lyon’s** tealeaves in the bottom of the floral patterned teapot that matches the rest of the crockery on the tray. With a satisfying clink, she drops the lid into the hole in the top.

 

“Oh my giddy aunt! The post!” Edith gasps, putting both her hands to her head. “I’d forget my head sometimes if it weren’t screwed on.”

 

Snatching up the slice of white bread she has freshly cut from the loaf on the table, she puts it in the gleaming silver toaster and takes up the letters and the magazine that have been delivered with the first post of the day.*** Edith goes through what is there.

 

“Looks like a formal invitation to something.” she murmurs as she holds up to the light one larger envelope of a higher quality than two others, which from the addresses she notes are from tradesmen, and tries to peer through the thick creamy white envelope. “I wonder if it’s an invitation to a ball, now that the Season has started up. Whose I wonder?”

 

Putting it down she then notices that the magazine that has been delivered is Country Life**** which Lettice does not subscribe to. “That’s odd.” She screws up her face and ponders the magazine featuring the grand colonnaded Georgian façade of a country house with its mistress descending its stairs on the cover. Then gasping with excitement, Edith remembers overhearing her mistress saying something about an interior she completed recently. Friends of Lettice, Margot and Dickie Channon, were gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) in Penzance as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton when the pair were married in October 1921. Margot in her desire to turn ‘Chi an Treth’ from a dark Regency house to a more modern country house flooded with light, commissioned Lettice to help redecorate some of the principal rooms in a lighter and more contemporary style, befitting a modern couple like the Channons. Lettice decamped to Penzance for a week where she oversaw the painting and papering of ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, dining room and main reception room, before fitting the rooms out with a lorryload of new and repurposed furnishings, artwork and objets d’arte that she had sent down weeks prior to her arrival from her London warehouse. With the rooms redecorated under Lettice’s adept hands where once there was dark red paint, modern white geometric wallpaper hangs, and where formal, uncomfortable and old fashioned furnishings sat, more modern pieces dispersed by a select few original items give the rooms a lighter, more relaxed and more contemporary 1920s country house feel. The redecoration came to the attention of Dickie’s friend Henry Tipping***** who as well as being Dickie’s chum is also the Architectural Editor of Country Life, and after viewing it, he arranged for it to be featured in the magazine.

 

Opening the magazine, Edith flits through the different editorials before coming across the one about ‘Chi an Treth’ towards the middle. As she reads and looks at the many photographs of her mistress’ beautiful interior, her neutral face comes to life and she smiles as her eyes glisten. “Oh-ho!” she chortles, her cheeks reddening. “This will be thumb in the eye****** for Miss Lettice’s mother. She won’t be able to be dismissive of her decorating now.”

 

It is only as she is drinking in the beauty of Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s fashionable looking drawing rom that Edith realises that she has been so absorbed in reading the article that she didn’t hear the toast pop. Turning her head, she sees the slice poking its golden brown top out of the gleaming silvered toaster. Reluctantly putting the copy of Country Life down, she goes and picks up the toast with her right thumb and forefinger and brings it back to Lettice’s breakfast tray where she puts it on the plate. Adding a teacup and saucer in a matching pattern to the plate, egg cup and jug, she returns to the stove and removes the perfectly four minute boiled egg from the pot with a slotted spoon, and deposits it in the egg cup.

 

Placing the teapot onto the tray, she slips the letters into the pocket on the front of her apron, puts the copy of Country Life under her left arm and picks up the breakfast tray.

 

“Today is the day.” Edith says aloud with a smile as she pushes at the bottom of the door leading from the kitchen into the flat’s hallway with the toe of her shoe. “The day that Miss Lettice’s work is properly recognised is here. She is going to be so pleased.”

 

*Golden Shred orange marmalade still exists today and is a common household brand both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson's Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson's marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.

 

**Unlike today where mail is delivered on a daily or even sometimes only every few days basis, there were several deliveries done a day when this story is set. At the height of the postcard mania in 1903, London residents could have as many as twelve separate visits from the mailman. By 1923 it had been scaled back somewhat, but in London it would not be unusual to receive post three or four times a day.

 

*** Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in the UK, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England. Lyons Tea was a major advertiser in the early decades of RTÉ Television, featuring the "Lyons minstrels" and coupon-based prize competitions.

 

****Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.

 

*****Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.

 

******I am unsure of the origins of the saying “to shove a thumb in one’s eye”, but its meaning is to open someone’s eyes to the obvious, but not necessarily in a welcome way.

 

This domestic scene may not be all that it appears, for it is made up completely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The copy of Country Life sitting on the table that is the lynchpin of this chapter was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1923 edition of Country Life.

 

The panoply of things required by Edith to make Lettice’s breakfast that cover her deal kitchen table come from various different suppliers. The lacquered wooden breakfast tray and the pretty breakfast crockery came from specialist stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The box of eggs in the background comes from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The slice of toast on the plate comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. The bottle of milk in the background comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as do the pieces of cutlery. The jar of Golden Shred marmalade in the foreground comes Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire as does the box of Lyon’s Tea in the background. The sliced load of bread comes from Polly’s Pantry Miniatures. The lidded silver preserve pot comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The silver salt and pepper shakers are part of a larger cruet set made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality of the detail in their pieces.

 

Edith’s Windsor chair in the background is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

To the left of the sink is the food safe with a mop leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.

More kitchen table shenanigans where I got f'in annoyed I couldn't get the circuit board to focus how I wanted with the gear I've got so I decided to throw it completely out of focus for some random bokeh. Camera rotated alien, tripod swap with one lens and macro extension tubes, all shot in one photographic exposure etc etc.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith, her maid’s, preserve. With her mistress out, having a final fitting for her outfit for the Royal wedding of her friend Elizabeth* to the Duke of York**, Edith is enjoying the sense of tranquillity that falls upon the Cavendish Mews flat when Lettice is not home, and is sitting at the deal kitchen table in the middle of the room, looking through one of her small number of cookbooks as she works out a menu for the next few days. Having just boiled the brass kettle on the stovetop behind her, the young maid has made a pot of tea for herself, and it sits within easy reach of her right hand, the spout peeping out from the blue and white knitted tea cosy made for her by her mother. Steam rises from the spout, and from the Delftware cup featuring a windmill as she cradles it in both her hands as she consults ‘Miss Drake’s Home Cookery’*** and considers whether to cook fillets of whiting with oyster sauce or Clementine Sauce for Lettice’s luncheon on Tuesday.

 

“Let’s see,” Edith says quietly mulling over the recipe for Clementine Sauce aloud. “One ounce of butter, one ounce of flour, half a pint of fish stock, half a gill**** of cream, lemon juice, salt and cayenne to taste. Oh! Parmesan! I don’t have any of that. Well, I can get some from Willison’s easily enough.”

 

Just at that moment there is a tentative knock on the tradesman’s door leading out of the kitchen onto the back stairs of the flats, shattering Edith’s quiet contemplation and startling her so much that she almost spills tea onto her precious cookbook.

 

“That’s Frank’s knock.” Edith remarks aloud to the empty kitchen around her, recognising the slightly hesitant tap of her young man, Frank Leadbetter, delivery boy for Willison’s Grocery in Mayfair. “Frank? Frank is that you?” she calls cheerily, quickly standing up and self-consciously brushing down the front of her blue and white striped morning print dress uniform and quickly sweeping some loose strands of her blonde hair behind her ears in an effort to make herself more presentable for her beau.

 

“It is Edith.” Frank’s voice calls from the other side of the white painted door. “May I come in?”

 

“Oh yes, do come in Frank. It’s not locked.”

 

The door opens and Frank pokes his head around the door, his workman’s flat cap covering his head of mousy brown hair. He smiles, his pale skin flush from riding his bike and then climbing several flights of stairs to reach the Cavendish Mews flat from the ground floor.

 

“You’re just in time.” Edith continues with a smile. “I’ve just boiled the kettle. If you have time that is.”

 

“Yes, I do.” Frank indicates, walking into Edith’s cosy kitchen and closing the door behind him so as to keep the cool spring air outside. He is struck by the ghostly, yet comforting wafts of butter and herbs from last night’s Chicken a la Minute dinner that Edith cooked for Lettice. “Jolly good Edith. All this bicycling around Mayfair and Pimlico gives a man a thirst.”

 

Edith walks over to the pine dresser and takes down another Delftware cup and saucer whilst Frank lifts up the Windsor backed chair next to the back door and carries it across the waxed black and white chequered linoleum floor and puts it adjunct to Edith’s own Windsor chair.

 

“It’s funny, Frank. I was just making a mental note to myself to order some Parmesan cheese from Mr. Willison’s, and here you are!”

 

“Well,” Frank removes his cap and runs his fingers through his slightly wavy hair before depositing the cap on the surface of the kitchen table. “You know I’m always at your service, Miss Watsford.”

 

Edith giggles as she and Frank sit down at the table.

 

As Edith lifts the cosy clad pot and pours Frank a cup of steaming tea, she remarks, “But I don’t have a grocery order, Frank. What are you doing here?” She quickly adds, “Not that I mind, of course.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it.” Frank laughs good naturedly.

 

“Don’t tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Willison have shown some heart and given you the morning off.”

 

“Not likely, Edith!” Frank scoffs casting his eyes to the ceiling above, taking up the sugar bowl and adding two large heaped spoonfuls of sugar to his tea. “No, I finished my round of deliveries early, so I thought I had just enough time to pop in and have a cup of tea with my sweetheart before I was missed back at the shop.”

 

‘Well, we better make the most of this impromptu visit then, before you are missed.”

 

“Oh yes! That old Mrs. Willison is a tartar! I think she is more of stickler for time than Mr. Willison is.”

 

“So, to what do I owe the honour then, Frank?”

 

“What? Can’t a chap visit his girl just to say hullo?”

 

“Well of course, Frank.” Edith picks up her own teacup again. “I’m always delighted to be graced with your company.”

 

“That’s better.” Frank nods approvingly as he stirs his tea with a slightly tarnished teaspoon. He takes a sip and sighs with pleasure before adding, “But actually, I do have an ulterior motive to be here today, Edith.”

 

“Oh?” Edith queries warily. “What is it, Frank?”

 

“Well, I know I got off to a bad start with you family the other Sunday,” Frank begins.

 

“Oh, are you still worried about that, Frank? I thought we’d been through all this on Easter Sunday.” Edith admonishes. With a brave smile she assures him, “I told you: we’ll win Mum over easily enough, given a bit of time and you keeping quiet about some of your more progressive workers’ ideas.”

 

“I know, Edith, but I’ve got a little something with me that might calm the waters a little, at least with your dad.”

 

“What is it? What have you got, Frank?”

 

“These.” Frank reaches into the inside of his white shirt beneath his russet coloured woollen vest and withdraws a small envelope from his breast pocket.

 

Handing it to Edith with a beaming smile he lets his sweetheart investigate it. The envelope is postmarked with yesterday’s date. Addressed to Frank by hand in a neat copperplate care of the boarding house in Holborn the return address, one in Wembley that she doesn’t recognise, is typed in the top left hand corner.

 

“What is it, Frank?” Edith asks suspiciously, holding the envelope aloft, poised in the air between them.

 

“Well, just open it and find out.” Frank encourages her with a broad smile. “It won’t bite.” He chuckles at Edith’s hesitancy.

 

Edith slips her fingers tentatively beneath the edge of the back of the envelope and hooks underneath it. It comes away easily, having already been opened and simply slipped back into place. Opening the envelope, she peers inside and withdraws several small pale yellow ticket stubs between her slightly careworn fingers. She gasps as she reads the black print on one of the four tickets.

 

“This is for the White Horse Finals***** at Empire Stadium******!”

 

“I know.” Frank replies matter-of-factly, but with pride beaming from his expression. “There are four tickets in there.”

 

“Four tickets!” Edith gasps, looking again, her eyes growing wide in amazement.

 

“Yes: two for us and one each for your dad and mum.”

 

“Four! That’s amazing Frank! You can’t get a ticket for the finals for love nor money!”

 

“I thought they might help make up for my somewhat awkward introduction to your parents, and show that I really do care about you, and them too, of course.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith leaps out of her chair and flings her arms around Frank’s neck as he sits there.

 

Unaccustomed to such fervent signs of affection from Edith, who is usually very reserved, Frank is taken aback at first, but then settles comfortably into the embrace, smiling as he inhales the sweet smell of his sweetheart: freshly laundered clothes and Lifebuoy soap intermixed with the fragrance of her hair. He wraps his arms around Edith’s waist carefully and for a moment is lost in his love for her before the moment is broken as Edith regains her composure and finally pulls away from him, albeit a little reluctantly.

 

“How on earth did you get these?” Edith asks in astonishment, resuming her seat. “Magic? Dad’s been trying to get hold of tickets for weeks and weeks, pulling every string and pulling in every favour that he can!”

 

“I guess they just weren’t the right strings he pulled.” Frank beams elatedly.

 

“But how did you do it?”

 

“Well, you know how I said when we had lunch with your parents that there was some doubt as to whether the Empire Stadium will be completed on time.”

 

“Yes Frank.”

 

“Well, I know a bit more than the papers let on because I’m friendly with a couple of chaps who are working on the building of it, you see.”

 

“Really Frank?”

 

“Yes. Anyway, one of them has a girl who works at the booking office for the football final tickets, and my friend pulled a few strings for me, and there you go!” He waves a hand theatrically towards the envelope, which Edith has now placed face down on the kitchen table between them.

 

“Oh Frank! You are a wonder!” Edith picks up her cup of tea and takes a sip.

 

“Well, think of it as more of a good will gesture from me to your parents, than a gift from me to you.”

 

“But Frank, don’t you see? It is a gift! This will help brush over that awkwardness from the other day, and calm the waters as you say. You’re so clever!”

 

“Well,” Frank says happily, looking very pleased with himself. “You’re my girl, Edith, and I want your parents’ blessing as well as my Gran’s, when it comes to marrying you one day. I need to make sure that your parents know that even though I may be a bit of a radical thinker, I have your best interests at heart: first and foremost.”

 

“And this will go well towards building the foundations of their trust in you, Frank! It really will!” Edith enthuses. “Dad’s been like a child with a broken toy according to Mum, moping about the house when he comes home empty handed after seeing friends down at the pub who haven’t been able to get him tickets. He was even thinking of just taking Mum for a picnic and the pair of them would sit outside the stadium and listen to what was going on inside.”

 

“Well now he won’t have to, Edith! He can go! We all can go!”

 

“How lucky am I, to have you as my beau, Frank Leadbetter?”

 

“About as lucky as I am to have you as my best girl, Edith Watsford.”

 

The par of young lovers laugh as they settle back in their chairs, chatting away happily, making the most of the unexpected stolen moment together before Frank must return to his job delivering groceries and Edith to her household chores around the flat.

 

*Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was known at the beginning of 1923 when this story is set, went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". He proposed again in 1922 after Elizabeth was part of his sister, Mary the Princess Royal’s, wedding party, but she refused him again. On Saturday, January 13th, 1923, Prince Albert went for a walk with Elizabeth at the Bowes-Lyon home at St Paul’s, Walden Bury and proposed for a third and final time. This time she said yes. The wedding took place on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey.

 

**Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. He was never expected to become King, but came to the throne after his elder brother David, the Prince of Wales, abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry the love of his life American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. Although not schooled in being a ruler, Bertie, who styled himself as George VI as a continuation of his father, became King of United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952, and saw Britain through some of its darkest days, becoming one of the most popular monarchs in British history.

 

***’Miss Drake’s Home Cookery’ is a book of standard household recipes suitable for a plain cook or maid-of-all-work like Edith. First published in 1915 it was compiled by Miss Lucy Drake, a trained cookery teacher at the Education Department of Melbourne, and a student of the National Training School of Cookery and other branches of Domestic Economy , Buckingham Palace Road, London.

 

****The gill or teacup is a unit of measurement for volume equal to a quarter of a pint. It is no longer in common use, except in regard to the volume of alcoholic spirits measures, but was certainly a well known measure in the years prior to the Second World War.

 

*****The first football match to be played at Wembley Stadium was between the Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United. This match became known as the White Horse final, and was played just a few days after the completion of the stadium.

 

******Originally known as Empire Stadium, London’s Wembley Stadium was built to serve as the centerpiece of the British Empire Exhibition. It took a total of three hundred days to construct the stadium at a cost of £750,000. The stadium was completed on the 23rd of April 1923, only a few days before the first football match, between the Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, was to take place at the stadium. The stadium's first turf was cut by King George V, and it was first opened to the public on 28 April 1923. Much of Humphry Repton's original Wembley Park landscape was transformed in 1922 and 1923 during preparations for the British Empire Exhibition. First known as the "British Empire Exhibition Stadium" or simply the "Empire Stadium", it was built by Sir Robert McAlpine for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 (extended to 1925).

 

This cosy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Central to our story is the envelope containing the four tickets to the White Horse final, which is a 1:12 size miniature made to incredibly high standards of realism by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Although known predominantly for his creation of miniature books, Ken has also created quite a number of other items, including envelopes and even tiny legible letters that go inside them. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

Also on Edith’s deal table stands her teapot. The tea cosy, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in England. The Delftware cups, saucers and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot.

 

The little cookbook, a non-opening 1:12 artisan miniature of a real cookbook, comes from a small American artisan seller on E-Bay.

 

Edith’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and easier to clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews, although we are still in Mayfair, moving a few streets away to Hill Street, where Edith, Lettice’s maid, and her beau, grocery boy Frank Leadbetter, are visiting Edith’s friend and fellow maid Hilda. It is a beautiful, sunny Sunday and Sundays all three have as days off from their jobs as domestic servants and delivery boy. Taking advantage of this, all three are going to spend the afternoon at Hammersmith Palias de Danse*. As usual, Frank collects Edith from Cavendish Mews and the pair then go to the home of Lettice’s married friends Margot and Dickie Channon, where Hilda works as a live-in maid.

 

Being Hilda’s day off, her employers usually decamp for the day, and today they are visiting their friend Priscilla who recently married American dry goods heir Georgie Carter. The pair have just returned to London from their honeymoon which took in much of Europe before visiting Georgie’s family in Philadelphia. The quartet will dine at the Café Royal**, doubtless at the expense of Georgie since the Channons seem perpetually to have financial difficulties, but as a result, the Channons have invited the Carters back to their Hill Street flat for after supper coffee, which means that Hilda must do one of her most hated jobs: grind coffee beans to make real coffee for Georgie Carter, who is particular about his American style coffee. We find the trio in the kitchen of the Hill Street flat, the ladies’ dancing frocks and Frank’s suit at odds with their surrounds as Hilda grinds the coffee beans sitting in a white china bowl in the large wooden and brass coffee grinder. By preparing the coffee, ready to make before she goes out, it will be easy to serve when her employers and their guests return after dinner, and the beans will still be fresh enough for Georgie’s liking.

 

“You know,” Frank remarks as he stands at Edith’s elbow and watches Hilda turn the handle of the coffee grinder with gusto. “I don’t see why they can’t just drink Camp Coffee*** like the rest of us.”

 

“Oh Frank!” gasps Edith, looking up at her beau and patting his hand with her own as he squeezes her left shoulder lovingly. “You know perfectly well why not, Frank. Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s friend, Mr. Carter is an American gentleman, and just like Miss Wanetta Ward the American moving picture star, he doesn’t like British coffee.”

 

“What rot!” Frank scoffs at the suggestion. “There’s nothing wrong with British coffee! If British coffee isn’t to Mr. Carter’s taste, let him have tea then, and save poor Hilda the effort of having to grind up coffee beans for his lordship.” He slips off the jacket of his smart Sunday blue suit, revealing his crisp white shirt, red tie and smart navy blue vest. He drapes it over the back of the Windsor chair Edith sits in. “Come on old girl,” he says to Hilda as he moves around the deal pine kitchen table. “Give me a go then. Give your arms a chance to recuperate before we go dancing.”

 

“You’re such a Socialist, Frank Leadbetter.” pipes up Hilda as with a grunt, she pushes the handle of the grinder mechanism over a particularly recalcitrant coffee bean.

 

“What?” gasps Frank as he takes over grinding from the grateful maid. “I thought you’d come to my defence, Hilda, especially as I’m being so chivalrous as to grind coffee beans for you.”

 

“Oh I am grateful, Frank, ever so.” Hilda replies, rubbing her aching forearms with her fat, sausage like fingers. “But just because you are being gallant, doesn’t mean I can’t call you a Socialist.”

 

“Because a hard working man like me thinks I’m every bit as good as this friend of your Mr. and Mrs. Channon, I’m now a Socialist?” Frank asks in an appalled voice. “You’re as bad as Edith’s mum.” He nods in his sweetheart’s direction.

 

“Mum thinks Frank might be a Communist.” Edith explains. “Even though we’ve both told her that he isn’t.”

 

“Handsome is as handsome does.” remarks Hilda with a cheeky smile as she glances at Frank winding the red knob topped brass handle of the grinder.

 

“I’m neither, I’ll have you know, Hilda Clerkenwell!” Frank retorts. “I’d prefer to think of myself as more of a progressive thinker when it comes to the rights and privileges of the working man,” He looks poignantly at Hilda. “And woman.”

 

“Same thing.” Hilda retorts matter-of-factly as she starts to straighten the russet grosgrain bandeau**** embellished with gold sequins which has slipped askew whilst she has been grinding coffee beans.

 

“Pardon my ignorance,” Edith begins gingerly. “But what exactly is a Socialist?”

 

“Socialism is a political movement that wants to reform various economic and social systems, transferring them to social ownership as opposed to private ownership.” remarks Hilda as she runs her hands down the back of her hair.

 

“Well done, Hilda!” Frank congratulates her.

 

“You sound surprised, Frank.” Hilda says with a cheeky smile. “Don’t they have smart girls where you come from, present company excluded, Edith!” Hilda adds hurriedly so as not to offend her best friend.”

 

“Oh, you know I’m not very political,” Edith assures Hilda, yet at the same time self consciously toys with her blonde waves as she speaks.

 

“I must confess, Hilda, I am a little surprised.” Frank admits. “I don’t know many girls who are interested in social rights and can give explanations so eloquently.”

 

“I’m so sorry Frank!” Edith defends herself. “I know you’ve tried to teach me, but I can’t help it. I get confused between this ist and the other ist. They all seem the same to me.” She blushes with mild embarrassment at her own ignorance.

 

“No, no, Edith!” Frank assures her as he stops grinding the coffee beans and reaches out his left hand, clasping her right one as it rests on the tabletop and squeezes it reassuringly. “This isn’t a criticism of you! It was a compliment to Hilda. You’re wonderful, and there are things that you understand and are far better at than me.”

 

“Than both of us, Edith.” adds Hilda quickly, the look of concern about her friend taking umbrage clear on her round face.

 

“Yes, inconsequential things.” Edith mumbles in a deflated tone.

 

“No, not at all.” Frank reassures her soothingly as he takes up grinding coffee again. “What good am I to myself if I can’t cook a meal to feed myself.”

 

“And for all my love of reading, Edith, you know I can’t sew a stitch.” Hilda appends. “I could never have made this beautiful frock.” She grasps the edge of the strap of her russet coloured art satin***** dress as she speaks. “Not in a million years. We’re all good at different things, and no-one could say you weren’t smart, Edith.”

 

“That’s right.” Frank concurs, smiling at his sweetheart. “One of the reasons why I’ve always admired you is because you aren’t some silly giggling Gertie****** like some of the housemaids I’ve known. You aren’t turned by just a handsome face, and your head isn’t filled with moving picture stars and nothing else.”

 

“Well, I do like moving picture stars, Frank.” Edith confesses.

 

“Oh I know, Edith, and I love you for that too.” Frank reassures her. “But it’s not all that is in there. You have a good head on your shoulders.”

 

“And a wise one too.” Hilda interjects. “How often do I ask you for advice? I’ve always asked you for your opinion on things for as long as we’ve been friends.”

 

“You are clever, and insightful, and you want a better life for yourself too, and that’s why I really love you. We want the same things from life.” Frank says in a soft and soothing tone full of love as he gazes at Edith. “You are very pretty, and no-one can deny that – not even you,” He holds out an admonishing finger as Edith goes to refute his remark. “But beauty, however glorious will fade. Just look at our Dowager Queen Mother*******. When beauty fades, wit and intelligence remain, and you have both of those qualities in spades, Edith.”

 

“Oh Frank.” Edith breathes softly. “You aren’t ashamed of me then?”

 

“Of course I’m not Edith! How could I ever be ashamed of you? I’m as proud as punch******** to step out with you! You’re my best girl.”

 

Frank winds the gleaming brass coffee grinder handle a few more times before stopping. He pulls out the drawer at the bottom and as he does, the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee beans fills the air around them, wafting up his, Edith and Hilda’s nostrils. He sighs with satisfaction at a job well done.

 

“Good enough for his American lordship?” Frank asks Hilda.

 

She peers into the drawer. “Good enough.” she acknowledges with another of her cheeky smirks, nodding affirmatively.

 

“I still think he could jolly well grind his own, you know, Hilda!” Frank opines.

 

“Socialist.” she laughs in reply as she walks around Frank, withdraws the drawer of ground coffee and knocks the contents into the small, worn Delftware coffee cannister with careful taps, so as not to spill and waste any of the hard-won grinds.

 

“I bet you, your Wanetta Ward doesn’t grind her own coffee, Edith.” Frank goes on as he walks back around to Edith and slips his jacket on again.

 

“I bet you she does, Frank!” Edith counters.

 

“What? A moving picture star grinding her own coffee? I don’t believe it!”

 

“Miss Ward is a very unorthodox person, Frank, even for an American.” she assures him. “I think she might surprise you if you ever get the pleasure of meeting her one day.”

 

“Maybe.” Frank says doubtfully. “Well now that coffee is ground, we should really get going.” He runs his hands around the back of his jacket collar to make sure it is sitting straight. “The Hammersmith Palais waits for no-one, not even those who slave for undeserving Americans.” He laughs good heartedly. “Shall we go?”

 

“Oh yes!” enthuses Edith as Frank chivalrously pulls out her chair for her as she stands up. “I’ll fetch our coats.”

 

With her pretty blue floral sprigged frock swirling about her figure, Edith hurries over to the pegs by the door where Frank’s, Hilda’s and her own coat and hats hang. She moves lightly across the floor, practicing her dance steps as she goes, silently moving to the music she hears the band playing in her head.

 

“I really wonder why I bother sometimes.” Hilda says despondently as she pulls her brown coat on over the top of the luxurious man-made silk frock that Edith made for her and decorated with lace trimming and small bursts of sequins.

 

“Like I said,” Frank mutters. “He should settle for Camp Coffee like the rest of us, or have tea.”

 

“Not grinding coffee, Frank!” Hilda scoffs in reply. “I mean go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais week after week. What’s the point?”

 

“What do you mean, Hilda?” Edith asks gently, slipping her arms into her own black three-quarter length coat as Frank holds to open for her.

 

“I mean why do I bother going dancing when no man at the Palais ever looks at me, even in this beautiful new frock you made me, Edith.” She picks up the lace trimmed hem of her dance dress and lifts it despondently.

 

Edith and Frank both glance anxiously at one another for a moment. Both know they are thinking exactly the same thing. What Hilda says is true. Whenever the three of them go to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse there are always far more women in attendance than men. The Great War decimated the male population, and almost drove an entire generation of young men into extinction. Sadly, this means that more and more women are finding themselves without a gentleman to step out with, and are deemed surplus to needs by society. In spite of any of his faults, Edith knows how lucky she is to have a young man like Frank. Even the attentions of pretty girls are less in demand with fewer men in circulation desiring their company. Unlike Edith, Hilda is a little on the plump side, enjoying the indulgence of sticky buns from the bakers and an extra serving of Victoria Sponge at the Lyons Corner Shop********* at the top of Tottenham Court Road. Her face is friendly, with soft brown eyes and a warm smile, but she isn’t pretty. Even with the judicious application of a little powder and rouge acquired from the make-up counter of Selfridges********** her skin lacks the fresh gleam that Edith has, and for as long as she has known her, Edith has always found Hilda to have a very pale complexion. When the three of them do go dancing, Frank is often the only man she dances with when he partners her around the dancefloor, and more often than not, Hilda ends up taking the part of the man, dancing with any number of other neglected wallflowers, just to ward of the tedium of waiting for someone to ask her to dance. The plight, for plight it was, of women like Hilda was all too common, in the post-war world of the 1920s.

 

“Perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place, Hilda.” Frank says.

 

“What do mean, Frank?”

 

“Well, a girl with brains like you needs a man who will stimulate her mentally. Perhaps you might find the man of your dreams at a library.”

 

“A library!” Hilda’s mind conjures up images of pale bookish young men in glasses with phlegmatic characters who would much rather shake her hand limply and discuss the benefits of Socialism, rather than sweep her off her feet romantically.

 

“Not at all helpful, Frank!” hisses Edith as she watches her best friend’s face fall.

 

“I was only joking.” Frank shrugs apologetically, unsure what to say.

 

Edith hurries over and wraps her arm around Hilda’s slumping shoulders consolingly. “A faint heart never won a fair lady, Hilda.” She pulls Hilda to her lovingly. Hilda looks up at her friend sadly, yet thoughtfully. “And I think it works the same in reverse.”

 

Seeing a way to make amends for his ill-timed joke, Frank pipes up, “That’s exactly right, Hilda. Edith wouldn’t have been anywhere near as attractive to me if she hadn’t had a bit of pluck.”

 

“And you look splendid in the dance frock I made for you, Hilda,” Edith adds. “Really you do.”

 

“Do you really think so, Edith?” Hilda asks, looking at her friend.

 

“Of course I do! I’m a professional seamstress, and you are my best friend. I wouldn’t make something that didn’t suit you!”

 

“No, no of course not.” Hilda replies.

 

“And didn’t Mrs. Minkin say that russet satin would suit your colourings?”

 

“She did.”

 

“Well then,” Edith replies matter-of-factly. “There is nothing more to be said.”

 

“That’s right.” agrees Frank, and without further ado, he sweeps Hilda into his arms.

 

With the ease of a natural dancer, Frank begins to waltz his partner carefully across the black and white chequered linoleum floor of the Channon’s kitchen, guiding her around the kitchen table and the chairs gathered around it, past the black and white stove and the dresser cluttered with crockery and provisions.

 

“Oh Frank!” Hilda says, laughing joyously as she allows herself to be swept away. “You really are a one!”

 

Edith smiles as she sees a light return to her best friend’s eyes, and a smile appear upon her pert lips. She considers herself so fortunate not just because she has a chap to step out with, but because Frank is so kind and considerate. Not just any man would understand or appreciate Edith’s wish to include Hilda in their excursions to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, and not every man would be as willing to take a turn with her on the dancefloor, as has been proven. Then again, Frank is no ordinary man, and as time goes on and she gets to know him better, the more she is becoming aware that her sweetheart is a very special man indeed. She laughs as Frank dips Hilda, making her squeal in delight, before raising her up again and restoring her to her feet.

 

“There!” Frank says with a huff as he catches his breath. “Now that your feet are suitably warmed up, you’re ready to go, Miss Clerkenwell. We’ll have no more talk of you not wanting to come dancing with us.”

 

“Today might be the day you meet someone, Hilda. Don’t give up on the chance.” Edith enthuses.

 

“Oh alright you two!” Hilda acquiesces. “I give up. Let’s go then.”

 

“That’s the spirit, Hilda!” Frank says. “That pluck will win you a fine and handsome gentleman with a brain that you deserve.”

 

“I can hardly battle both of you, can I?” Hilda laughs as she carefully places her floppy brimmed brown velvet and copper faille poke-style bonnet decorated with a beige rose and leaves atop her head.

 

The three friends walk out of the kitchen door that leads out onto the flat’s back stairs and begin to descend to the street. Hilda locks the door behind her and the coffee grinder and the as of yet to be ground coffee beans sit on the table, ready for when she returns later that day to serve to Margot, Dickie and their friends Priscilla and Georgie Carter.

 

*The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

**The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.

 

***Camp Coffee is a concentrated syrup which is flavoured with coffee and chicory, first produced in 1876 by Paterson & Sons Ltd, in Glasgow. In 1974, Dennis Jenks merged his business with Paterson to form Paterson Jenks plc. In 1984, Paterson Jenks plc was bought by McCormick & Company. Legend has it (mainly due to the picture on the label) that Camp Coffee was originally developed as an instant coffee for military use. The label is classical in tone, drawing on the romance of the British Raj. It includes a drawing of a seated Gordon Highlander (supposedly Major General Sir Hector MacDonald) being served by a Sikh soldier holding a tray with a bottle of essence and jug of hot water. They are in front of a tent, at the apex of which flies a flag bearing the drink's slogan, "Ready Aye Ready". A later version of the label, introduced in the mid-20th century, removed the tray from the picture, thus removing the infinite bottles element and was seen as an attempt to avoid the connotation that the Sikh was a servant, although he was still shown waiting while the kilted Scottish soldier sipped his coffee. The current version, introduced in 2006, depicts the Sikh as a soldier, now sitting beside the Scottish soldier, and with a cup and saucer of his own. Camp Coffee is an item of British nostalgia, because many remember it from their childhood. It is still a popular ingredient for home bakers making coffee-flavoured cake and coffee-flavoured buttercream. In late 1975, Camp Coffee temporarily became a popular alternative to instant coffee in the UK, after the price of coffee doubled due to shortages caused by heavy frosts in Brazil.

 

****A bandeau is a narrow band of fabric worn round the head to hold the hair in position. Although bandeaus existed long before the 1920s, there was a resurgence in popularity for embroidered grosgrain ribbons to be worn around the head across the forehead in the 1920s, and they are synonymous with 1920s flapper fashion.

 

*****The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.

 

******Although obscure as to its origin, the term “giggling Gertie” is of English derivation and was often used in a derisive way to describe silly children and young people, usually girls, who were deemed as being flippant and foolish.

 

*******Queen Alexandra was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from the twenty-second of January 1901 to the sixth of May 1910 as the wife of King-Emperor Edward VII. Daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, at the age of sixteen Alexandra was chosen as the future wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the son and heir apparent of Queen Victoria. When she arrived in England she was famed for her beauty and her style of dress and bearing were copied by fashion-conscious women. From Edward's death, Alexandra was queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch. Alexandra retained a youthful appearance into her senior years, but during the Great War her age caught up with her. She took to wearing elaborate veils and heavy makeup, which was described by gossips as having her face "enamelled".

 

********Although today we tend to say as “pleased as punch”, the Victorian term actually began as “proud as punch”. This expression refers to the Punch and Judy puppet character. Punch's name comes from Punchinello, an Italian puppet with similar characteristics. In Punch and Judy shows, the grotesque Punch is portrayed as self-satisfied and pleased with his evil actions.

 

*********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

********** Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of upscale department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1908. Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr. was an American-British retail magnate who founded the London-based department store. His twenty year leadership of Selfridge’s led to his becoming one of the most respected and wealthy retail magnates in the United Kingdom. He was known as the 'Earl of Oxford Street'.

 

***********Faille is a type of cloth with flat ribs, often made in silk. It has a softer texture than grosgrain, with heavier and wider cords or ribs. Weft yarns are heavier than warp, and it is manufactured in plain weaving. It was especially popular in the Nineteenth Century, and its popularity, although somewhat dwindling, did carry through into the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

 

This cosy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Hilda’s deal table stands her coffee grinder with its brass handle, wooden base and drawer, and red knobs. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The little Delftware canister and the white china bowl also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The coffee beans in the bowl are really black carraway seeds. The vase of flowers comes from an online shop on E-Bay.

 

Hilda’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and easier to clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews, although we are still in Mayfair, moving a few streets away to Hill Street, where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her friend and fellow maid Hilda. Edith and Hilda used to share at attic bedroom together in the Pimlico townhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Plaistow, their former situation, where they worked together as parlour maids. Edith recently helped Hilda obtain a new position as live-in maid for Lettice’s married Embassy Club coterie friends, Dickie and Margot Channon. Whilst Edith spends her Sundays off with her beau, Willison’s Grocers delivery boy Frank, she shares her Wednesdays off between visiting her parents in Harlesden and spending the day enjoying the pleasures London has to offer with Hilda. It is in the Channon’s Hill Street flat’s kitchen that we find ourselves today where Edith and Hilda are taking luncheon before heading off to nearby Oxford Street for a spot of window shopping.

 

Hilda has found that the Channon’s rather chaotic household and way of living somewhat of challenge to get used to working in, but it always guarantees great stories that she can share with her best friend, and this is what the girls are doing. The Channons are away, visiting Dickie’s parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Taunton in Cornwall, which makes it easier for Hilda to entertain Edith at the flat in Hill Street, and the pair are enjoying Dickie and Margot’s unknown largess as the table is set with tea for two, bread from the glazed bread crock and a choice of spreads for them to enjoy.

 

“Well, “ Hilda says with a sigh of relief as she unscrews the yellow lid from the Marmite* jar. “I can tell you I was relieved to hear Mrs. Channon say to your Miss Lettice over lunch last week that the reason why they are going to see her in-laws is because they find it too lowering to visit the flat.” She scoops some of the thick dark Marmite out of the jar and smears the paste thinly across her slice of bread.

 

“Mmmm…” murmurs Edith in reply, her own knife still laying next to her untouched slice of bare bread.

 

“She sounds like a nasty old trout anyway.” Hilda prattles on as she cuts her slice of Marmite topped bread into two by slicing it with ungainly drags of her Bakelite** handled knife. “Poor Mrs. Channon always comes back from these stays at the in-law’s castle so downcast, and despondent.”

 

“Yes…” Edith replies in a distracted way, still leaving her bread untouched.

 

“And I’ve heard she and Mr. Channon talk about the fact that they have no children yet.” Hilda picks up one half of her bread and bites into it hungrily, chewing her mouthful a few times and half swallowing it before adding, “I mean, I know they have been married for a year and all, so it is unusual.” She loudly chews her mouthful of bread and Marmite a few more times. “But you can’t force babies to come, now can you?”

 

“Mmmm…”

 

“And, I mean fancy the Marchioness being rich enough to live in a castle, yet she and the Marquess barely give Mr. Channon a penny to live by, and they won’t visit his home because they think it’s too lowering.” Hilda emphasises the last word before taking another large bite of her bread. “What a cheek! ‘d hate her for a mother-in-law, no matter how rich she is! She’s just plain rude, if you ask me! Don’t you agree, Edith?”

 

“No…” Edith replies after a few moments, her voice reedy and tinged with a far off quality.

 

“You don’t, Edith?” Hilda asks, her face screwing up in disbelief, her mouth a thin, long line moving up and down as she chews.

 

“I don’t what?” Edith replies.

 

“You don’t agree with me, Edith!” Hilda retorts in surprise. “Haven’t you been listening to me?” She looks at the slice of bare bread on Edith’s plate and her untouched cup of tea, and then up into Edith’s rather pale and wan face with apprehension. “What’s wrong Edith? You haven’t touched your tea.”

 

“Oh!” Edith gasps, before smiling at her friend. “Nothing, Hilda.” She picks up the jar of Golden Shred Marmalade*** and unscrews the painted red lid.

 

“Aren’t you going to put butter on your bread first?” Hilda asks with disquiet as she watches Edith’s clean knife edge towards the gelatinous golden orange conserve within the jar.

 

“What?” Edith looks at the marmalade and then looks at the bar of creamy pale yellow butter on the white glazed tray of the butter dish. “Oh! Oh yes!” She giggles somewhat forcefully at her mistake. “Silly me.”

 

“What’s wrong Edith?” Hilda asks her friend in genuine concern as she watches her butter her bread. “You’ve been a bit off ever since you’ve arrived, and I don’t think you’ve really heard a word I said since you got here.”

 

“Yes I have, Hilda!” Edith defends.

 

“You’re not,” Hilda glances down to Edith’s stomach, encased in a pretty floral print frock of her own making, cocking her eyebrow as she does. “You know… in the family way with Frank, are you?”

 

“Hilda!” Edith let’s her knife clatter loudly onto her blue and white plate. “Good heavens, no!” She blushes. “I’m not that kind of girl! You know that! How could you even think such a thing? I haven’t let Frank touch me like that, and he knows he can’t, until he’s put a ring on my finger.”

 

“Oh, that’s a relief!” Hilda sinks back not the comfort of the round back of her Windsor chair. “Then what is it? Something’s bothering you. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Is it Miss Lettice? Has she done something? I know your brother is home. Is he alright?”

 

“Of course my brother’s alright!” Edith scoffs in surprise. “You only saw him at the Hammersmith Palais**** on Sunday. And no, it’s nothing about Miss Lettice.”

 

“Well, a lot can happen in a few days, Edith. So, what is it, then. Is it to do with Frank?”

 

Edith doesn’t reply for a moment, which tells her best friend so much before she finally does reply falteringly. “Well, yes… well not him, exactly.”

 

“What is it then?” Hilda sits forward and picks up the last bite of her first half of her bread. “Come on! Out with it then!”

 

Edith sighs deeply and toys with the marmalade as she smears it across her slice of bread. “I’m worried about meeting Frank’s grandmother on Sunday.”

 

“But I thought you wanted to meet her.” Hilda replies, her eyes widening in surprise. “You’re the one who has been banging on to me for weeks about Frank dragging his heels. Now he’s gone and done the right thing and organised for you two to finally meet. I don’t understand.”

 

“Oh, I am glad, Hilda. Really, I am.”

 

“Well you don’t sound it, I must confess.” Hilda says matter-of-factly as she snatches up her second half of her bread and bites deeply into it, emitting a small gasp of pleasure at doing so.

 

Edith cuts her slice of bread in half with desultory strokes as she considers her reply. “It’s hard to explain.”

 

“Try me.”

 

“Alright. Well, I’m worried that she won’t like me.”

 

“What?” Hilda gasps. “What is there not to like about you, Edith? You’re wonderful! Frank’s picked himself the best of the catch!” She pats Edith’s arm comfortingly as she leans forward. “You’re pretty and smart. You’ve landed yourself a good job as far as being in service goes. Goodness,” She slaps Edith’s forearm. “You’re even clever enough to whip Frank up a shirt on that new Singer***** of yours, I’ll wager. I’m sure she’ll be tickled pink that her grandson has found such a catch as you.”

 

“But she sounds so grand, Hilda. She makes lace, and she lives in Upton Park. It sounds much nicer than Harlesden.”

 

“What rubbish!” Hilda scoffs. “Lots of women make lace, and they aren’t fine ladies like Mrs. Channon or Miss Lettice. In fact, I doubt that either of our mistresses could sew their own lace. And as for Upon Park, it’s just an ordinary suburb, just like any other in London.”

 

“Have you been there?”

 

“Well, no.” Hilda admits. But as her friend’s face falls, she quickly adds, “But I have been with you to the Premier****** in East Ham, and that isn’t far away, and there’s nothing particularly grand or special about it. Upton Park is just an ordinary London suburb, just like many others, and that includes Harlesden.”

 

“I don’t really know much about Frank’s upbringing, other than his parents died in the Spanish Flu epidemic. His grandmother might not approve of a working girl whose father works in a biscuit factory and a mother who is a laundress.”

 

“Rubbish! Your parents are both respectable people, Edith. Your mum keeps a lovely house and did a splendid job of raising you and your brother. You’ve nothing whatever to be ashamed of! I’m sure your nerves are just bringing all this nonsense up.”

 

“Oh,” Edith sighs. “You’re probably right, Hilda.” She smiles wanly at her friend and reaches up her own right hand and places it gratefully on her best friend’s left forearm. “Thank you.”

 

“Course I’m right.” Hilda says with satisfaction.

 

The pair settle back in companionable silence for a short while. Hilda happily helps herself to another slice of thick and soft white bread from the bread crock, far nicer than the bread she used to be served by the cook in Mrs. Plaistow’s, who deliberately gave the maids food of a poorer quality out of sheer spite, whilst feeding she and her kitchen maid little delicacies that she would create just for them. Smearing a thick layer of rich, dark and gleaming Marmite on her bread, Hilda feels the silence change. Glancing up at her friend she watches as she gingerly nibbles at her slice of bread, spread with a thin layer of jewel like orange marmalade. Her eyes, usually so bright, seem dull and sad and she is obviously troubled and distracted by something more than she is saying. Hilda sips her tea and ponders the situation.

 

“There’s something else worrying you, isn’t there Edith?” she confronts her friend at length.

 

“No, I…”

 

“Don’t try and deny it!” Hilda protests, raising one of her doughy arms with its wide hands and fat, sausage like fingers. “I’ve known you long enough Edith Watsford, to know there is something wrong. What is it? Don’t you want to tell it me?”

 

Edith looks guiltily at her, evidently upset at withholding information from her most trusted of friends, yet unable to voice them. Finally, she speaks.

 

“You’ll think me foolish, if you thought my other reasons were rubbish, Hilda.”

 

“Your reasons may be rubbish,” Hilda agrees. “But your concerns aren’t. Come on Edith. We tell each other everything. You know I won’t think you’re foolish. Like I said before, you’re a smart girl, and smart girls aren’t foolish.” She smiles in a welcoming fashion, encouraging Edith to share. “I won’t pass judgement on you.” she concludes softly, putting down her slice of bread, just to prove the point that she is paying full attention. “Promise.”

 

Edith puts down her own nibbled slice of bread and explains with a heaviness and reluctance, “I feel foolish, because I can’t help but feel I’m cheating on Bert’s memory by going to see Frank’s grandmother.”

 

When Edith pauses and looks across at her friend, Hilda doesn’t respond, even though she wants to. She wants to tell her that such an idea is nonsense, and that she has been crying over the photo of a dead man for far too long as it is, but she knows that will only make Edith feel foolish, and she doesn’t want her to feel that way. Instead, she stays silent for a moment before asking, “How’s that then?”

 

“Well, by me going to see Frank’s grandmother, it commits me more to Frank, and I can’t help but feel that in doing so, I’m not being generous to Bert’s memory.”

 

“That’s,” Hilda begins, about to add the word rubbish. However, she quickly changes her mind, swallows the word and instead says, “Understandable.”

 

“Do you really think so, Hilda?”

 

Hilda smiles, but her smile contains pity for her friend. “For all the time we shared that awful, cold attic bedroom at Mrs. Plaistow’s, I remember how often you talked about Bert, and how often you looked at his picture. Of course, he was your first love, and whilst I have no real experience of love myself, I do know that first loves remain in your heart.”

 

Edith nods shallowly.

 

“But I think that Bert would be disappointed in you if you didn’t take this chance with Frank, Edith. He sounded like a nice chap, and I think he’d be happy for you if you had a chance at love again. You’re lucky.” she adds. “Not all of us get that chance.” Now her pity is for herself.

 

“Oh, I’m sorry Hilda!” Edith exclaims. “I must sound so ungrateful! Here I am with a lovely man like Frank, and I’m worried about a man who isn’t even alive any more.”

 

“He lives in your heart.” Hilda says in a strangulated voice as she struggles to hold back her own tears.

 

“Don’t worry, Hilda!” Edith assures her friend. “We’re going to find you a good man at the Hammersmith Palais. You wait and see!”

 

“Not with the number of women there are in comparison to the men.” Hilda says doubtfully, picking up her bread slice and her cup. “Like most of the plainer girls, I end up dancing with other women rather than sit and be a wallflower. Thank goodness for your Frank dancing with me from time to time, or your brother last week.” After slurping a sip of hot sweet and milky tea, she adds, “My Mum used to tell me I had good child-bearing hips. I think she used to say it out of kindness, because I’ve always been on the heftier side.” She looks down at herself. “I’ll never be a slip of thing like you, and there’s a fact.”

 

“Oh I wouldn’t…” Edith begins, but Hilda holds up her hand in protest again as she pops her bread between her teeth.

 

Taking the slice out of her mouth, she continues, “Anyway, Mum doesn’t say that any more, partially I think to spare me the humiliation of being reminded that I’m still single at the age of twenty three, but I think more so to keep herself from remembering that as her only child left alive, if I am destined to be an old maid, she’ll never have grandchildren.”

 

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Hilda! You might meet the man you are going to marry, tomorrow.”

 

“Let’s be honest, Edith,” Hilda says in a deflated fashion. “I’m nowhere near as pretty as you, nor as trim, and with so many young men killed in the war, my chances of finding someone are slim. Besides, I can’t sew my own pretty frocks like you can, and it seems that dresses in my size are mostly muddy brown or olive in colour. They are hardly becoming are they?”

 

“Well, we might be able to do something about that.” Edith says with a genuine smile that returns brightness to her eyes. “Now that I do have my own sewing machine, I can just as easily make up a frock for you as I can for me. I have plenty of Weldon’s******* at home.”

 

Hilda’s sad face suddenly brightens and her cheeks fill with colour, giving her a pretty flush of pink. “Would you Edith?” she dares to ask. “Would you really?”

 

“Oh yes, of course I will!” Edith exclaims. “If I start working on it in the evenings this week, it might even help keep my mind off meeting Frank’s grandmother. I probably won’t have anything ready for a week or two, but if you don’t mind waiting.”

 

“Oh, of course I don’t mind waiting! That would be wonderful!”

 

“Well,” Edith says, sparking up herself at the thought of making a frock for her best friend. “I know we said we were going to go and look in the shop windows on Oxford Street, but why don’t we go to Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashers in Whitechapel instead? We could pick some nice fabric today, and maybe even look at frock patterns to see what you like.”

 

“We’d better eat up then!” Hilda says before stuffing what is left of her second slice of bread into her mouth and washing it down with another slurp of tea. Through a wall of chewed up bread mixed with tea she adds, “Whitechapel’s a bit further away than Oxford Street.”

 

As Edith stands and prepares to help tidy the luncheon dishes away, Hilda waves her hands over them, indicating to her that she will take care of them when she gets back. Hilda goes to the pegs by the back door to the flat and picks up her chocolate brown overcoat and camel felt cloche with the chocolate brown grosgrain ribbon, the latter of which she pulls down over her mousy brown hair. Holding out Edith’s black coat to her, the pair of best friends wrap up against the still chilled early spring weather and slip out the door, their joyously chattering filling the air like birdsong as they discuss what Hilda’s new frock might look like.

 

*Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

**Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

***Golden Shred orange marmalade still exists today and is a common household brand both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson's Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson's marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.

 

****The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

*****The Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of consumer sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer with New York lawyer Edward C. Clark. Best known for its sewing machines, it was renamed Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865, then the Singer Company in 1963. In 1867, the Singer Company decided that the demand for their sewing machines in the United Kingdom was sufficiently high to open a local factory in Glasgow on John Street. The Vice President of Singer, George Ross McKenzie selected Glasgow because of its iron making industries, cheap labour, and shipping capabilities. Demand for sewing machines outstripped production at the new plant and by 1873, a new larger factory was completed on James Street, Bridgeton. By that point, Singer employed over two thousand people in Scotland, but they still could not produce enough machines. In 1882 the company purchased forty-six acres of farmland in Clydebank and built an even bigger factory. With nearly a million square feet of space and almost seven thousand employees, it was possible to produce on average 13,000 machines a week, making it the largest sewing machine factory in the world. The Clydebank factory was so productive that in 1905, the U.S. Singer Company set up and registered the Singer Manufacturing Company Ltd. in the United Kingdom.******The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

*******Created by British industrial chemist and journalist Walter Weldon Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was the first ‘home weeklies’ magazine which supplied dressmaking patterns. Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was first published in 1875 and continued until 1954 when it ceased publication.

 

This cosy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Hilda’s deal table is everything required for a nice, hearty luncheon for two working maids. The bread crock, butter knives and the butter dish come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The bar of butter on the dish I have had since I was six. It came as part of a dinner set, underneath a silver butter dish. The blue and white floral tea set, plates and bread slices all come from different online stockists of miniatures on E-Bay. The vase of flowers also comes from an online shop on E-Bay. The jar of Marmite and the jar of Golden Shred Marmalade are handmade artisan miniatures with great attention to the labelling, made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire., a panoply of things as she readies luncheon for Lettice and her guests. The mahogany stained serving tray, the gravy boat of gravy, the chopping board, napkins and cutlery all came from an English stockist of 1:12 artisan miniatures whom I found on E-Bay. Edith’s green handbag, appearing on the table at the bottom right-hand corner of the photo, is handmade from soft leather. I bought it along with many other items from an American miniature collector named Marilyn Bickel.

 

Hilda’s two different Windsor chairs are hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniatures which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat of either, but both are definitely unmarked artisan pieces.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and easier to clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

Taken in Leagrave Cottage (20th C)

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid’s, parents live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. Whilst far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, the Harlesden terrace has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her brother, Bert.

 

Having recently met Mrs. McTavish, the grandmother of Frank Leadbetter, Edith’s young beau, Edith has now arranged for Frank to join her for a Sunday roast with her parents, so that they might finally meet. Wishing to make the right impression, Frank arrived on the doorstep of the Watsfords dressed in his Sunday best suit, and presented Ada with a bunch of beautiful yellow roses and George with a bottle of French red wine. Frank has not been the only one wishing to make a good impression, with Ada scrubbing her home from top to bottom in the days leading up to the visit.

 

The kitchen has always been the heart of Edith’s family home, and today it has a particularly special feel about it. Ada had pulled out one of her best table cloths which now adorns the round kitchen table, hiding its worn surface and the best blue and white china and gilded dinner service is being used today. Ada has even conceded to Edith’s constant reminders that she promised to use the pretty Price Washington ‘Ye Old Cottage’ teapot that Edith bought her.

 

The kitchen is filled with the rich smells of roasted ham and pumpkin, boiled potatoes and vegetables, gravy warming over the grate and the faint fruity aroma of one of Ada’s cherry tarts as it sits waiting to be served for dessert on the dresser’s pull out extension.

 

“It’s a pleasure to finally have you at our table on a Sunday after all this time, Frank.” Ada says welcomingly from her seat in the high backed Windsor chair in front of the kitchen range, smiling across the round kitchen table at their guest.

 

“It’s a great pleasure to be here and to meet you too Mrs. Watsford,” Frank answers, before quickly looking to his right and adding, “And of course you too, Mr. Watsford.”

 

“Yes,” adds George. “All we ever seem to hear from our Edith these days is ‘Frank and I did this’ or ‘Frank said that’, and we wondered when we were going to get to meet you.”

 

“Dad!” admonishes Edith hotly, her cheeks flushing with colour at her father’s direct remark.

 

Frank looks to his sweetheart and smiles at her, silently indicating that what her father said was fine with him. “I am sorry we haven’t met sooner, but I am a stickler for doing things properly.”

 

“Yes, so Edith told us.” Ada answers.

 

“So, she may have told you that I wanted her to meet my family first. Sadly, my parents aren’t alive any longer, but I still have my maternal grandmother, who had more than a hand in my upbringing. I needed to ease her into the idea that I have a sweetheart, you see. It has just been she and I since 1919. I didn’t want to upset our routine, so I slowly introduced the idea of Edith being my sweetheart to her before finally introducing them.”

 

“Edith tells us that the introduction to Mrs. Mc… Tavish, is it?” Ada begins querying. When Frank nods, she continues. “That her introduction to Mrs. McTavish went very well.”

 

“It did indeed. In fact, it went even better than I’d hoped.” Frank enthuses. “You must both be very proud of Edith.”

 

Edith blushes again and looks down into her napkin draped across her lap.

 

‘And now they’ve met,” Frank continues. “It means that we could meet.”

 

“Well,” Ada says kindly. “I think that’s very respectful of you, considering your grandmother’s feelings like that.”

 

“I’m sure Edith would do the same, were she in a similar position, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies with a slight blush of his own now gracing his usually pale cheeks.

 

“And thank you again for the lovely roses, Frank.” Ada adds, glancing at the bunch of fat yellow roses on the table that Frank presented to her upon his and Edith’s arrival at the Watsford family home.

 

“Oh, and the wine.” Edith points to the bottle of red wine also sitting on the table.

 

“I’m not really a wine drinker myself,” George remarks. “More of stout man, me.” He taps the reddish brown earthenware jug next to him comfortingly.

 

“It doesn’t matter, George.” Ada admonishes her husband. “It was very thoughtful of you, Frank. I’m sure you make your grandmother as proud as Edith makes us.” Yet even as she speaks, Ada looks distrustfully at the bottle of red wine with its fancy label decorated with garlands and writing in a foreign language. “And where did you find this wine, Frank?”

 

“I did make sure to ask Edith whether you were teetotal, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures Ada. “If you disapprove, I’ll take it away. I meant no disrespect.”

 

“Oh it’s not that, Frank. We just aren’t used to it is all. As my husband says, we don’t often have a cause to have wine in this house.”

 

“I don’t think we’ve ever had wine in the house.” George adds.

 

“Oh, when Mum was alive and used to make elderflower or blackberry wine, I always had a small demijohn*** of them on the dresser.” Ada corrects him. “Not that there was ever a great deal in the house.”

 

“I don’t remember that,” George chortles. “But then again,” he adds, raising his bushy eyebrows. “There are a good many things I don’t remember these days.”

 

“Well, I’m afraid this didn’t come from my Granny.” Frank apologises. “But she doesn’t make wine.”

 

“No, but she does make very pretty lace, Mum.” Edith turns to Frank. “So where did you get it from Frank?” she asks. “I don’t remember Mr. Willison being a wine merchant.”

 

“Well, that’s because he’s not. This is a bottle of French wine which comes from a chum of mine who runs a little Italian restaurant up the Islington****.” Frank looks at Edith and smiles. “I’ll take you there one day, Edith, for a very special dinner of home-made spaghetti.”

 

“I’d like that, Frank.” Edith beams.

 

“A French wine from an Italian restaurant?” George queries.

 

“Giuseppe, my chum, serves wine from different countries with his meals, and I asked him what might be best to have.” Frank explains. “And he sold me this bottle.”

 

Ada picks up her tumbler of wine, sniffing at its red liquified contents rather suspiciously before taking her first tentative sip. Swallowing the wine, she isn’t quite sure whether she likes it or not as it glides down her throat. She can taste the fruitiness of it, but it is matched by an acidity that surprises her. It doesn’t taste like the blackberry wine she remembers her mother making. “Once again, it’s very thoughtful of you to give us such a… treat.” Returning her tumbler to the table she discreetly pushes it away from her place at the table, hoping that Frank won’t notice or take offence.

 

“Mum has always said that good manners are the hallmark of a gentleman.” Edith adds with a smile and a nod towards er mother, knowing that Frank has made a good impression with her by the simple gesture of a gift.

 

“And so they are.” Ada nods.

 

“Yellow roses are the universal symbol of friendship.” Frank explains. “And I do sincerely hope that we will be friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watsford.” he adds hopefully, the statement rewarded by a kind smile from both of Edith’s parents.

 

“Where did you learn that from, Frank?” Ada asks.

 

“I came across an old book at the Caledonian Markets* Mrs. Watsford, called, ‘Floral Symbolica’** which lists the meaning of ever so many flowers.”

 

“That sounds very fancy.” George remarks. “Floral… floral sym… what?”

 

“Symbolica, Mr. Watsford.” Frank confirms.

 

“Frank’s a big reader, Dad.” Edith announces, attracting her father’s attention to common ground between the two of them.

 

“What else do you read then, Frank?” George asks with interest. “Besides books of flowers, that is.”

 

“I read lots of things, Mr. Watsford.” Frank replies proudly. “Anything to improve my mind.”

 

“Well, I wish you’d help improve Edith’s mind. She seems only to be interested in romance novels.” George teases his daughter cheekily.

 

“That’s not true, Dad!” Edith gasps, taking her father’s bait far too easily. “I read lots of different things, not just romance novels.”

 

“What do you like to read, Sir?” Frank asks helpfully in an effort to save his sweetheart further embarrassment and character assassination at her father’s hands.

 

“I probably don’t read things you’d like, Frank. I prefer to read for escapism. A good story that grabs me is what I like, like those Fu Manchu***** mystery books, or that new female mystery writer. What’s her name?” He clicks his fingers as he tries to recall her name. “Help me, will you Edith. The woman who wrote ‘The Secret Adversary’ and ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’.”

 

“Christie.” Frank pipes up.

 

“That’s it!” George sighs with relief. “Agatha Christie******. Thank you Frank. Do you read her books too?”

 

“No, I’m afraid I’m not much of a mystery reader myself, Mr. Watsford.”

 

“No, you don’t strike me as a murder mystery type, Frank.” George muses as he eyes the serious young man in his Sunday best suit up and down. “You seem to be a more studious type.” He shrugs. “Pity, she writes ripping good yarns.”

 

“And you’re a delivery lad I believe?” Ada asks, turning the subject more towards knowing more about Frank’s prospects as a potential suitor for her daughter.

 

“That’s right, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies proudly, sitting a little straighter in his seat at the table. “I work for Willison’s the Grocers in Mayfair, and I do deliveries around the neighbourhood.”

 

“But he’s doing more than just deliveries now, Dad.” Edith pipes up a little anxiously, seeing the creases in her father’s serious face.

 

“Yes!” Frank adds. “Mr. Willison has taken me under his wing so to speak and is teaching me about displaying goods in the window and the like.”

 

“It’s called visual merchandising.” Edith explains.

 

“Is it now?” Ada remarks, pursing her lips in distrust and raising her eyebrows. “Such fancy words. Our Edith is always coming home with fancy words from your neck of the woods these days.”

 

“Good for you, Lad!” George booms. “Mrs. Watsford here,” He glances beyond the bunch of yellow roses at his wife. “Is perhaps a little less at ease with the idea of bettering yourself than Edith and I are.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that, George.” Ada defends herself. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with a young man improving his lots in life.”

 

“But?” George asks, picking up on the silent second half of his wife’s statement.

 

“But I think that there is such a thing as aspiring too high. There is a class structure that has done us well for time long before I was born.”

 

“For some of us, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank pipes up.

 

Edith’s eyes grow wide as she realises that the conversation over Sunday luncheon is suddenly careening swiftly towards a topic that Frank feels very passionately about, but also one that rattles her mother. She worries that Frank’s enthusiasm might not be so well received by either of her parents. However, even as she thinks these thoughts, it is already too late as Frank opens his mouth and continues.

 

“Now is the time for the working man, and working woman too, to rise up and be better than the lot in life we’ve been dealt, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

Edith watches the almost imperceptible shifts in her mother’s features as they steels and harden.

 

“You may be happy with your place in life, but I for one want to do better. I don’t want to be a grocer’s boy forever. I want to do better, so that I can afford to give Edith a good home.”

 

“Do you plan to own your own grocer’s, lad?” George asks with an air of impossibility.

 

“Maybe, Mr. Watsford. I don’t see why I shouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t try. I have a lot of dreams you see, and ideas for the future.”

 

Ada takes a mouthful of ham, swallowing stiffly as she answers, “Yes, I’ve heard a great deal about your ideas from Edith, Frank.”

 

“I can assure you, Mrs. Watsford, that I am not a Communist.” Frank defends himself, having heard from Edith about her mother’s concerns. “I just want a better world for Edith, for me, for my children.”

 

“And that’s admirable, Frank.” Ada counters. “And I don’t disagree with you. Aspiring to a better life is good. I just think a little less radically than you do, and you’ll forgive me for saying this, but as a person who has had more years on this earth than you have, Frank, I don’t think my opinions are less valid, in spite of their lack of ambition for change.”

 

An uncomfortable silence falls over the table.

 

“Oh I’m sorry, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank says after a moment, dabbing the edge of is mouth with his napkin. “I didn’t mean to cause any offence. Edith tells me that when I get passionate about something, I talk before I think. I apologise for shooting off my mouth.”

 

“That’s alright lad.” George replies soothingly, covering over his wife’s stony silence. “It’s good to feel strongly and want change: a better future for yourself. Ada and I,” He places his bigger hand comfortingly and in a sign of solidarity over his wife’s as she still holds her fork, resting her wrist on the table. “Well, you’ll probably laugh at our old fashioned ideas, but we’ve made positive changes for ourselves and our children in our own, more quiet ways.”

 

“Sorry Mr. Watsford.” Frank sighs. “It’s not the first time my mouth has gotten me in trouble.”

 

“It’s alright, Frank.” Ada says quietly, releasing the handle of her fork and entwining her fingers with those of her husband. “I like you, in spite of the fact that you and I may not entirely agree with the way the world should be or how we go about making it a better place, but I just can’t help worrying about our Edith being with you and your revolutionary ideas.”

 

“Mum!” Edith gasps, raining her hands to her mouth.

 

“I’m sorry, Edith,” Ada says. “But I have to say my peace. I do worry about you. As a mother you do worry, about all your children.”

 

“I promise you that I won’t ever put Edith in harm’s way, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank swears earnestly.

 

“Not intentionally, I know, Frank, but what about unintentionally?” Ada says. “You’re a good lad, and I can see that by your thoughtfulness and your manners. You obviously treat Edith very well. However, the vehemence with which you spurn your new ideas around is frightening to me.” She looks at Edith seriously and continues earnestly. “You’re of age now, Edith love, and I can’t stop you from stepping out with Frank here. You can make your own decisions as to whether he is the right young man for you.”

 

“Oh he is, Mum! I promise you!” Edith pipes up, looking deep into her mother’s serious face.

 

“I suppose I’m just a bit like your granny was with our Edith, Frank. I need to get accustomed to you.” She looks at the plump yellow rose blooms. “George and I accept your offer of friendship, and we hope that you won’t feel too awkward after today to join us for Sunday tea again.”

 

“Oh I assure you Mrs. Watsford, I’d be delighted.”

 

“Good. But in extending the warm hand of friendship, I’d be obliged if you would perhaps temper your more modern and revolutionary ideas, whilst I get used to you, Frank.”

 

All four diners spend a few minutes quietly eating their dinner, with only the scrape of cutlery against crockery to break the silence.

 

As Edith chews her mouthful of boiled potato, she finds it hard to swallow, and when she finally does, she feels it slide down her throat and land heavily in the pit of her stomach. She glances across at Frank to her right, but he doesn’t look up from his plate as he puts a sliver of orange roast pumpkin in his mouth. She had warned Frank to try and curtail his passionate ideas before her parents, but realises now that to ask him to do so is to deny him one of the most important things in his life. She worries whether Frank and her mother will ever see eye-to-eye on things.

 

“So, enough about changing the world,” George says at length, breaking the silence. “What football team do you support then, young Frank?”

 

Edith smiles gratefully at her father, who winks at her over the rim of his glass as she takes a swig of ale.

 

“West Ham United, Sir.” Frank says proudly.

 

“Good lad!” George chortles. “See, he’s not all bad, Ada!”

 

“You must be as excited as me about West Ham playing Bolton at the inaugural Empire Stadium******* match that’s coming up then, Mr. Watsford.” Frank says, also smiling gratefully at George for being the peacemaker and easing the tension in the room.

 

“Oh we all are, lad!” agrees George. “Would that I could get tickets for the match, but being the opening of the stadium, tickets are hard to come by.”

 

“If they finish it in time.” Frank remarks. “There isn’t long to go now, and yet from what I’ve read, it’s nowhere near done yet.”

 

“Now, now, lad!” George admonishes Frank good naturedly, wagging his fork with a speared piece of cauliflower on it. “Have a bit of faith in British construction. That stadium is going to be the centrepiece of the British Empire Exhibition. No full blooded British man is going to let the Empire down by not competing it.”

 

“Yes, you’re quite right, Sir.” Frank agrees.

 

As the mood at the table lifts and shifts a little, Edith is suddenly heartened by the possibility that maybe Frank might win approval from both her parents in the end, if Frank can win her father over. Her father’s opinion matters a great deal to her mother. She slices her knife through another boiled potato on her plate and sighs quietly, knowing that whilst this first meeting of Frank and her parents was not all that she had hoped for, all is not lost and some bridges have been built.

 

*The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

**’Floral Symbolica; or, The Language and Sentiment of Flowers’ is a book written by John Ingram, published in London in 1870 by Frederick Warne and Co. who are perhaps best known for publishing the books of Beatrix Potter. ‘Flora Symbolica; or, The language and Sentiment of Flowers includes meanings of many species of flowers, both domestic and exotic, as well as floral poetry, original and selected. It contains a colour frontispiece and fifteen colour plates, printed in colours by Terry. John Henry Ingram (November the 16th, 1842 – February the 12th, 1916) was an English biographer and editor with a special interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Ingram was born at 29 City Road, Finsbury Square, Middlesex, and died at Brighton, England. His family lived at Stoke Newington, recollections of which appear in Poe's works. J. H. Ingram dedicated himself to the resurrection of Poe's reputation, maligned by the dubious memoirs of Rufus Wilmot Griswold; he published the first reliable biography of the author and a four-volume collection of his works.

 

***A demijohn originally referred to any glass vessel with a large body and small neck, enclosed in wickerwork. The word presumably comes from the French dame-jeanne, literally "Lady Jane", as a popular appellation; this word is first attested in France in the Seventeenth century. Demijohns are primarily used for transporting liquids, often water or chemicals. They are also used for in-home fermentation of beverages, often beer or wine.

 

****The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.

 

*****’The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu’ was a 1913 novel by prolific writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward under the non-deplume Sax Rohmer that portrayed Chinese as opium fiends, thugs, murders and villains. His supervillain Fu-Manchu proved so popular that he wrote a whole series of sequels featuring the odious character between 1914 ad 1917 and then again from 1933 until 1959. The image of "Orientals" invading Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer's commercial success, being able to sell twenty million copies of his books in his lifetime.

 

******By 1923 when this story is set, detective mystery fiction writer Agatha Christie had already written two successful novels, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ published by The Bodley Head in 1921, which introduced the world to her fictional detective Hercule Poirot, and ‘The Secret Adversary’ also published by The Bodley Head, in 1922, which introduced characters Tommy and Tuppence. In May of 1923, Agatha Christie would release her second novel featuring Hercule Poirot: ‘The Murder on the Links’ which would retail in London bookshops for seven shillings and sixpence.

 

*******Originally known as Empire Stadium, London’s Wembley Stadium was built to serve as the centerpiece of the British Empire Exhibition. It took a total of three hundred days to construct the stadium at a cost of £750,000. The stadium was completed on the 23rd of April 1923, only a few days before the first football match, between the Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, was to take place at the stadium. This first match was the 1923 FA Cup final, which later became known as the White Horse final. The stadium's first turf was cut by King George V, and it was first opened to the public on 28 April 1923. Much of Humphry Repton's original Wembley Park landscape was transformed in 1922 and 1923 during preparations for the British Empire Exhibition. First known as the "British Empire Exhibition Stadium" or simply the "Empire Stadium", it was built by Sir Robert McAlpine for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 (extended to 1925).

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On the table the roast ham dinner that really does look good enough to eat is made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The gravy boat of gravy is also Frances Knight’s work. The knife sitting alongside the ham comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue and white crockery on the table I have bought as individual from several online sellers on E-Bay. I imagine that whole sets were once sold, but now I can only find them piecemeal. The cutlery and the glasses (which are made from real glass) I bought as a teenager from a high street dollhouse suppliers. The pottery ale jug comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in England. The glass of ale comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The salt and pepper shakers come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The 1:12 artisan bottle of Bordeaux, made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, is made from glass and the winery on the label is a real winery in France. The vase of yellow roses came from a 1:12 miniatures stockist on E-Bay. The tablecloth is actually a piece of an old worn sheet that was destined for the dustbin.

  

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and a jar of S.P.C. peaches. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, except the jar of S.P.C. peaches which comes from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All of them have great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

S.P.C. is an Australian brand that still exists to this day. In 1917 a group of fruit growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley decided to form a cooperative which they named the Shepperton Fruit Preserving Company. The company began operations in February 1918, canning pears, peaches and nectarines under the brand name of S.P.C. On the 31st of January 1918 the manager of the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company announced that canning would begin on the following Tuesday and that the operation would require one hundred and fifty girls or women and thirty men. In the wake of the Great War, it was hoped that “the launch of this new industry must revive drooping energies” and improve the economic circumstances of the region. The company began to pay annual bonuses to grower-shareholders by 1929, and the plant was updated and expanded. The success of S.P.C. was inextricably linked with the progress of the town and the wider Goulburn Valley region. In 1936 the company packed twelve million cans and was the largest fruit cannery in the British empire. Through the Second World War the company boomed. The product range was expanded to include additional fruits, jam, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and production reached more than forty-three million cans a year in the 1970s. From financial difficulties caused by the 1980s recession, SPC returned once more to profitability, merging with Ardmona and buying rival company Henry Jones IXL. S.P.C. was acquired by Coca Cola Amatil in 2005 and in 2019 sold to a private equity group known as Shepparton Partners Collective.

 

Also on the dresser on the pull out drawer is a cherry tart made by Frances Knight. Next to it stands a cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

Wickham Place is the London home of Lord and Lady Southgate, their children and staff. Located in fashionable Belgravia it is a fine Georgian terrace house.

 

Today we are below stairs in the Wickham Place kitchen. At the sink, the scullery maid Agnes scrubs the copper pots used for the preparation of upstairs luncheon with a mixture of sand and soap. Mrs. Bradley, known by most downstairs staff as Cook, is occasionally filled with a momentarily maternal instinct for her poor, bedraggled scullery maid. Watching the poor girl with her brown curls coming loose from beneath her cap, huffing and puffing away as she scrubs, creates such a burst of emotion within her breast.

 

“Agnes. Agnes.”

 

“Yes Mrs. Bradley.”

 

“I think you’ve earned the right for a quick cooking lesson.”

 

“Oh! Oh really Mrs. Bradley!”

 

“Yes Agnes. Now, wash and dry your hands with some of that Sunlight. Make sure you scrub under your nails, girl! And then come and join me at the table. Clean hands are essential for a good cook, and we all know that cleanliness is next to godliness!”

 

Cook takes out some butter, milk and a bowl of eggs from the food safe. Going to her big heavy dark wood dresser she withdraws her Cornishware canister of sugar, some flour nutmeg and salt. She also brings over a fluted flan.

 

“Cor Mrs. Bradley! Are you going to show me how to make your famous soufflé?”

 

“Do you take me for fool Agnes?” She looks incredulously at her scullery maid, who sighs and lowers her shoulders at the rebuke. “You need to learn the basics of plain cooking girl, before I can teach you anything fancy. No! We’re going to make a good, plain, custard tart for Nanny and the children. I’m going to make the pastry, and you can make the custard. Now, do you think you can you break three eggs into that bowl there in front of you?”

 

“Oh yes Mrs. Bradley!”

 

Moments later Agnes is happily and purposefully breaking eggs against the edge of the bowl. Suddenly there is a crack and a plop. Cook looks up from making pastry to see that Agnes has accidently dropped an egg onto the deal tabletop where it has cracked open, the white oozing across the table’s surface. Agnes looks anxiously at Cook and before the older woman can speak, the poor scullery maid starts to cry.

 

“Oh heavens Agnes!” Cook exclaims, dusting off her floured hands on her apron.

 

“Sorry Mrs. Bradly,” Agnes sobs.

 

“Now girl! There’s no need for tears! No use crying over spilt milk, or a broken egg for that matter.” She smiles reassuring across at Agnes. “If I cried every time I dropped an egg, why, the road outside would be running with my tears!”

 

“It would, Mrs. Bradley?”

 

“Yes, girl! Now quick! Go fetch a cloth and clean that up, and then keep going.”

 

The Wickham Place kitchens are situated on the ground floor of Wickham Place, adjoining the Butler’s Pantry. It is dominated by big black leaded range, and next to it stands a heavy dark wood dresser that has been there for as long as anyone can remember. There is a white enamelled sink to one side with deep cupboards to house the necessary cleaning agents the scullery maid needs to keep the kitchen clean for the cook. In the middle of the kitchen stands Cook’s preserve, the pine deal table on which she does most of her preparation for both the meals served to the family upstairs and those for the downstairs staff.

 

The theme for the 14th of August “Looking Close… on Friday” is “eggs”. This tableaux is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood like the ladderback chair and the milk jug. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The eggs, including the broken egg are all 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail.

 

On Cook’s deal table is a Cornishware white and blue striped bowl which holds the eggs and also one of her Cornishware cannisters. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.

 

Next to the Cornishware cannister stands a miniature Blue Calico milk jug. Traditional dark blue Burleigh Calico made in Staffordshire, England by Burgess & Leigh since 1851. It was inspired by Nineteenth Century indigo fabrics. Blue Calico is still made today, and still uses the traditional print transfer process, which makes each piece unique.

 

On the other side of the Cornishware cannister stands a bag of Dry Fork Four. The Dry Fork Milling Company was based in Dry Fork Virginia. They were well known for producing cornmeal. They were still producing cornmeal and flour into the 1950s. Today, part of the old mill buildings are used as a reception centre.

 

The sink in the background is littered with interesting items. On the left stands an old fashioned draining board which could be removed so that the space could then be used for other purposes. It is stacked with copper pots and a silver metal muffin tray. Near the taps is a box of Sunlight soap and a can of Vim, both cleaning essentials in any Edwardian household. Vim scouring powder was created by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme) and introduced to the market in 1904. It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight. Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884.

 

To the left of the sink is the food safe with a birchwood broom leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvanized wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.

Strawberries

Gerade gepflückt

My husband knows how to cook.

I love it.

  

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is staying with her parents for Christmas. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. What is especially exciting is that Edith's brother, Bert is home for Christmas too. He is a dining saloon steward aboard a passenger ship, so he is lucky to be on shore leave just in time of Christmas!

 

The kitchen has always been the heart of Edith’s family home, and today it has a particularly festive feel about it is Christmas Day and Christmas dinner is about to be served. Strings of brightly coloured paper chains have been strung around the room, draped over the old Welsh dresser, across the mantle of the kitchen range and across the room from corner to corner, hanging in jolly festoons. Ada had pulled out one of her best table cloths with an orange rose pattern on it which now adorns the round kitchen table, hiding its worn surface and the best blue and white china dinner service is being used today. Ada has even conceded to Edith’s constant reminders that she promised to use the pretty Price Washington ‘Ye Old Cottage’ teapot that Edith bought her from the Caledonian Markets* a few months ago because she and her brother Bert are both home for Christmas.

 

The kitchen is filled with the rich smells of Christmas: turkey and potatoes roasting and Yorkshire puddings baking in the oven, gravy warming over the grate and the faint fruity aroma of Ada’s Christmas cake as it sits waiting to be served for dessert on the dresser’s pull out extension.

 

“Bert love,” Ada calls to her son as she stirs the pan of gravy made with juices from the turkey mixed with Bisto Gravy Powder**. “Be a treasure and set the table would you?”

 

“Right-oh Mum!” Edith’s brother pipes up as he rises from his seat on a ladderback chair pulled up to the table where he has been admiring the fabric of his new cobalt blue tie, a Christmas gift from Edith. “First Class Steward Watsford of the SS Demosthenes*** is always ready to assist.”

 

“Thanks love.” Ada replies gratefully as she pushes a few stubborn strands of hair that keep falling loose into her face, back behind her right ear.

 

“It’s just like being at sea, isn’t it, son?” George chuckles good naturedly from his comfortable seat in his Windsor chair where he reads the newspaper and sips a cup of tea.

 

“Better watch out George Watsford, lest I give you a job ‘n all.” Ada warns her husband teasingly as she smiles over at him and winks.

 

“What? I’ve done my job by getting you the best Christmas turkey money can buy from Mr. Ludlow’s butcher’s shop.” he splutters. “Anyway, I can’t do anything dressed in my best bib and tucker****, now can I Ada? I’ll only spoil all your good washing and pressing.”

 

“It won’t stop me giving you one if you stir up trouble for me.” She wags her wooden spoon coated in thick brown gravy warningly at him.

 

“You’re in trouble now, Dad,” Edith laughs as she goes to open the small bread oven of the range. “Mum’s waving her spoon at you.”

 

“No Edith!” Ada gasps. “Don’t open the door yet! All the hot air will come out and the Yorkshire puds will go flat! Didn’t I teach you anything?”

 

“Oh you did, Mum, but I was just going to take a peek at them. Otherwise, how will we know they’re done.”

 

“Even a peek will make them go flat. No, I’ll know when they're ready love. I’ve been using this range,” Ada gently pats the mantle over the range like a faithful dog. “Ever since I married your Dad. It took me a while to learn its ways, but we understand each other now. Don't we old girl? Here, you want to help me, love?”

 

Edith nods.

 

“Then stir the gravy so it doesn’t burn whilst I check on the turkey.” Ada replies.

 

Edith dutifully takes over stirring the pan with the wooden spoon.

 

“Thanks again for my tie, old girl!” Bert says to his sister as he sets out the last of the blue and white dinner plates featuring a central flower on each. “It’s spiffing.”

 

“Oh you’re welcome, Bert.” Edith replies, turning around and smiling at her brother. “Now you’re moving up the ranks, you need to look smart when you’re off duty as well as on.”

 

“Don’t know how you could afford something as smart as this for me.”

 

“Well, Miss Lettice pays me a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, and living so centrally in London, I have access to lots of places to find you presents.”

 

“Petticoat Lane*****?” Ada asks in a quiet whisper as she rises from being bent over the oven.

 

Edith nods.

 

“Oh that reminds me Bert, I’ll have to show you the present that Miss Lettice gave me for Christmas after dinner.”

 

“She spoils you, Edith.” Ada remarks. “Dinner,” she says in a posh voice. “Tea is what we call it, my girl.” she corrects. “All these fancy words have no place in my kitchen.”

 

“Oh Ada!” George counters, looking sharply at his wife over the top of his newspaper. “If Edith learns new, more refined words to describe something, there isn’t anything wrong with that.” He gives his blushing daughter a beatific smile. “Betterment is good for the girl, especially if she wants to get on in the world.”

 

“Well tea was always a good enough word to describe our meal as far as I’m concerned.” Ada replies huffily.

 

“Now, now Ada!” George folds his paper and drapes it over the arm of his chair. Heaving his portly figure out of his well worn chair he walks over to his wife and wraps his arms around her shoulders. “What’s gotten into you today? Where's your Christmas spirit? Christmas is always a jolly time for us Watsfords, not a time for bickering about words.”

 

“Oh I’m sorry, George,” Ada replies, sinking into the comforting embrace of her husband. “I suppose I’ve been running myself ragged getting everything nice for Christmas over the last few days.” She looks at her daughter, who quickly casts her eyes down at the pot of gravy she is stirring. “I’m sorry, Edith love,” she apologies. “I’m not really cross with you. I’m just tired and a bit snappy.”

 

“It’s alright Mum,” Edith replies. “I know.”

 

“I’m happy you’re learning new words.” Ada continues, but then adds, “I just don’t want you getting above your station. One day you’ll leave Miss Chetwynd, and I just don’t want you spoiled for your next mistress. You know not everyone’s generous like she is.”

 

“I know Mum, and I promise I’m not getting above my station. I’m just proud of what she gave me is all, and I want to show it to Bert.”

 

“Of course you do, love.” Ada puts a comforting hand on Edith’s shoulder. “And why not indeed. It’s beautiful, and you’re very lucky to have it. Show it off, love.”

 

“Goodness Edith,” Bert exclaims. “What did she give you?”

 

“It’s a dressing table set from Boots******, made of Bakelite*******.” Edith enthuses. “There’s a brush and comb and mirror and…” She stops herself quickly before she mentions the photograph frame which she has left sitting on the chest of drawers in her little bedroom at the Cavendish Mews flat with her fallen sweetheart Bert’s picture in it. “And… and I just love it!”

 

“That does sound fancy, Edith!” Bert says in an impressed tone. “Makes my box of Australian Fruit Biscuits look shabby in comparison.”

 

“Shabby?” Edith exclaims. “Don’t say that, Bert! I love my Christmas present from you!” she assures him. “I can practically feel the Australian sunshine you talked about radiating from that tin. I’ve never had anything from so far away before! They are exotic, Bert.”

 

“That table set, Bert?” Ada asks.

 

“Table set, shipshape and Bristol fashion********, Mum.” Bert replies proudly.

 

“Good! Then its time to serve up Christmas tea! Edith, pour that gravy into the jug and take out the potatoes. I’ll put out the turkey and the Yorkshire puds. George, you fetch the ale.”

 

“Now that’s a job I can do in my best bib and tucker.” George laughs.

 

Soon the table is covered in Ada’s splendid Christmas dinner: a tray of steaming golden roast potatoes, beautifully risen Yorkshire puddings, a pot of green brussels sprouts and a bowl of peas and carrots. However most impressive of all is the golden brown turkey, glistening in the gaslight of the kitchen, steam rising from its perfectly cooked flesh. The family take their places about the table and George fills everyone’s glass with thick, dark ale.

 

“Goodness Dad!” Bert gasps as he looks at all the delicious food. “How could you afford such a fine turkey? Did you cut a deal using broken biscuits with Mr. Ludlow?”

 

“Cheeky!” George replies with a smile, getting up from his seat and holding his tumber aloft. “I’d like you all to raise your glasses, please.”

 

“Who are we toasting, Dad?” Edith asks. “The King?”

 

“Well, we can toast good King George in a moment, but first I’d like to raise a toast to McVitie and Price’s********* newest Line Manager!”

 

“Oh George!” Ada gasps, jumping up from her seat and throwing her arms around her husband in delight. “You kept mum on that bit of news!”

 

“Congratulations Dad!” Edith says, standing and charging her glass.

 

“Yes! Congratulations Dad!” Bert follows, raising his own glass. “That’s spiffing news!”

 

“And that’s how I could afford such a fine turkey, son.” George replies proudly. “Now, let’s eat!”

 

“Merry Christmas everyone.” Edith says, sitting back down with a smile.

 

“A merry Christmas indeed!” agrees Ada as she returns to her seat. “The best Christmas the Watsford family have ever had I’d say, with you two children home and your Dad’s news!”

 

*The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

**The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.

 

***The SS Demosthenes was a British steam ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship which ran scheduled services between London and Australia via Cape Town. It stopped at ports including those in Sydney and Melbourne. She was launched in 1911 in Ireland for the Aberdeen Line and scrapped in 1931 in England. In the First World War she was an Allied troop ship.

 

****The phrase “best bib and tucker”, which means one’s best clothes, emerged during the first half of the eighteenth century. It was used in New Memoires Establishing a True Knowledge of Mankind by Marquis d'Argens, published in 1747. It goes, “The Country-woman minds nothing on Sundays so much as her best Bib and Tucker.”

 

*****Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

******Boots the chemist was established in 1849, by John Boot. After his father's death in 1860, Jesse Boot, aged 10, helped his mother run the family's herbal medicine shop in Nottingham, which was incorporated as Boot and Co. Ltd in 1883, becoming Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd in 1888. In 1920, Jesse Boot sold the company to the American United Drug Company. However, because of deteriorating economic circumstances in North America Boots was sold back into British hands in 1933. The grandson of the founder, John Boot, who inherited the title Baron Trent from his father, headed the company. The Boots Pure Drug Company name was changed to The Boots Company Limited in 1971. Between 1898 and 1966, many branches of Boots incorporated a lending library department, known as Boots Book-Lovers' Library.

 

*******Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

********The saying “shipshape and Bristol fashion” means things are in good order, neat and clean.

 

*********McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful Christmas scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On the table the Christmas dinner that really does look good enough to eat is made up of pieces from different suppliers and artisans. The Christmas turkey and the bowl of peas and carrots come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in Essex. The knife sticking out of the turkey comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. The tray of potatoes in the foreground and the six Yorkshire puddings in the midground have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The gravy boat of gravy is also Frances Knight’s work. The blue and white crockery on the table I have bought as individual from several online sellers on E-Bay. I imagine that whole sets were once sold, but now I can only find them piecemeal. The cutlery and the glasses (which are made from real glass) I bought as a teenager from a high street dollhouse suppliers. The pottery ale jug comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in England. The tablecloth is actually a piece of bright cotton print that was tied around the lid of a jar of home made peach and rhubarb jam that I was given a few years ago.

 

The paper chains festooning Ada’s kitchen I made myself using very thinly cut paper. It was a fiddly job to do, but I think it adds festive cheer and realism to this scene, as fancy Christmas decorations would have been beyond the budget of Edith’s parents, and homemade paper chains were common in households before the advent of cheap mass manufactured Christmas decorations.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the Essex. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are jars of Marmite and Bovril. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans. Also on the dresser on the pull out drawer is a Christmas cake from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. Also from them is the cranberry glass cake stand, made of real glass, on which the cake sits. Next to it stands a cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we have headed a short distance north-east across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, over Paddington and past Lisson Grove to the comfortably affluent suburb of Little Venice with its cream painted Regency terraces and railing surrounded public parks. Here in Clifton Gardens Lettice’s maiden Aunt Eglantine, affectionately known as Aunt Egg by her nieces and nephews, lives in a beautiful four storey house that is part of a terrace of twelve. Eglantine Chetwynd is Viscount Wrexham’s younger sister, and as well as being unmarried, is an artist and ceramicist of some acclaim. Originally a member of the Pre-Raphaelites* in England, these days she flits through artistic and bohemian circles and when not at home in her spacious and light filled studio at the rear of her garden, can be found mixing with mostly younger artistic friends in Chelsea. Her unmarried status, outlandish choice of friends and rather reformist and unusual dress sense shocks Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, and attracts her derision. In addition, she draws Sadie’s ire, as Aunt Egg has always received far more affection and preferential treatment from her children. Viscount Wrexham on the other hand adores his artistic little sister, and has always made sure that she can live the lifestyle she chooses and create art.

 

As Lettice pulls the well worn brass hand that triggers the doorbell next to the brightly painted red front door, she stands beneath the columned portico of her aunt’s house and admires the terracotta pots of brightly coloured tulips that flank the front doorstep, which make her terrace stand out from all the others in the row. A faint female voice with a Germanic accent calls from within before the door is answered by Augusta, Eglantine’s Swiss head parlour maid, dressed in her formal black uniform with a white lace trimmed apron and with a large black bow in her hair.

 

“Good morning, Augusta,” Lettice greets her brightly. “Is my Aunt home?”

 

“Good morning, Fräulein Chetwynd.” Augusta answers politely. “Please do come in. Ya, your Tante is in ze studio.”

 

Lettice steps across the threshold of her aunt’s terrace and is immediately enveloped in the rich mixture of exotic scents that she has always associated with the artist: a blend of heavy floral perfumes, cigarette smoke and oil paint. She sighs as she inhales the welcome smell and shirks off her dark blue coat with a mink collar into Augusta’s waiting hands. “Don’t bother to introduce me, Augusta. I’ll just show myself through to the studio.” she says.

 

“Ya! Ya!” the parlour maid enthuses as she watches Lettice disappear down the hall, which like the rest of the house, is filled with ornate, yet artistic, furnishings, paintings and a general jumble of clutter which keep her and the three maids under her very busy cleaning and dusting all year round.

 

“Aunt Egg! Yoo-hoo, Aunt Egg!” Lettice calls as she approaches the ivy covered studio at the rear of the rambling cottage garden filled with a hotchpotch of brightly coloured spring blooms.

 

She pushes down on the latch and opens the door to the studio, the familiar earthy smell of potter’s clay, oil paint and linseed oil greeting her as she does. The studio is flooded with light thanks to a large, almost full length window of plate glass that fills the northern wall. The space is filled with benches and shelves cluttered with everything from pieces of ceramics in different stages of completion to canvases to books on art. A sink stands at the rear of the studio with a row of fine Royal Doulton Art Nouveau tiles of white irises above it. An easel leans, unused against a bench next to it. And sitting at the large wooden table covered in a panoply of paints, brushes and ceramics that dominates the middle of the studio, is her beloved Aunt Egg.

 

“Well,” the older woman beams as she looks up from the pottery jug she is painting. “If it isn’t my favourite niece.”

 

“I’m sure you say that to Lally and all our female cousins.” Lettice replies as she walks over to her aunt’s seated figure and kisses her first on one proffered cheek and then the other.

 

“Well, you’ll never know, will you my dear,” the older woman answers with a cheeky smile and alert green eyes. “I like to keep you all guessing who will inherit my jewels when I die.”

 

“Oh Aunt Egg!” Lettice scoffs. “You mustn’t talk like that.”

 

“We all of us are going to die one day, Lettice. Anyway, you are probably the most like me out of all of you girls, with your artistic attributes, so why shouldn’t you be my favourite?”

 

Lettice pulls up a small stool and sits opposite her aunt. When she was young, Eglantine had Titian red hair that fell in wavy tresses about her pale face, making her a popular muse amongst the Pre-Raphaelites she mixed with. With the passing years, her red hair has retreated almost entirely behind silver grey, save for the occasional streak of washed out reddish orange, yet she still wears it as she did when it was at its fiery best, sweeping softly about her almond shaped face, tied in a loose chignon at the back of her neck. Large emerald coloured glass droplets hang from her ears that match the green glass necklace about her neck that cascades over the top of her white paint splattered dust coat. Lettice doesn’t need to see beneath it to know that her aunt is wearing her usual uniform of a lose Delphos dress** that does not require her to wear a corset of any kind, and a silk fringed cardigan of some description, both in beautiful colours.

 

“I hope Augusta brings us some tea soon,” Eglantine remarks as she focuses her attention once again on the task at hand a she paints a long green frond onto the jug with her adept hands, heavily bejewelled with an array of sparkling stones and gold.

 

“Shall I go and ask her, Aunt Egg?”

 

“No, no.” Eglantine says with a settling wave, her paint brush held in place by her interwoven fingers. “She’s been serving me for nigh on thirty years now. She knows when to serve tea.”

 

“What are you doing, Aunt Egg?” Lettice asks as she stares at her aunt’s delicate hands as they move up and down the bulbous body of the jug.

 

“I’m painting the ceiling, my dear,” she replies sarcastically without so much as a blink in her lowered eyelids. “Must you ask such obvious questions?”

 

“I’m sorry, Aunt Egg,” Lettice apologises, remembering that however much her aunt loves her, she cannot abide dull conversation and obvious questions, owing to the amount of time she spends with interesting and witty people. “I meant, what is the purpose of the jug you are painting? Where is it going?”

 

“Then that is what you should ask, Lettice.” Eglantine chides mildly, still not lifting her eyes from her task. “You will never succeed in business if you whitter away like most women do. Be clear, polite, and direct. Ask what you want to know without fear.”

 

“Yes, Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies, suitably chastened.

 

“Its not for anyone, yet. I’ve been inspired by the painted pottery of Capula*** in Mexico, and I also saw some of Carrington’s**** pottery recently. When I was visiting the Slade*****. I’m exploring the naïve style of folk art. What do you think?”

 

“I think it looks very beautiful Aunt Egg.”

 

“And how go your artistic pursuits, Lettice my dear?” Eglantine adeptly mixes a little more white paint into a pool of the gleaming dark green she shas been using and applies a thin line up the leaf’s middle to highlight a stem.

 

“My artistic pursuits?”

 

“Yes! How is the interior design business going?”

 

“I’d hardly call my business an ‘artistic pursuit’ Aunt Egg.” Lettice laughs.

 

“Nonsense my dear! Your interiors are just as artistic as my ceramics. It’s just your canvas is much bigger than mine, and involves many different facets.”

 

“Well, if you ask Mater, she’d say dreadfully.”

 

“Ahh,” the older woman sighs as she paints faint spiderweb thin veins coming off the stem of her leaf. “But I’m not asking Sadie, thank goodness. I’m asking you, Lettice. However, if Sadie says it’s not going well, that must mean business is flourishing. Is it?”

 

“It’s going swimmingly, Aunt Egg!” Lettice gushes. “I don’t need Mater to introduce me to people like the Duchess of Whitby anymore. I’m finally starting to develop a name for myself.”

 

“Good! Good!” replies Eglantine. “I’m pleased to hear it.” She dips her brush in the lighter coloured green again. “I’m not surprised of course. You’re very talented. However, I’m glad to hear it from your own lips. Too many people with talent are neglected, whilst ones with no talent get the recognition they don’t deserve.”

 

“I’m sure they wouldn’t agree, Aunt Egg. After all, weren’t you the one to teach me that art appreciation is a subjective thing?”

 

“Very good Lettice.” She looks up from her work and smiles broadly at her niece, her eyes gleaming with pride. “I’m glad to see all those afternoons at the Slade and Omega Workshops****** weren’t wasted, or smothered by your mother’s lack of imagination.” She looks back down and begins to work again, the concentration etched in the furrows that line her forehead. “So, it’s going well then?”

 

“Oh yes! I’m actually in the process of designing a few rooms for Margot Channon.”

 

“Ahh yes!” Eglantine gasps. “Little Margot de Virre finally grew up and got married, to the Marquess of Taunton’s son.”

 

“Yes, Dickie Channon.”

 

“Poor dear. No doubt a match made by her own meddling mother.”

 

“You have a very poor opinion of marriage, Aunt Egg.” Lettice opines.

 

“Well, as you can see, my dear, I’ve never needed the institution of matrimony myself to feel fulfilled.”

 

“Oh, but Margot and Dickie are in love, Aunt Egg. They met, well through me really, at the Embassy Club. Mrs. de Virre had no hand in their matrimony.”

 

“Oh well. I suppose that’s alright then. I read about their wedding in The Times. St. Mark’s******* wasn’t it?” She waits for Lettice to affirm with a nod. “And I saw that Gerald Bruton designed her gown. I’m pleased to see that he developed some independence like you, and that he’s making something of himself too.” She pauses before continuing. “I don’t object to people marrying for love: another point, one of many, about which Sadie and I will never agree. Which is why I refused to come to the Hunt Ball this year, knowing it was intended as a marriage market for you, my dear.” She pauses and puts down her brush onto her palette, thickly coated in layers of dried oils and reaches out to her niece, clasping her smaller hand in her larger gnarled one, giving Lettice’s a friendly squeeze. “I don’t mind if you marry for love. However, the amalgamation of two great families through the marriage bed, simply for the sake of ‘good breeding’, whatever that is, I find quite repugnant.”

 

“Well, “ Lettice blushes as she casts her eyes down onto her aunt’s hands, where she gazes at her winking jewels in their gold and platinum settings. “I did meet someone, actually. I wouldn’t say that we’re in love, but we’ve agreed to see one another when his next visit to London coincides with me being available. I told Pater and Mater that I wanted to do this my own way, and not have any interference.”

 

“No doubt Sadie was furious about that, and probably blames me for putting such independent ideas into your head”

 

“Were you a fly on the wall of the morning room, Aunt Egg?” chuckles Lettice.

 

The older woman withdraws her hand, picks up her brush and sets to work highlighting the leaf again. “I don’t need to. I know what cloth your mother is cut from. So, who is it, then?”

 

“Selwyn Spencely.”

 

The older woman pauses again and stares off into the distance, out the window, lots in her own thoughts. “Selwyn Spencely. Selwyn Spencely. I vaguely know that name.”

 

“He is the son of the Duke of Walmsford. He used to come to Glynes******** when we were children. He’s only a few years older than me.”

 

“Well, whoever he is, just don’t let him come between you and your design business, will you? As you say, you’ve worked hard to build yourself a name, Lettice. Don’t throw it all away for a marriage not of your making, or a marriage for the wrong reasons.”

 

“I promise, I won’t Aunt Egg.” Lettice assures her aunt.

 

“You’re a lucky girl, Lettice. You have choices in life”

 

“Try telling Mater that.” Lettice replies disparagingly.

 

“Oh pooh Sadie and her blinkered ideas that she infects you and your father with!” Eglantine spits hotly. “You’re an independent woman now you’re of age Lettice. You have a sizable allowance, thanks to your forward-thinking grandfather, which no-one can take from you, and now you have your own money from your business. That’s more than a lot of women have. Don’t waste the advantages you have and whatever you do, be it in love, work or marriage, be true to yourself.”

 

A quiet tapping on the glass panes of the door interrupts the two women. Looking to the entrance, they see Clotilde, the second parlour maid looking hopefully through the glass.

 

“I’ll go.” Lettice says as she leaps up from the stool and hurries over to open the door.

 

“Danke schön, Fräulein Chetwynd.” Clotilde says gratefully as Lettice opens the door, to reveal the girl in her morning print dress and cotton apron carrying what looks like a heavy tray laden with tea things.

 

True to her independent form, when the Great War came and there was much resentment towards people of Germanic heritage in Britain, Eglantine refused to dismiss her three Swiss parlour maids, even though they all spoke German fluently and preferred to speak it in the household. She simply packed herself and her servants off to her brother’s estate of Glynes in Wiltshire, where they could live a sheltered life of safety with her in the disused Glynes Dower House, seeing very few people and not being subjected to bigotry. In spite of her immense dislike of her sister-in-law, whom she inevitably crossed paths with when she went up to the estate’s Big House, she had a pleasant enough war growing vegetables in the garden to help supplement their diet and assist with the war effort, without having to actually involve herself in the war, being a pacifist. It was also during this time that she had her greatest influence on Lettice, preparing her niece for the more independent life of a women after the war ended.

 

“Bitte schön,” Eglantine replies to Clotilde, standing herself and clearing a space on the crowded work space for the tea tray, a cloud of glowing dust motes filling the air around them as they tumbled through the spring sunbeams pouring through the window of the studio.

 

After Clotilde closes the door behind her and retreats to the house, Lettice and her aunt resume their conversation.

 

“So, you said you were decorating the new Mrs. Channon’s house then, Lettice?” Eglantine picks up the conversation.

 

“Well yes. Lord de Virre and I came up with a plan. Since Margot is used to new things, but their country house in Cornwall is quite old, and poor Dickie hasn’t enough money to pay for refurbishment, Lord de Virre is footing the bill for electrification, new plumbing and for a connection to the telephone exchange. He also suggested that I might redecorate a few of the principal rooms of the house.”

 

“Which rooms?” Eglantine asks, setting out the tea things.

 

“The drawing room, the dining room, their bedroom and what must have been a sunroom, which they want to use for cocktail parties and dancing. Which is why I’ve come to see you, Aunt Egg. I need your advice.”

 

“Advice on what, my dear?” Eglantine pours tea into their cups, to which they both add milk and sugar.

 

“Well, Margot wants all new furnishings, which as you know isn’t my style. I prefer a mixture of old and new. Gerald came up with the perfect solution, which is to paint some of the old pieces and present them in a new style.”

 

“Very clever, Gerald. So how can I be of assistance, Lettice?”

 

“I need to know what sort of paint I should use on wooden furniture. I thought that if anyone would know, you would.”

 

“Ahh, well.” Eglantine starts to stir her tea. “There I can indeed be of assistance. Tell me, do you have any house paint lying around at Cavendish Mews?”

 

Aunt and nice sit together over the tea at the bench and discuss priming wood, coats of paint and varnish, all the while bathed in beautiful sunlight as the disturbed dust motes continue to play around them, dancing and swirling in the sunbeams that pour through the window of the studio.

 

*The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" modelled in part on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse. The group sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art. They rejected what they regarded as the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. The Brotherhood believed the classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite".

  

**The Delphos gown is a finely pleated silk dress first created in about 1907 by French designer Henriette Negrin and her husband, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. They produced the gowns until about 1950. It was inspired by, and named after, a classical Greek statue, the Charioteer of Delphi. It was championed by more artistic women who did not wish to conform to society’s constraints and wear a tightly fitting corset.

 

***Capula is a small village in Mexico in Michoacan state with a pre-Hispanic pottery tradition. Clay tableware delicately decorated with flowers and fishes, kitchen plates painted with the town's unique dotting style.

 

****Dora de Houghton Carrington, known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she considered Dora to be "vulgar and sentimental". She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. An accomplished painter of portraits and landscape, she also worked in applied and decorative arts, painting on any type of surface she had at hand including inn signs, tiles and furniture. Her naïve pottery, like all her art is now described as progressive, because it did not fit into the mainstream of art in England at the time.

 

*****Established by lawyers and philanthropist Felix Slade in 1868, Slade School of Fine Art is the art school of University College London and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the United Kingdom’s top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as a department of University College London's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century. It had such students as Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer.

 

******The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos. The Workshops were also closely associated with the Hogarth Press and the artist and critic Roger Fry, who was the principal figure behind the project, believed that artists could design, produce and sell their own works, and that writers could also be their own printers and publishers. The Directors of the firm were Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.

 

*******St. Mark’s Church Mayfair, is a Grade I listed building, in the heart of London's Mayfair district, on North Audley Street. St Mark's was built between 1825 and 1828 as a response to the shortage of churches in the area. The population in Mayfair had grown with the demand for town houses by the aristocracy and the wealthy, as they moved in from the country. The building was constructed in the Greek revival style to the designs of John Peter Gandy. In 1878 the architect Arthur Blomfield made significant changes to the church, adding a timber roof, and introducing Gothic style features. The thirty-four feet (ten metre) façade, together with the elegant porch, is known as one of the finest in London. Being in Mayfair, it was a popular place for the weddings of aristocratic families. It was deconsecrated in 1974, and today it is used as a mixed use venue.

 

********Glynes is the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie.

 

This rather delightfully chaotic artist’s studio scene may look very real to you, yet it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including some very special pieces that are very close to my heart.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The painted and glazed jug in the centre of the image, the brown one in the foreground, the jug standing on the edge of the trough, and the green and the white jugs on the bench all come from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The white jug is Parianware and is mid Victorian. The brown glazed jugs and pots are individually made and are impressed with Art Nouveau images, which is very apt considering that they were made as children’s toys in the early 1900s.

 

The unglazed pots on the table and the bench in the background were made by a Polish miniature potter and were given to me some twenty five years ago by one of my closest girlfriends as a gift for helping arrange her kitchen for her when she moved house. They are such beautiful pieces, and hold great sentimental value for me.

 

The trough on brick legs with its silvered taps and the easel leaning against the bench in the background come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The paints, paint brushes and paint palette on the table were all acquired from Melody Jane Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

The ladderback chair to the left of the photo is a recent 1:12 miniature which has a hand-woven rattan seat. It was acquired from an estate of a miniature collector in Sydney and dates from around the 1970s.

 

The tile frieze that appears along the back wall above the sink is an Art Nouveau design from the Lambeth works of Royal Doulton and features white Irises.

no sloes this year.

 

(a pretzel response)