A scaled-down replica of Nelson's ship Victory first seen on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. It's 4.7 metres in length and 2.8 metres in diameter.

Theme Rules:

Food brings people together, and the more the merrier! Show us two or more of your dolls enjoying a midday meal. Are they sharing a romantic meeting at a Parisian café or at the newest burger joint? Are friends gathering for a picnic at the park or beach? Perhaps your dolls are learning how to prepare a yummy, healthy lunch together at home. There are many ways to spend a lunch date, so let's eat!

  

About this photo:

Storm and Rogue asked Shadowcat and Lockheed to join them for lunch at the X-Mansion since they were in town for a long weekend. Kitty Pryde and her purple-skinned alien friend head back to Excalibur in the United Kingdom on Tuesday. Even superheroes need to eat! ;)

  

A-Z Doll Photography Challenge Group Description

  

Members can submit a photo for one, two, or all themes. At the end of the month, members will vote for their favorite photos.

  

Participation is based on your time and inspiration. While we hope everyone can create a photo for each month, it is not required. Come and go as you like!

  

Submit just one photo per theme. Last day to submit photos for J, K, and L is May 31st!

 

Not a member or missed last month? Not a problem--this group is fluid -- participate when you can. Don't hesitate to ask any questions!

 

Visit A-Z Doll Photography Challenge to join. Hope to see you there! :)

My first "real" (like with wood and stuff, lol) diorama!

  

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In these pictures:

  

The morning of Bella’s Birthday!

  

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In these pictures:

  

Sindy Chest of Drawers by Pedigree, Ref. no. 2SA15 (1968-1976) (Reference number changed after 1973).

Sindy Breakfast Table (Bed tray) by Marx Ref. no. 1234 (1978).

Fleur (the Dutch Sindy) bedside tables made in the Netherlands by the Otto Simon company, Article no. 385-2361 (Mid to late 1970s?) (Knobs modified by me).

Bed by Amber of Bashette Ironworks (2012) and all beautiful bed linens (bedspread, pillows, etc.) by Amber of BashetteDoll on Etsy.

Blue blanket by ShortcutsCrochet on Etsy.

Suzy Goose Vanity (1963-1965).

Chair is from ebay seller il.felice.

Lamps by me.

1/48 scale miniature Victorian vanity by Victoriaminiland on Etsy.

Chanel books by PoppysPetites.

Bunny was a gift from a friend.

Bella’s lovely books were a gift from a friend.

Little white dolls are "Salvaged Dolls" by Tim Holtz.

Beautiful hat by MatisseFashions on Etsy.

Little chest is from the My Scene Masquerade Madness Party Pad (2004).

Vintage Barbie, Silkstone, and FR miniatures/accessories.

Re-Ments.

This goofy photo has won me a ride in a balloon at next year's Great Reno Ballon Race. Yay! Hooray for my pudgy fingers!

Using a programme called Tilting Sun and taking the middle exposure imaging time from my Prominence captures of 20 August (www.flickr.com/photos/76699751@N07/29007261792/in/datetaken/), I can work out the tilt and rotation of the sun and where my image overlays at the time. Also shown here are the 109 Earth's stacked across the diameter of the sun in fairly even measure to arrive at the scaling for Earth (zoom in you will see them!). Taking the Sun as 861,800 miles (1,390,000 kilometers) in diameter and dividing that by Earth at 7909 miles (12,756 kilometers) gives 108.9 rounded to 109 Earths fitting across the diameter of the sun.

In keeping with the "Boulevard" style of automotive photography from the late 1950's, here is my rendition featuring the 1959 Dodge Custom Royal two door hardtop.

Mercy!

At 18 feet long, it had front bucket seats that swiveled for easy entry and exit, a push button transmission, power steering, plus a 320 horse power V8 engine.

We won't discuss the gas mileage, but this luxo barge could haul, with style to spare.

 

This scene was photographed on my kitchen table, using a piece of embossed plastic sheeting, along with battery powered LED lights.

The blue streak in the background is due to light

from the window seeping under the black foam core I was using as a back drop.

 

I know I should have been working on other projects, but this was just too much fun to pass up.

 

The diecast is 1/18th scale and is made by SunStar.

 

Here is the faux magazine ad:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/14807501111/

 

Jaguar S type 3.8 (1964-68) Engine 3781 cc straight six Production 15070 (for the 3.8 plus 9,830 for the 3.4)

 

Registration Number YAS 907 (Nairnshire)

 

JAGUAR SET

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623671588245...

 

A sort of cross between the Mark 2 front end and the Mark 10 twin fuel tanks, rear suspension and roof line. Improved handling and an all synchro-mesh box. The Jaguar S type was launched in 1963, technically more sophisticated than the Jaguar Mark 2, offering buyers a more luxurious alternative to the Mark 2 but without the size and expense of the Mark X. The S-Type sold alongside the Mark 2, as well as the Jaguar 420 following its release in 1966.

The car used a mid-scale version of the Mark X independent rear suspension to replace the Mark 2's live rear axle and featured longer rear bodywork, among other styling and interior changes. The S-Type was available with either 3.4 or 3.8-litre XK engines but only in twin carburettor form because the triple carburettor setup would not fit into what was essentially still the Mark 2 engine bay

 

Diolch am 77,302,135 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mae pob un yn cael ei werthfawrogi'n fawr.

 

Thanks for 77,302,135 amazing views, every one is greatly appreciated.

 

Shot 15.09.2019 at Hanbury Car Show, Droitwich, Worcestershire 143-950

     

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 north-west from Cavendish Mews, across Marylebone, past Regent’s Park, the London Zoo and Lords Cricket Ground to the affluent and leafy residential streets of nearby St. John’s Wood. It is here that Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie friends Minnie Palmerston and her husband Charles reside in a neatly painted two storey early Victorian townhouse on Acacia Road that formerly belonged to Charles Palmerston’s maternal grandparents, Lord and Lady Arundel.

 

Having taken her future sister-in-law, Arabella Tyrwhitt, to her old childhood chum and best friend Gerald Bruton’s couturier in Grosvenor Street Soho for her initial wedding dress consultation, Lettice has left the two together to discuss designs whilst she visits Minnie in St John’s Wood. Minnie, a highly strung socialite, has redecorated her dining room in a style not to her husband’s taste, or so she was told by Minnie over a luncheon Lettice hosted for Arabella last week. Known for her melodrama, Lettice quietly ponders whether it really is as awful as Minnie implies as she pays the taxi driver the fare from Soho to St John’s Wood and alights the blue vehicle onto the street.

 

The day is bright and sunny, and the street is quiet with only the occasional bark of a dog and the distant rumble of traffic from busy Finchley Road in the distance as Lettice strides across the road and walks up the eight steps that lead up to Minnie’s black painted front door. She depresses the doorbell which echoes through the long hallway inside and waits. Moments later, there is the thud of Minnie’s hurried footsteps as she flings open the door dramatically.

 

“Lettice darling!” she cries, standing in the doorway in a beautiful may green day dress which compliments her red hair and green eyes, with cascades of green and black bugle beads tumbling down the front. “Come in! Come in!” she beckons her friend with enthusiastic waves which make the green, black and gold bangles on her wrist jangle noisily.

 

“Minnie.” Lettice leans in for a whispery kiss on the cheek as she steps across the threshold and follows Minnie’s indications and steps into a drawing room off the hallway, the room filled with diffused light from a large twelve pane window that looks out onto the street. Looking around her, she quickly takes in the overstuffed cream satin settees, nests of occasional tables, clusters of pictures in gilt frames in every conceivable space on the William Morris style papered walls and the potted parlour palms. “Oh yes,” she remarks as she removes her green gloves. “I do see what you mean. Very Edwardian.”

 

“Isn’t it ghastly, Lettice darling?” Minnie asks as she steps into the drawing room. “Here let me take your, umbrella, coat and hat.” She helps her friend shrug off her forest green coat and takes her rather artistic beret with its long tassel. “I think Lady Arundel could walk in here and not find a thing out of place!”

 

“It could be worse,” Lettice remarks, looking up at the crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling high above. “It could be decorated in high Victorian style and lit with gasoliers*.”

 

“True darling.” Minnie calls from the hallway where she hangs up Lettice’s things on a heavy Victorian coatrack. “But you have yet to see my dining room faux pas.”

 

“Now Minnie, no matter what I say, I want no histrionics today like we had over luncheon last week,” Lettice chides her friend with a wagging finger. “Poor Bella didn’t know where to look.”

 

“Oh I am sorry.” Minnie apologises. “Coming from the country, she probably isn’t used to our London ways.”

 

“Your emotional outbursts have nothing whatsoever to do with London ways, so don’t go foisting it off.” Lettice replies, cocking one of her delicately plucked eyebrows at her friend.

 

“You sound just like Gladys.” Minnie says.

 

“Well, I hope I’m not as shrill sounding as her,” Lettice replies with a chuckle.

 

“And how is the beautiful bride-to-be?”

 

“Happily ensconced with Gerald in his Soho atelier, no doubt talking about all the finer details of the dream wedding frock I have already heard about from dear Bella.”

 

“She seems quite lovely, Lettice darling.”

 

“Oh, I adore Bella.” Lettice agrees with a wave of her hand. “Given we grew up running in and out of each other’s houses, living on neighbouring properties, it was inevitable that she would marry one of my brothers, or Lally or I marry one of Bella’s brothers. I’m just glad that it wasn’t the latter. All Bella’s brothers, whilst charming, take after their grandfather, and he was not a handsome man. Bella has her mother’s delicate and pretty genes and she and Leslie are well suited. They both love the country, and as you know from luncheon last week, Bella likes the county social round. As Pater says, Bella will one day make a wonderful chatelaine of Glynes**, supporting Leslie as a dutiful wife, hosting important county social functions like the Hunt Ball, opening fetes and awarding prizes at cattle shows.”

 

“How does Lady Sadie feel about her usurper?”

 

“Oh Mater loves Bella as much as we all do.” Lettice replies breezily. “Of course, Pater doesn’t dare express his appreciation quite so volubly in front of Mater, but I’m sure she is silently thinking the same thing, not that she would ever share that with any of us. No, the problem will be if Pater decides to pop his mortal clogs before she does. I don’t know how happy she will be to hand over the mantle of lady of the manor to her daughter-in-law, even if she does love her.”

 

“Well, let’s hope we don’t have to worry about that for a good while yet.” Minnie says soothingly.

 

“Indeed yes!” agrees Lettice. “Now, show me this dread dining room of yours, Minnie darling. I’m famished, and I’m intrigued to see just how much of a faux pas it really is.”

 

“Come right this way, interior decorator to all the great and good of this great country of ours,” Minnie says rather grandly as she walks towards a door that leads from the drawing room to the next room. Suddenly she pauses, clasping the brass doorknob in her hand and turns back to Lettice who has trailed behind her. “Prepare yourself my dear for l’horreur!” And she flings the door open.

 

Minnie and Lettice walk into the townhouse’s dining room, which like the adjoining drawing room has a high ceiling. Lettice is surprised that after the grandeur of the drawing room, it’s a much smaller room, perhaps more suited for intimate dining rather than a large banquet. She glances around and quickly takes in the mixture of old and new. An Edwardian dining setting in Queen Anne style fills the majority of the space, whilst a late Victorian sideboard and spare carver chairs press against the wall. To either side of the new Art Deco gas fireplace stand two modern stands on which sit rather old fashioned urns. Modernist paintings in bold colours hang on the walls, but Lettice can barely see them for the bold wallpaper of red poppies against a black background with green and white geometric patterns.

 

“Oh I see.” Lettice remarks, neither enthusiastically nor critically, but in a rather neutral way.

 

Lettice walks around the dining table on which stands a Georgian Revival tea set with steam snaking from the spot of the pot, a small carafe of water and glassware, crockery and cutlery for two at the head of the table. She stands before the Streamline Moderne fireplace surround and runs an elegant hand over one of the bold red blooms, feeling the slightly raised pattern. She sighs as she contemplates what she sees.

 

“Do you think it looks like something out of Maida Vale, Lettice darling?” Minnie asks hesitantly.

 

For a moment, Lettice doesn’t answer as she traces one of the green lines towards the gilt edge of a frame holding a painting of a tiger. “Tyger Tyger burning bright***,” she murmurs the beginning of the William Blake poem.

 

“Yes,” Minnie acknowledges her friend with a sigh of pleasure. “He’s rather glorious, isn’t he?”

 

“He is,” Lettice agrees. “However his gloriousness is diminished somewhat by the wallpaper which draws away attention from him, and the red fox.” She points to a larger canvas hanging over the sideboard.

 

“So you do think it’s middle-class Maida Vale then.” Minnie pronounces in a downhearted fashion.

 

“No, I don’t.” Lettice clarifies, turning around and placing a comforting hand on the slumped left shoulder of her friend. “And I think it was very unkind of Charles to say so. The wallpaper is beautiful, Minnie. It just doesn’t suit this room.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, this is quite an intimate room: taller with these high ceilings, rather than wide. This wallpaper would suit a longer room with low ceilings, where expanses of this pattern could be exposed uninterrupted.”

 

“Like a mansion flat?”

 

“Exactly, Minnie! I did something similar for the moving picture actress, Wanetta Ward last year. She had a long, exposed wall and the bold pattern I used worked beautifully. And this wallpaer does nothing to show off yours and Charles’ beautiful paintings. It detracts rather than enhances. The paintings and the wallpaper vie for attention. Think about the National Gallery, or the Tate Gallery****. When you see pictures hanging on the wall, what do you notice about the surrounding to the painting?”

 

Minnie thinks for a moment, screwing up her pert nose with its dusting of freckles. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever actually noticed the walls, Lettice darling.”

 

“Correct again, Minnie. No-one thinks about the walls because you’re not meant to. Your focus is meant to be on the paintings.”

 

“So you think I should strip the walls and paint them? Is that what you’re saying?”

 

“Well, you could, Minnie.” Lettice replies. “Or you could paint the walls and decorate the upper edge with a nice frieze paper.”

 

“Then it really would look like Maida Vale.” Minnie argues. “Only people who can’t afford wallpaper get friezes hung.”

 

Lettice considers her friend’s remark for a moment. “Mmm… yes, you’re quite right Minnie. Well, Jeffrey and Company***** do stock a range of beautiful papers in vibrant colours with pattern embossed into them. They look very luxurious.”

 

“Oh!” Minnie clasps her hands in delight. “I do like the sound of that! What colour would suit this room do you think?”

 

“Oh I should imagine a nice warm red or orange to go with this.” Lettice taps the top of the tiled fireplace surround. “And that colour range would also compliment your polished floors.”

 

“And I could get black japanned furniture like you, Lettice darling! I do like your chairs.”

 

“Oh no.” Lettice shakes her head. “Black japanned furniture is fine, but not my chairs. They are far too low for this room. You need an equivalent high backed chair.” She reaches out and pats one of the dining chairs. “Lady Arundel chose these well as they echo the height of the room. Perhaps if you had something high backed padded with a complimentary fabric to the paper: say red or orange.”

 

“Oh Lettice you are so clever!” enthuses Minnie. “When can you start.”

 

“Don’t you want to ask Charles before you go spending his money on redecorating, Minnie?” Lettice laughs. “Surely he’ll want a say.”

 

“Oh Charles told me today when I reminded him that you were coming for luncheon before he left for the office, that he’ll happily pay for anything you recommend, or better yet your services. So you don’t need to worry on that account.”

 

“Well, I would have to finish Dickie and Margot’s.” Lettice tempers.

 

“Oh, of course.” Minnie agrees.

 

“Well, I don’t have another redecorating assignment after them, so let me contemplate it.”

 

“I’ll go and get luncheon whilst you contemplate.” Minnie exclaims with a clap of her hands before scuttling away through a second door to the left of the fireplace.

 

With her exuberant friend gone, Lettice looks around the dining room, contemplating what she has suggested, picturing what embossed wallpaper in a rich red or vibrant orange would look like as a backdrop for the paintings. “Pity.” she muses as she again runs her hands over the stylised poppies in the pattern on the wall. Turning around she looks across the room. “Sorry Lady Arundel,” she remarks, tapping the top of the nearest dining chair again. “But it looks like your granddaughter-in-law wants to modernise.

 

“I’m afraid it’s Cook’s afternoon off today,” Minnie says apologetically as she walks back through the door through which she went, carrying a tray of tomato, ham and cucumber sandwiches. “So we’ll have to settle for these.” Looking down at the plate of appetising sandwich triangles as she places them on the dining table’s surface she adds. “I do hope she remembered not to make tongue****** ones. She should remember that I can’t stand cold tongue.”

 

Lettice peers at the fillings of bright red tomato, vivid green cucumber, and pink ham. “I think we’ll be safe.”

 

“Well, there’s half a trifle left over for dessert just in case they aren’t nice.” Minnie adds hopefully.

 

Lettice is suddenly struck by something. “Minnie?” she asks. “Minnie, why are you carrying the tray? And come to think of it, why did you answer the door? Where is Gladys?”

 

Minnie blushes, her pale skin and smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose reddening. “She handed in her immediate notice the week before last.”

 

“Oh no! Not another one Minnie?”

 

“She said she couldn’t work for a woman who had such histrionics as I do, and she’s gone back to Manchester.”

 

“Oh Minnie!” Lettice shakes her head dolefully.

 

“See! I told you, you sounded like Gladys, Lettice. I’ve been getting by with the tweeny*******, but Cook grumbles, so I can’t keep pinching her. That’s why I’m so grateful you gave me that telephone number for that domestic employment agency in Westminster. I’ve a new maid starting next week. Her name’s Siobhan, so I figured that she can’t complain about my histrionics as she’d be used to them, being Irish.”

 

“Well, let’s hope so Minnie.” Lettice chuckles as she pulls out her dining chair and takes her seat. “I can’t keep up with the revolving door of maids that come in and out of this house. How long have you been here for now?”

 

“Seven months or thereabout.” Minnie replies vaguely as she takes her own seat in the chair at the head of the dining table.

 

“And how many maids have you had in that time?”

 

“Nine.” Minnie replies with a guilty gulp.

 

“No wonder Charles feels his club is better suited to entertain prospective business associates.” Lettice shakes her head disapprovingly. “A tweeny waiting table.”

 

“Well hopefully, with Siobhan starting next week, and you agreeing to redecorate my dining room faux pas,” She looks around the room with glittering, excited eyes, as she imagines the possibilities. “Charles will be happy to start entertaining here.” She pauses and thinks for a moment. “You will won’t you?”

 

“Will I what, Minnie?”

 

“You will redecorate my dining room, won’t you?”

 

Lettice reaches around Minnie’s teacup and squeezes her friend’s hand comfortingly. “Of course I will. I’ll come up with some ideas of what I think might suit this room and then I’ll show you and Charles. Charles has to have some input, even if he has told you that you that I have carte blanche when it comes to redecorating.”

 

*A gasolier is a chandelier with gas burners rather than light bulbs or candles.

 

**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.

 

***”The Tyger” is a poem by English poet William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his “Songs of Experience” collection and rising to prominence in the romantic period of the mid Nineteenth Century. The poem explores and questions Christian religious paradigms prevalent in late 18th century and early 19th century England, discussing God's intention and motivation for creating both the tiger and the lamb. Tiger is written as Tyger in the poem as William Blake favoured old English spellings.

  

****In 1892 the site of a former prison, the Millbank Penitentiary, was chosen for the new National Gallery of British Art, which would be under the Directorship of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. The prison, used as the departure point for sending convicts to Australia, had been demolished in 1890. Sidney R.J. Smith was chosen as the architect for the new gallery. His design is the core building that we see today, a grand porticoed entranceway and central dome which resembles a temple. The statue of Britannia with a lion and a unicorn on top of the pediment at the Millbank entrance emphasised its function as a gallery of British art. The gallery opened its doors to the public in 1897, displaying 245 works in eight rooms from British artists dating back to 1790. In 1932, the gallery officially adopted the name Tate Gallery, by which it had popularly been known as since its opening. In 1937, the new Duveen Sculpture Galleries opened. Funded by Lord Duveen and designed by John Russell Pope, Romaine-Walker and Gilbert Jenkins, these two 300 feet long barrel-vaulted galleries were the first public galleries in England designed specifically for the display of sculpture. By this point, electric lighting had also been installed in all the rooms enabling the gallery to stay open until 5pm whatever the weather. In 1955, Tate Gallery became wholly independent from the National Gallery.

  

*****Jeffrey and Company was an English producer of fine wallpapers that operated between 1836 and the mid 1930s. Based at 64 Essex Road in London, the firm worked with a variety of designers who were active in the aesthetic and arts and crafts movements, such as E.W. Godwin, William Morris, and Walter Crane. Jeffrey and Cmpany’s success is often credited to Metford Warner, who became the company’s chief proprietor in 1871. Under his direction the firm became one of the most lucrative and influential wallpaper manufacturers in Europe. The company clarified that wallpaper should not be reserved for use solely in mansions, but should be available for rooms in the homes of the emerging upper-middle class.

  

******Beef tongue (also known as neat's tongue or ox tongue) is a cut of beef made of the tongue of a cow. It can be boiled, pickled, roasted or braised in sauce. It is found in many national cuisines, and is used for taco fillings in Mexico and for open-faced sandwiches in the United States.

 

*******A tweeny is a between maid, who works in the kitchen as well as above stairs, assisting at least two other members of a domestic staff.

 

This rather bright dining room is perhaps a little different to what you might think, for it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection, some pieces from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Queen Anne dining table, chairs and sideboard were all given to me as birthday and Christmas presents when I was a child.

 

The three prong Art Deco style candelabra in the sideboard is an artisan piece made of sterling silver. Although unsigned, the piece was made in England by an unknown artist. The vase of flowers to the left of the candelabra is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. The carafe to the right of the candelabra is another artisan piece made of hand spun glass. I acquired it as a teenager from a high street dollhouse stockist.

 

The ornately hand painted ginger jar is one of a pair and comes from Melody Jane Dollhouse Suppliers in Britain. The tall stand on which the ginger jar stands was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

The paintings on the walls are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The stylised floral and geometric shape Art Deco wallpaper is a real Art Deco design which I have sourced and had printed in high quality onto A3 sheets of paper.

 

On the dining table the tray of sandwiches are made of polymer clay. Made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight they are very realistic with even the bread slices having a bread like consistency look. 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 water carafe came from the same high street stockist as the carafe on the sideboard. The Art Deco dinner set is part of a much larger set I acquired from a dollhouse suppliers in Shanghai. The Georgian Revival silver tea set on its tray I acquired from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The Streamline Moderne pottery tile fireplace surround I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse 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.

 

Two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. Lettice is hosting an exclusive buffet supper party in their honour this evening, which is turning out to be one of the events of the 1921 London Season. Over the last few days, Lettice’s flat has been in upheaval as Edith. Lettice’s maid, and Lettice’s charwoman* Mrs. Boothby have been cleaning the flat thoroughly in preparation for the occasion. Earlier today with the help of a few hired men they moved some of the furnishings in Lettice’s drawing room into the spare bedroom to make space for the hired dance band and for the guests to dance and mingle. Edith’s preserve of the kitchen has been overrun by delivery men, florists and caterers. Yet it has finally all fallen into place perfectly just as a red and white striped marquee is erected by Gunter and Company** over the entrance and the pavement outside.

 

Now we find ourselves in Lettice’s dining room, which has become the focal point for half the party guests as her dining table is given over to a magnificent buffet created by Harrods catering, whilst Dickie stands at one corner, thoroughly enjoying playing the part of barman as he makes cocktails for all his friends.

 

Lettice sighs with satisfaction as she looks around the drawing room and dining room of her flat. Both rooms have a golden glow about them created by a mixture of electric light and candlelight and the fug of cigarette smoke. The rooms are populated with London society’s glittering young people, nicknamed “bright young things” by the newspapers. Men in white tie and tails with a smattering of daring souls wearing dinner jackets chatter animatedly and dance with ladies in beautifully coloured evening gowns with loose bodices, sashes and irregular and handkerchief hems. Jewels wink at throats, on fingers, dangling from ears and in carefully coiffed and finger waved hair, illuminated by the brilliant lighting. Bugle beads glitter as gowns gently wash about the figures of their wearers as they move. Everywhere gay chatter about the Season and the upcoming wedding of Margot and Dickie fills the air, the joyous sound mixing with the lively jazz quartet who play syncopated tunes lustily in a corner of Lettice’s drawing room.

 

“Dubonnet and gin?” Dickie asks Lettice as she stands by the buffet and picks up a biscuit lightly smeared with salmon mousse.

 

“Oh you are a brick, Dickie!” Lettice enthuses, popping the dainty morsel into her mouth. Accepting the reddish gold cocktail from him she adds, “But really, this is your party. You should be out there, socialising with Margot, not standing here making cocktails for everyone.”

 

“Why should I bother going out there to socialise,” he waves his hand across the crowded room to the edge of the makeshift dancefloor where his fiancée stands in a beautiful ankle length silver georgette gown studded in silver sequins, surrounded by a small clutch of equally elegant young guests. “When they all have to come to me for drinks.”

 

“Ahhh,” Lettice titters as she sips her cocktail. “So there is method in your madness, Dickie.”

 

“Isn’t there always, Lettice?” he laughs. “Now, you are technically hostess of this bash. Go out there and dazzle everyone.” Then he stops and adds, “Well, not quite everyone.” And he blows a kiss to his fiancée whose eye he has caught from across the crowded room.

 

“Alright Dickie,” Lettice laughs and she saunters off into the crowd, pausing to smile and say hullo and accept the compliments of her many guests.

 

Suddenly she spots a beautiful woman in a pale pink beaded gown with dark finger waved hair framing her peaches and cream complexion standing docilely by the dancefloor watching the stream of passing couples dancing past in each other’s arms. She seems distant and remote, even a little sad, and far removed from the frenetic energy and jolly bonhomie about her. Excusing herself from the couple who are addressing her, Lettice slips over to her.

 

“Hullo Elizabeth***!” Lettice embraces her warmly. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come along tonight considering everything that’s happened.”

 

“I wasn’t sure myself, Lettice.” Elizabeth replies, a warm smile revealing a slightly crooked set of teeth. “But I couldn’t let Dickie and Margot down.” Then she adds quickly as an afterthought, “Or you, darling Lettice.”

 

“Well, I’m glad you’ve come. How are you feeling?”

 

“A little battered and bruised emotionally.” Elizabeth admits with a lilt of sadness. “But one mustn’t complain.”

 

“I still don’t understand why you said no to his marriage proposal. I thought you loved Bertie****.”

 

“I did.” Elizabeth remarks before correcting herself. “I do! But I’m afraid that if I said yes to him, I’d never, never again be able to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to. Besides,” she adds conspiratorially, glancing about her before continuing. “His mother terrifies me.”

 

“She terrifies all of us,” Lettice laughs lighty as she waves her hand gaily about the room. “Now, what you need to pick you up and forget your heartache is one of these.” She points to the glass in her hand.

 

“What is it?” Elizabeth asks, eyeing Lettice’s glass and sniffing its contents with suspicion.

 

“A Dubonnet and gin. Dickie will make you one. Go and ask him.” Lettice grasps Elizabeth by the shoulder and sends her toddling across to Dickie as he stands behind a line of bottles and a beautiful arrangement of roses.

 

“Lettice!” Margot suddenly calls from across the room, beckoning her over enthusiastically. “Lettice, darling!”

 

Squeezing between small clusters of well-dressed guests drinking and eating or leaving the dance floor, Lettice makes her way over to her friend.

 

“Hullo Margot, darling! Are you having a fabulous time?”

 

“Fabulous isn’t enough of a word to describe it, darling!” she replies with eyes shimmering with excitement and joy. “Such a thrilling bash! I can’t thank you enough!”

 

“Yes Lettice,” a deep male voice adds from behind her. “You certainly do know how to throw a party!”

 

“Lord de Virre!” Lettice exclaims, spinning around. “Oh! I didn’t know you’d arrived. Now, who can I introduce you to?”

 

“No-one my dear. My beautiful daughter has been doing an ample job of introducing me to so many people that already this old man cannot remember who is whom.”

 

“Never old!” Lettice scolds, hitting his arm playfully as she curls her own through the crook in his. “Then if I can’t introduce to anyone, perhaps I can entreat you into eating something.”

 

“Now that I won’t refuse, Lettice.”

 

Lettice and Margot guide Lord de Virre across the crowded dining room to the buffet table weighed down with delicious savoury petit fours, vol-au-vents, caviar, dips, cheese and pâte and pasties. Glasses full, partially drained and empty are scattered amidst the silver trays and china plates.

 

“Champagne, Sir?” Dickie calls out.

 

“Good show Dickie!” laughs Lord de Virre over the noise of the party. “Playing barman tonight, are we?”

 

“It’s the best role to play at a party, Sir.” He passes Lord de Virre a flute of sparkling champagne poured from the bottle wedged into a silver ice bucket.

 

Behind him Lettice spies Elizabeth with a Dubonnet and gin in her glove clad hand. Lettice catches her eye and discreetly raises her glass, which Elizabeth returns with a gentle smile.

 

“Now Lettice, darling,” Margot enthuses as she selects a dainty petit four. “Daddy has just reminded me of an idea we had a few weeks ago, which I meant to ask you about, but between all Gerald’s dress fittings and other arrangements for the wedding,” She flaps her hand about, the diamonds in her engagement ring sparkling in the light. “Well, I completely forgot.”

 

Lettice tries not to smile as she feels the gentlest of squeezes from Lord de Virre’s arm and remembers the conversation that she and he had some weeks ago in his study. “What is it?” She glances between Margot and her father, pretending not to know what is coming.

 

“Well, Daddy suggested… I mean… I was wondering…”

 

“Yes, Margot darling?”

 

“Well, you know how the Marquess is giving us that house in Cornwall?”

 

“Yes! Chi an… an…?”

 

“Chi an Treth!” Dickie calls out helpfully.

 

“Yes!” Margot concurs. “Beach House! Well, it hasn’t been lived in for ever such a long time, and it’s a bit old fashioned. Daddy is kindly organising for it to be electrified, re-plumbed and have it connected to the Penzance telephone exchange for us.” Margot pauses. “And… well he and… we… that is to say that I thought…”

 

“Yes?” Lettice coaxes with lowered lids as she takes a gentle sip of her Dubonnet and gin.

 

“Well, we… Dickie and I that is… well we rather hoped that you might consider fixing up a couple of rooms for us. Would you? I would just so dearly love a room or two decorated by you! Dickie even thinks that his father can pull some strings and get you an article in Country Life if you do?”

 

“Oh Margot!” Lettice exclaims, releasing her grip on Lord de Virre and depositing her glass on the table she flings her arms about her friend’s neck. “I’d love to!”

 

Lettice suddenly feels a gentle poking of fingers into the small of her back. Letting go of Margot, she stands back and looks at her, remembering the lines Lord de Virre asked her to come up with and rehearse upon agreeing to Margot’s request.

 

“Of course, I can’t do it straight away, you understand. You know I’m currently mid-way through Miss Ward’s flat in Pimlico.”

 

“Oh that’s alright,” Margot beams. “The modernisation isn’t finished yet, so we won’t even be going down there to inspect the place until after our honeymoon.”

 

Lettice feels Lord de Virre’s prodding in her back again.

 

“And I won’t do it for free, Margot. I have already given you a wedding gift. I’m a businesswoman now.”

 

“Oh, well that’s just the thing,” Margot exclaims, clasping her hands in delight. “Daddy has kindly agreed to pay for it all.”

 

Lettice looks up at Lord de Virre. He looks back at her seriously, but she can see a smile tweaking the edges of his mouth, trying to create a cheeky smile. She tries to keep up the pretence that she didn’t already know that Margot was going to ask her to redecorate for her and Dickie as she says, “Really Lord de Virre? All of it? That’s very generous of you.”

 

“Not a bit of it, Lettice. This is a good, sound business transaction. You may send your quotes to me for consideration,” He ennunciates the last word carefully to stress its importance, more for Margot’s sake than Lettice’s. “Once you have seen the rooms as they are now.”

 

“Thank you Lord de Virre,” Lettice replies. “Well Margot, I suppose that settles it then!”

 

“Oh Dickie!” Margot exclaims, scuttling over to her fiancée. “She said yes!”

 

“Who did, darling?” Dickie asks as he adds crème de menthe to colour his Fallen Angel cocktail a pale green.

 

“What do you mean, who?” Margot hits his arm jokingly as she sways excitedly from side to side. “Lettice of course!” She looks back over to her friend standing alongside her father. “She’s agreed to decorate for us.”

 

“Oh, jolly good show!” Dickie smiles. “Thanks awfully Lettice, darling! Now you’re the brick!”

 

“Always Dickie!” Lettice laughs back.

 

“Listen Dickie!” Margot gasps. “The band is playing ‘Dancing Time’*****! Come away from the bar and dance with me.”

 

“You’d best not refuse her, my boy!” teases Lord de Virre. “It’s madness if you try. I never could!”

 

The happily engaged couple hurry across the room, hand in hand, slipping between clusters of guests before disappearing into the crowd on the dancefloor as the music from the band soars above the burble of the crowd and the clink of glasses.

 

“So, we finally have an official arrangement, Miss Chetwynd?” Lord de Virre says discreetly as he raises his glass towards Lettice.

 

“I think we do, Lord de Virre.” Lettice smiles and clinks her glass with his as they toast their arrangement formally. “Your offer is simply too good to refuse.”

 

*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.

 

**Gunter and Company were London caterers and ball furnishers with shops in Berkley Square, Sloane Street, Lowndes Street and New Bond Street. They began as Gunter’s Tea Shop at 7 and 8 Berley Square 1757 where it remained until 1956 as the business grew and opened different premises. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Gunter's became a fashionable light eatery in Mayfair, notable for its ices and sorbets. Gunter's was considered to be the wedding cake makers du jour and in 1889, made the bride cake for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Louise of Wales. Even after the tea shop finally closed, the catering business carried on until the mid 1970s.

 

***Elizabeth Bowes Lyon as she was known in 1921 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"

 

****Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. Not only did Bertie propose to Elizabeth in 1921, but also in March 1922 after she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles. Elizabeth refused him a second time, yet undaunted Bertie pursued the girl who had stolen his heart. Finally, in January 1923 she agreed to marry him in spite of her misgivings about royal life.

 

*****’Dancing Time’ was a popular song in Britain in 1921 with words by George Grossmith Jr. and music by Jerome Kern.

 

This rather splendid buffet of delicious savoury treats might look real to you, but in fact the whole scene is made up on 1:12 scale miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On Lettice’s black japanned dining table delicious canapés are ready to be consumed by party guests. The plate of sandwiches, the silver tray of biscuits and the bowls of dips, most of the savoury petite fours on the silver tray furthest from the camera and the silver tray of Cornish pasties were 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 cheese selection on the tray closest to the camera were made by hand by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as are the empty champagne glasses all of which are made of hand blown glass. The bowl of caviar was made by Karen Lady Bug Miniatures in England.

 

The tray that the caviar is sitting on and the champagne bucket are made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The bottle of Deutz and Geldermann champagne. It is an artisan miniatures and made of glass and has real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Several of the other bottles of mixers in the foreground are also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin, the bottle of Crème de Menthe, Cinzano, Campari and Martini are also 1:12 artisan miniatures, made of real glass, and came from a specialist stockist in Sydney. Gordon's London Dry Gin was developed by Alexander Gordon, a Londoner of Scots descent. He opened a distillery in the Southwark area in 1769, later moving in 1786 to Clerkenwell. The Special London Dry Gin he developed proved successful, and its recipe remains unchanged to this day. The top markets for Gordon's are (in descending order) the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. Gordon's has been the United Kingdom’s number one gin since the late Nineteenth century. It is the world's best-selling London dry gin. Crème de menthe (French for "mint cream") is a sweet, mint-flavored alcoholic beverage. Crème de menthe is an ingredient in several cocktails popular in the 1920s, such as the Grasshopper and the Stinger. It is also served as a digestif. Cinzano vermouths date back to 1757 and the Turin herbal shop of two brothers, Giovanni Giacomo and Carlo Stefano Cinzano, who created a new "vermouth rosso" (red vermouth) using "aromatic plants from the Italian Alps in a recipe which is still secret to this day. Campari is an Italian alcoholic liqueur, considered an apéritif. It is obtained from the infusion of herbs and fruit (including chinotto and cascarilla) in alcohol and water. It is a bitters, characterised by its dark red colour.

 

The vase of red roses on the dining table and the vase of yellow lilies on the Art Deco console are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. Also on the console table stand some of Lettice’s precious artisan purchases from the Portland Gallery in Soho. The pair of candelabra at either end of the sideboard are sterling silver artisan miniatures from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in England. The silver drinks set, made by artisan Clare Bell at the Clare Bell Brass Works in Maine, in the United States. Each goblet is only one centimetre in height and the decanter at the far end is two- and three-quarter centimetres with the stopper inserted. Lettice’s Art Deco ‘Modern Woman’ figure is actually called ‘Christianne’ and was made and hand painted by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. ‘Christianne’ is based on several Art Deco statues and is typical of bronze and marble statues created at that time for the luxury market in the buoyant 1920s.

 

Lettice’s dining room is furnished with Town Hall Miniatures furniture, which is renown for their quality. The only exceptions to the room is the Chippendale chinoiserie carver chair and the Art Deco cocktail cabinet (the edge of which just visible on the far right-hand side of the photo) which were made by J.B.M. Miniatures.

 

The paintings on the walls are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

SCOUT: “Paddy? Paddy!”

 

PADDY: “Yes Scout?”

 

SCOUT: “Paddy, it’s raining outside! We can’t take tea in the garden today.” *Sulks.*

 

PADDY: “That’s alright Scout! We can take elevenses right here in the dining room instead! Won’t that be nice?”

 

COUSIN PADDINGTON: “What a capital idea, Paddy!”

 

PADDY: “Thank you Cousin Paddington. Scout, go and get your Red Riding Hood dolly, so she can take elevenses with us too.”

 

SCOUT: “Oh goody!” *Jumps up and down enthusiastically.* “Can we invite little Malachi? We haven’t had tea with Malachi since he came to live with us.”

 

PADDY: “What a lovely idea, Scout.”

 

PADDY, SCOUT, COUSIN PADDINGTON and MALACHI wait patiently whilst DADDY sets out the tea things and brings in a plate of jam fancies, shortbread and a bowl of chocolates.

 

SCOUT: “But what will Malachi eat Paddy?”

 

MALACHI: “Fear not dear Scout! I brought my own selection of tea, biscuits and chocolates for elevenses!”

 

PADDY: “Well, taking tea together is a very civil thing to do. Bon appetite everyone!”

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “drinks” was chosen by Di,PhotosbyDi.

 

Paddy, Scout, Cousin Paddington and Malachi all wanted to take part, as they all enjoy taking tea and elevenses in style.

 

This beautiful faerie tale pantomime nursery dinner set was made in England by the Shell China Company in the 1930s. It features four cups, saucers and plates (not all the set is being used today) as well as a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, platter, sandwich plate, a lidded soup tureen on its own dish and a gravy or cream jug on its own dish. Each piece is gilt edged and decorated and feature different faerie tales including: "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Dick Whittington and his Cat", "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" amongst others. The set I acquired from England, and it is a sister set to a 1920s Shell China Company nursery rhyme tea set that I was given as a gift some years ago by a close friend who knows I collect nursery ware and children\'s tea sets. Paddy and Scout also have a tiny doll (bear) sized nursery napkin each which is hand embroidered with a donkey motif. There are also doll (bear) sized tea spoons which are sterling silver salt spoons, and the spoon in the "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" sugar bowl is an Eighteenth Century sterling silver mustard spoon.

 

Malachi is taking tea from a 1:12 white gilt miniature tea set. He has a fine selection of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits in his tin. If you look closely on his plate there are two cream centres. He also has a box of Pierson Brothers chocolates. All the chocolates and the biscuits, like the tin and tea set are artisan made 1:12 miniatures from my own collection and are between two and three millimetres in diameter. The teapot is two and a half centimetres in height, the milk jug two centimetres in height, the sugar bowl one and half centimetres in height, the plate and saucer 2 centimetres in diameter, the teacup one a half centimetres in diameter, the teaspoon two centimetres in length and the biscuit tin two centimetres in diameter. Malachi has his elevenses set out on a placemat hand embroidered with a donkey motif which matches the napkins.

 

My Paddington Bear came to live with me in London when I was two years old (many, many years ago). He was hand made by my Great Aunt and he has a chocolate coloured felt hat, the brim of which had to be pinned up by a safety pin to stop it getting in his eyes. The collar of his mackintosh is made of the same felt. He wears wellington boots made from the same red leather used to make the toggles on his mackintosh.

 

He has travelled with me across the world and he and I have had many adventures together over the years. He is a very precious member of my small family.

 

Scout was a gift to Paddy from my friend. He is a Fair Trade Bear hand knitted in Africa. His name comes from the shop my friend found him in: Scout House. He tells me that life was very different where he came from, and Paddy is helping introduce him to many new experiences. Scout catches on quickly, and has proven to be a cheeky, but very lovable member of our closely knit family.

 

Cousin Paddington is a recent visitor to our family. Travelling all the way from London, he was caught in transit thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, so it looks like he is stopping with us for a while. The more I look into his happy, smiling face, the more attached I am becoming to him.

 

Malachi is a recent, and unexpected, addition to my bear family. I acquired him in mid-March from a wonderful Melbourne stalwart toy shop: Dafel Dolls and Bears, when I went looking for a present for one of my goddaughters. Malachi is designed by Mary and hand-made by Wendy Joy in Australia. He has reticulated arms and legs, and an extremely sweet face. Malachi was the name he came with, written by hand on his little tag.

All three photos posted this morning were taken yesterday, 28 October 2018. A group of 15 of us went S and SE of the city on a birding trip to one of my favourite areas. This included Chain Lakes and Pine Coulee Reservoir. I just love some of the landscape through which we drove - barren, rugged, middle-of-nowhere kind of scenery. It looks so different in each season - I think my favourite time of year is when there is a covering of snow on the empty hills and ice on most of the water. I've still not had the courage to drive in this area myself, as I know that I might never find my way out.

 

As on almost all these day trips out of the city, almost every bird is far, far away, needing at least binoculars and best of all, a scope. Also, as always happens, my camera lens turns to things other than birds. Scenic shots are always taken - after all, I feel that it is important to record the habitat of any birds seen.

 

We saw so many Swans (Tundra and Trumpeter) on various sloughs and in flight. What a sight they were, with the sun shining on their pure white feathers. Love to hear the Trumpeter Swans "trumpeting". A huge thrill was when our leader led us to a small creek where there were four American Dippers, happily bobbing and dipping, and swimming under water. They weren't bothered by our presence at all.

 

"The American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), also known as a water ouzel, is a stocky dark grey bird with a head sometimes tinged with brown, and white feathers on the eyelids that cause the eyes to flash white as the bird blinks. It is 16.5 cm long and weighs on average 46 g. It has long legs, and bobs its whole body up and down during pauses as it feeds on the bottom of fast-moving, rocky streams. It inhabits the mountainous regions of Central America and western North America from Panama to Alaska.

 

This species, like other dippers, is equipped with an extra eyelid called a "nictitating membrane" that allows it to see underwater, and scales that close its nostrils when submerged. Dippers also produce more oil than most birds, which may help keep them warmer when seeking food underwater." From Wikipedia.

 

Terry, you took us on yet another amazing trip! You even arranged with the weatherman for a beautiful, sunny day, though the morning was cold and it was very windy all day. It couldn't have been a better outing - so very enjoyable. Thanks so much, Linda and Robin, for the ride all day - greatly appreciated!

 

I have been off my computer all day today, too. My daughter came down for the day, as she had offered to come and help me with sorting through some things and getting rid of all my old electronics at recycle places. It saved me a whole lot of bending (which kills my back) and a lot of lifting. Her help was hugely appreciated!

 

Tonight is THE night, ha, ha! I am going to set two or three mouse traps (which is how I started out about 6 months ago, but I caught nothing). I absolutely dread going downstairs tomorrow morning, in case the traps have caught something. If they were successful, friends are coming over straight away to remove it/them for me!! I just hope I don't hear the snap of a trap or any squealing!!!

Terranora Creek image captured near Scales Fish and Chips Shop.

Many thanks to all my Flickr photo stream followers I have now more than one million views, thank you. Thanks for viewing my photos and for any favourites and comments, it is very much appreciated.

 

My Blog: www.alldigi.com

 

This image has been captured with a Nikon D810 camera and

Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.

  

Model "Truck T13” is a fully brick build motorized and Infra Red remote controlled scale model resembling a Aussie style Euro semi-truck. Powered by a V8 engine with a displacement of 14.0 L with horsepower range from 400 up to 500. The truck’s modelled engine together with both front and rear axles, steps, air cylinders, battery box, fuel tanks and all electronic components are mounted to its realistic ladder frame.

 

This modelled engine is given its realistic looks with detailes such as: engine oil dipstick, fan, fan belt, pulleys, hoses, oil filters and a turbo. Together with much more engine bay details which are added the looks are phenomenal. These include break fluid reservoir, by-pass oil filter, windshield washer container and steering shaft.

 

Even more details are to be found in the drivers cabin. By opening the cabin doors one can can take a closer look. For the driver's comfort the interior has gauges, switches and comfortable seats. Other details are a angled dash and gauge panel, a steering wheel and a gear shift.

 

You could build it yourself too. Building instructions and inventory/parts list are available!

 

The truck’s features:

- solid front axle suspension

- tandem bogie rear axle suspension

- differentials for smooth cornering

- servo motor steering

- fully functional fifth wheel

- modeled engine

- detailed cabin interior

- realistic ladder frame

 

This photo was taken in the butterfly house at Jimmy's Farm at Wherstead, Suffolk.

 

Hypolimnas bolina, the great eggfly, common eggfly, varied eggfly or in New Zealand the blue moon butterfly is found in Madagascar in the west, through to South and Southeast Asia, Cambodia, the South Pacific islands (French Polynesia, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa and Vanuatu), and occurs in parts of Australia as far south as Victoria during summer and autumn, Japan, and New Zealand. Appearances in New Zealand appear to be linked with favourable winds during April to June migratory periods in Australia, with the butterfly being recorded in 1956, 1971 and 1995. No populations have established locally in New Zealand.

The blue moon is a generally common butterfly across most tropical and sub-tropical habitat types, including wet and dry woodland, such as tropical savanna, rainforest and shrubland. It is a common visitor to suburban gardens. In the Australian tropics, the butterfly is particularly common along tracks, streambeds and the corridors formed between cultivated sugar cane fields.

The wingspan is of about 2.8 to3.3 in. (70 to 85 mm). The dorsal wing surface is jet black but features three prominent spots, two on the forewing and one on the hindwing. These appear as white spots fringed with blue-violet, hey actually consist of a white centre overlain by bright ultraviolet iridescence, a colour generated by nanostructures on the wing scale surface. Numerous smaller white spots fringe the fore and hindwings. The ventral surface lacks any ultraviolet iridescence and consists essentially of banded white markings set against a brownish background.

♦ Instructions available at Rebrickable ♦

 

"This is where the fun begins!"

 

My latest ship from the Prequel Trilogy has arrived, and it surely was a lot of fun to make: here's Obi Wan's Eta-2 Actis Interceptor from Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars.

 

This small unit consists of 281 pieces (stand included), and has one major feature: true Minifig scale!

 

There's a handful of beautiful MOCs of this ship out there already, but most of them are based on the huge cockpit piece from the playsets, so they're drastically oversized. So here I am with a, dare I say, more accurately scaled version.

 

It does come with a drawback, you guessed it: you can't put a fig inside. A bit ironic I know, but I chose to go for a brick-built cockpit in order to get as close to the original design as I could, prioritizing accuracy over playability, as usual.

 

The wings were pretty challenging given the ridiculously small scale, and my goal was to have them as thin as possible without compromising the SNOT look.

 

I'm quite happy with the result and I think this makes a nice little display piece. It's also very swooshable despite the intricate wing design.

 

I'm usually not a fan of stickers, but I thought this one deserved some sweet markings. I used the sticker sheet from the playset - it is included in the parts list. The color scheme can be changed to red with only a few part swaps (see last page in the instructions).

 

► Instructions for the Eta-2 Actis Interceptor are available at Rebrickable!

A mini-fig scale dumpster I made a few years ago. I reworked the base and connections since there's been an upsurge in SNOT parts the past few years. I've also included instructions since a lot of people have requested them.

 

www.BruceLowell.com

...... a first birthday cake made in the shape of a cupcake. (A normal size cupcake is beside it for scale!)

 

With apologies to Debbie Brown for making a real mess of her design!

(This was meant to be made in a brioche tin which I didn't have, so I had to carve it. The fondant was impossible to get smooth and things just went downhill from then on! Oh well, I'm sure Sophie will love it, and it's going to be eaten anyway ... so why worry??? After all, it's the thought that counts !!! )

  

Made Explore 22.09.07 ...... and I've just realised this is my 500th flickr photo!

Awe's original design was quite close to the 1:40 scale I build most of my minifig-scale models in, so it worked out great. It's for sure one of the best MiG-21 models in Lego, so go check it out on his photostream!

(317/365) Best viewed Large. This is one of 5 wooden "plaques" that hang in our kitchen. Each one is unique, about 18" square & handmade many years ago by a good friend of Martin's in Shropshire, England. Each model took weeks if not months to craft. This one depicts an old fashioned "Fruit & Veg" shop.

 

If you view Large you can see more detail. Check out the price of "Tea & sympathy" on the right hand chalkboard! All the breads & cheeses on the shelves & vegetables in the boxes are modeled individually from clay & hand painted. The scales do actually move. It needs a good dust but I think the dust makes it look more authentic (that's my excuse & I'm sticking to it). The missing apostrophe on Martin's name does annoy me but I've so far resisted drawing one in.

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.

 

It is the day after Lettice’s exclusive buffet supper party for two of her Embassy Club coterie of bright young things who are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. The soirée in their honour was a glittering success and will go down as one of the events of the 1921 London Season according to the Tattler’s society pages correspondent who busily scribbled notes about all the great and good of the land who were present and what they were wearing, whilst a photographer from the London magazine captured the guests in all their glittering finery.

 

The day has been spent setting the Mayfair flat back to rights and Lettice’s maid, Edith, with the help of Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman* and one of Mrs. Boothby’s friends, Jackie, have swept and polished, scrubbed and cleaned, whilst Gunter and Company’s** men have restored the furnishings to where they were before the drawing room was turned into a ballroom and the dining room into a buffet.

 

It's after midnight in the up-to-date modern kitchen and silence envelops the flat. Outside only the occasional drone of a taxi dropping late night revellers home, or the hiss of two fighting cats somewhere on the moonlight rooftops outside breaks the evening quiet. Edith has washed all the glasses, crockery and silverware from dinner and after such a busy day of work she should be tired and sleeping soundly like Lettice is, but instead she is still full of excitement from the previous evening as she sits at the deal kitchen table and thinks about all the beautiful people to whom she served drinks.

 

Her mistress looked beautiful in a powder blue silk georgette gown designed by her childhood friend Gerald Bruton who has his own dress shop in Grosvenor Street. Margot wore a stunning low waisted gown of silver satin. However, it was another guest at the party, Lady Diana Cooper *** who really caught Edith’s eye. With a neat, short chignon of waves and curls woven around a bandeau of diamonds, she wore a stunning blue gown of layer upon diaphanous layer of handkerchief point Lanvin blue silk taffeta which Edith knows from her mistress’ cast-off fashion magazines to be a ‘robe de style’**** with a full skirt supported by a wire hoop underneath the fabric. Pinned to the waist was a large pink satin rose with a slightly smaller one sewn to the right shoulder.

 

“Oh,” Edith sighs as she picks up a jam fancy biscuit from the Delftware plate in front of her and takes a bite. “How I should love to be reminded of that gown forever.”

 

As she munches on the biscuit and takes a sip of tea from her teacup, Edith suddenly has an idea. One of her pleasures in her spare time is to collect articles on the latest styles of clothes and hair from Lettice’s old magazines and paste them into scrapbooks. Her current scrapbook has a blank first page which she has kept for something special. Now she knows what that something special is.

 

Slipping quietly out into the drawing room of the flat, Edith fossicks carefully through the Chippendale gilded black japanned chinoiserie cabinet next to the fireplace and withdraws her mistress’ box of watercolours which she takes back to the kitchen. Going into her own little bedroom off the kitchen she withdraws a pack of coloured pencils from her chest of drawers and snatches up her scrapbook from its surface where it sits upright behind her sewing box, leaning against the floral papered wall. Returning to the kitchen she sets everything out on the table.

 

“Come on now girl,” Edith mutters encouragingly to herself as she takes up a grey lead pencil. “Let’s put that memory of yours to the test and see if we can’t get it out on paper.”

 

The pencil tip scratches across the paper as Edith’s hand moves deftly over the page. She starts to hum ‘After the Ball is Over’*****. Soon the figure of a woman emerges on the page with a short chignon dancing gaily with one arm out and another crossed over her chest. The room remains silent except for the tick of the clock, Edith’s soft humming and the sound of pencil against paper as the dress quickly takes form, with its cascades of layers billowing out over the model’s legs, the gown daringly showing her calves, just as Viscountess Norwich had when she danced with her handsome husband and other friends at the party.

 

“Not bad,” Edith says as she finishes her sketch. “Not bad at all. Now for some colour.”

 

She goes to the kitchen cupboard where she keeps the old Victorian jugs that Lettice uses for water when she is doing watercolour sketching and withdraws the smallest jug. Filling it with some water she goes back to her seat. She looks guiltily at her mistress’ watercolours resting atop the scrapbook.

 

“Well,” Edith reasons. “My schoolteachers all said I had artistic flair.” She sighs. “And if I were as lucky as Miss Lettice, I’d have had a tutor to teach me art, or maybe even have gone to the Slade School of Fine Art. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me using her paints just this one time.”

 

She releases a sigh of pleasure as she mixes the vibrant robin’s egg blue shade of the gown and begins to paint her sketched figure. The colour lightens as she reaches the hem, matching the stockings on her model. Adding more colour to the pool of blue she then defines the shoes. Rinsing the brush in the jug she waits until the blue paint is dry before adding the rose madder of the silk rose on the shoulder and sleeve, and blonde hair to match her own shade to her figure. Making notes about Lettice’s party in the margins around the edge of her picture, Edith waits until the watercolour is dry. Taking up her colour pencils she adds detail, highlights of colour and shading to her sketch, totally oblivious of the time as the hands on the kitchen clock pass one o’clock, all the while humming happily away.

 

“There!” Edith remarks at last, satisfied with her creation. “Perhaps I could give Mr. Bruton a run for his money.” She chuckles to herself at the thought. “Now I shall have Lady Cooper’s gown forever.”

 

As she starts to pack up the watercolours, pencils, sketchbook and tea things she continues to hum ‘After the Ball is Over’, her body swaying to the tune as she imagines herself dancing at a party in the beautiful gown she had just created from memory on paper.

 

*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.

 

**Gunter and Company were London caterers and ball furnishers with shops in Berkley Square, Sloane Street, Lowndes Street and New Bond Street. They began as Gunter’s Tea Shop at 7 and 8 Berley Square 1757 where it remained until 1956 as the business grew and opened different premises. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Gunter's became a fashionable light eatery in Mayfair, notable for its ices and sorbets. Gunter's was considered to be the wedding cake makers du jour and in 1889, made the bride cake for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Louise of Wales. Even after the tea shop finally closed, the catering business carried on until the mid 1970s.

 

***Born Lady Diana Manners, Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich was an English aristocrat who was a famously glamorous social figure in London and Paris. As a young woman, she moved in a celebrated group of intellectuals known as the Coterie, most of whom were killed in the First World War. She married Duff Cooper in 1919. In her prime, she had the widespread reputation as the most beautiful young woman in England, and appeared in countless profiles, photographs and articles in newspapers and magazines. She was a film actress in the early 1920s and both she and her husband were very good friends with Edward VIII and were guests of his on a 1936 yacht cruise of the Adriatic which famously caused his affair with Wallis Simpson to become public knowledge.

 

****The ‘robe de style’ was introduced by French couturier Jeanne Lanvin around 1915. It consisted of a basque bodice with a broad neckline and an oval bouffant skirt supported by built in wire hoops. Reminiscent of the Spanish infanta-style dresses of the Seventeenth Century and the panniered robe à la française of the Eighteenth Century they were made of fabric in a solid colour, particularly a deep shade of robin’s egg blue which became known as Lanvin blue, and were ornamented with concentrated bursts of embroidery, ribbons or ornamental silk flowers.

 

*****’After the Ball is Over’ was a popular 1891 song written by Charles K. Harris.

 

Believe it or not Edith’s sketch and her scrapbook as well as all the items around them are perhaps not quite as they appear, for all of them are 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Edith’s scrapbook is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. 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! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but 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. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside this wonderful scrapbook from the 1920s which contains sketches, photographs and article clippings. Even the paper has been given the appearance of wrinkling as happens when glue is applied to cheap pulp paper. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this scrapbook, it contains twelve double sided pages of scrapbook articles, pictures, sketches and photographs and measures forty millimetres in height and thirty millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. 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. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

The watercolour paint set, brushes, and Limoges style jugs (two of a set of three) come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House. So too do the pencils, which are one millimetre wide and two centimetres long.

 

The Huntley and Palmer’s Family Circle Biscuits tin containing a replica selection of biscuits is also a 1:12 artisan piece. Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time. The design on the tin originates from the 1920s, but continued much later due to its popularity. The biscuits on the plate are 1:12 scale artisan pieces. The jam fancy is made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, whilst the chocolate chip biscuit has 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 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 Deftware cup, saucer and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which I acquired from a private collection of 1:12 miniatures in Holland.

The Old U.S. Customs House and Post Office, built 1873-1884, is an outstanding, little-altered, and now-rare example of an important type of monumental public architecture that was widely utilized by the United States Government in the post-Civil War period. Designed in the French Second Empire style by Alfred Bult Mullett, Master Architect & Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department from 1866 to 1874, the Old Post Office is one of the two surviving examples of Mullett's six essays in the Second Empire style for major monumentally-scaled Federal buildings. (The even larger & more ornate Executive Office Building (the former State, War and Navy Building) in Washington D.C., is the only other extant example of the six huge Federal buildings designed by Mullett in the Second Empire mode.) The Old Post Office also included in its original design & construction innovative applications of technology - prompted by the Chicago fire of 1871 - that were relatively new in the 1870's. These features included the use of predominately fire-resistant construction methods & materials; a circulating hot air heating system, separate elevators for people, mail, & freight, and direct access from the main basement to an underground railway tunnel for mail service. The Old Post Office superbly illustrates the type of large-scale and ornate Federal buildings that formerly stood in Boston, Cincinnati, New York City, & Philadelphia, as well as St. Louis, from the 1870's to the 1930's, and is the last surviving example of this group.

 

During its period of prime historical importance, March 1881 to November 1935, the Old Post Office was utilized chiefly as a Federal Courthouse & Post Office. The main basement & first floor were occupied by the Post Office Department; the third floor contained the courtroom & offices of the U.S. District Court; and the fourth floor had the offices of miscellaneous Federal officers - custom & internal revenue service, lighthouse & steamboat inspectors, and U.S. Army Engineers. The Federal Courts met for the last time in the Old Post Office in November 1935, when they were transferred to the new Federal structure at 12th & Market Streets in St. Louis. Other Federal offices were gradually removed from the building until only the Post Office remained to occupy about three-fourths of the first floor. The Post Office was scheduled to leave this structure in July 1970, and the building was then declared surplus property. It is unknown to me at this time what the use of this building is today.

 

The Old U.S. Customs House and Post Office was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on November 22, 1968 and also added to the list of National Historic Landmarks (NHL) on December 30, 1970. All of the information above was found on the original documents submitted to the NRHP (along with much more infomration) and can be viewed here:

npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/312eca96-78ae-4f45-88bd-b...

 

Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.

 

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11

 

The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the following link: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/

Some nautical themed miniatures I’ve made this year … and now it’s time to start working on Halloween stuff :-)

80's IT GIRL Bo Derek, star of Blake Edwards hit "10" is repainted and restyled by Noel Cruz for www.myfarrah.com. From the beginnings of a Fashion Royalty to the end result: BO... here are images as taken by Noel as he recreated her.

 

Bo Derek continues to act and is an animal rights activist. You can see her official web site at www.officialboderek.com.

 

From IMDB: She is a member of the California Horse Racing Board. Named envoy to Fight Animal Trafficking by the United States State Department. Has her own pampering pet care product company: "Bo Derek's Bless the Beasts", products in the range include numerous nourishing dog shampoos and conditioners, fragrances and fur polish.

 

Graphic Layout & web sites ncruz.com & myfarrah.com by www.stevemckinnis.com.

I captured this photo during a relaxed evening stroll on our recent family trip to Abu Dhabi. To the right, you'll notice the gleaming stainless steel centerpiece of the Founder's Memorial, while to the left, the impressive Etihad Towers loom large. The Founder's Memorial holds a special place as it pays homage to Sheikh Zayed, the UAE's founding father, and symbolizes his visionary aspirations for the nation—a dream of unity, progress, and prosperity. It's an iconic landmark in Abu Dhabi, widely recognized. What immediately drew my attention in this photograph was the enchanting play of light, and I was thrilled to have a tourist in the frame to offer a sense of scale to the monument.

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 kitchen, standing in front of Cook’s, great heavy dark wood dresser. It’s after eleven at night. Lord Southgate hosted a small dinner for some of the members from the House of Lords this evening: influential men whom he hopes to curry favour with in order to pass a private member’s bill regarding the city’s parks and gardens. Now that the dinner is done, the guests have left and the cleaning up done, Mrs. Bradley, known by most downstairs staff as Cook, can put her feet up and relax by the range. Cook has ordered her scullery maid Agnes to boil the kettle to make a pot of tea for her and warm some milk and make some coco for Agnes and the two housemaids Tilly and Sara. Suddenly her quiet reflection is broken by the shrill voice of Mrs. Blackheath the Housekeeper.

 

“Another candle! You were only given a candle last month! Do you think this house is made of money to furnish you with candles? I hope you girls aren’t reading those Penny Dreadfuls or anything else up there in your room!”

 

Cook opens her eyes gently and peers across to her dresser where Mrs. Blackheath, unkindly known as Mrs Blackheart by many of the lower staff, is placing candles into the servants’ candleholders that need replenishing. All the while she stares accusingly at her two charges Tilly and Sara, looking down her nose at them. Tonight, the Housekeeper is living up to her nasty nickname and Cook feels sorry for the two housemaids. Life in a big house like Wickham Place has little joy for maids, especially when you are under the care of such a penny-pinching woman as Mrs. Blackheath. Cook is glad that she is responsible for replenishing her own larder. When she must ask Mrs. Blackheath for items under her preserve, she is always questioned about her request, even when she asks for Sunlight Soap for washing or black lead for the range. Poor Tilly and Sara must share one candle between the two of them when they go up to their tiny bedroom up under the eaves of Wickham Place. Cook doubts that the young girls, bone tired after a day of hard graft, would have the energy to read a Penny Dreadful before going to sleep. However, Mrs. Blackheath keeps scrupulous records of stock in the house, down to every last candle end!

 

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. It has three shelves which are full of just a small selection of all the items used to prepare meals not only for Lord and Lady Southgate and their family, but for all the staff who run the London house. The dresser also has a pull out surface to put extra items on, such as the tea cups and Mrs. Blackheath’s box of candles.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “candle” was chosen by David, DaveSPN.

 

This tableaux is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood including the silver Victorian candlesticks and the 1:12 wax candle in the foreground, which I was given as part of my tenth birthday present and the two teapots which I bought from a specialist tea shop when I was in my mid teens. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures. There are also a few very special antique pieces on show here.

 

The shelves of the dresser are littered with a panoply of interesting everyday utensils and household brands that were used in the Edwardian era by houses large and small. Some have stood the test of time and are commonly recognised today, whereas others have not and are long forgotten.

 

The Victorian candlestick about to be filled for the maids is one of a pair which are artisan pieces of sterling silver made in England and are only 2 ½ centimetres in height and ½ a centimetre in width at the base. The brass candlesticks are the same height and are also artisan pieces made in England.

 

The box of Price’s Carriage Candles contains twelve artisan made wax candles like the one in front of the box and the two in the brass candles. The design of the box is Victorian. Price’s was established in 1830 and still exists today. They received the Royal Warrant to Queen Victoria after making Sherwood candles for her wedding. By 1900 they were the largest manufacturer of candles in the world, producing 130 differently named and specified sizes of candles. They supplied candles for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Phillip Mountbatten in 1947 and received the Royal Warrant of Queen Elizabeth II after supplying candles for her coronation in 1953.

 

The two floral teapots I acquired from a specialist high street tea shop when I was a teenager. I have five of them and each one is a different shape and has a different design. I love them, and what I also love is that over time they have developed their own crazing in the glaze, which I think adds a nice touch of authenticity.

 

The Art Nouveau brass cup on the left-hand side of the dresser’s workbench and the silver Art Nouveau cup, plates and funnel on the first shelf are dolls’ house miniatures from Germany, made in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. They are beautiful works of art as stand alone items, and are remarkably heavy.

 

The Macfarlane Lang & Co. Imperial Assorted biscuit tin is a 1:12 specialist miniature. The tin design is Edwardian. Macfarlane Lang and Company began as Lang’s bakery in 1817, before becoming MacFarlane Lang in 1841. The first biscuit factory opened in 1886 and changed its name to MacFarlane Lang & Co. in the same year. The business then opened a factory in Fulham, London in 1903, and in 1904 became MacFarlane Lang & Co. Ltd. In 1948 it formed United Biscuits Ltd. along with McVitie and Price.

 

Next to the Macfarlane Lang & Co. Imperial Assorted biscuit tin is a Cornishware white and blue cannister. 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 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.

 

The Elkay Dutch Cocoa for Agnes, Tilly and Sara was an American brand which originated in Chicago. The Elkay Company still exists today, but no longer produce cocoa, or any foodstuffs. The label of the cocoa jar features a steaming cup of hot cocoa and a purity testimonial. Drinking coco before bed was often a blissful reprieve at the end of the day from the daily grind for many housemaids, scullery maids and other downstairs staff alike if you read some of the histories of domestic service that have been recorded.

 

The three artisan 1:12 miniature preserve jars on the right-hand side of the dresser’s work bench contain seeds, herbs and preserved lemons. I have many others in my collection including preserved nuts, apples, sweets and even cannisters of 1:12 size biscuits!

 

The little white jug next to the teapot in the far right of the photo is mid Victorian and would once have been part of a doll’s tea service. It is Parian Ware. Parian Ware is a type of biscuit porcelain imitating marble. It was developed around 1845 by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons, and named after Paros, the Greek island renowned for its fine-textured, white Parian marble, used since antiquity for sculpture.

 

On the first shelf of the dresser on the left-hand side you will see two jars of marmalade. Golden Shred orange marmalade and Silver Shred lime marmalade still exist today and are common household brands 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 Silver Shred is a clear, tangy, lemon flavoured shredded marmalade. Robertson\'s marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.

 

Bird’s Custard is also a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange mix next to the jars of marmalade. I actually ate Bird’s blancmange regularly as a child, and I still occasionally make blancmange from scratch as a treat dessert every now and then. It is quite old fashioned, and most people today have never heard of it. It was usually a nursery food or an invalid’s food as it is soft and uses milk as its main ingredient. It is quite gelatinous and is not unlike junket so it is easy to swallow. Edwardians had a fascination with gelatinous foods, with most dinners having at least one course at luncheon or dinner containing something suspended in aspic (an early version of jelly) and a jelly dessert. Edwardians were all about show, and to show food suspended in aspic became quite an art form, especially in the big hotels and grand restaurants of England and Europe. Bird\'s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird\'s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

The little hand-painted dish on the first shelf, the dishes on the first shelf and the cups on the dresser’s work space were all acquired from specialist 1:12 artisans. All are hand-made, and this is most noticeable in the fine painting of the bowl, and the irregularity of the plates’ edges. In Victorian and Edwardian times up to the Second World War when domestic staff were still common, the staff would never have eaten off the crockery of their betters. Household staff crockery was usually plain white and would be what we would call everyday ware. It was cheap, mass manufactured pottery and more serviceable, whereas the master and mistress ate off fine porcelain which was often beautifully decorated and gilt. Cook has a slightly better blue and white Willowware cup and saucer as she was an upper member of the staff along with the Butler and Housekeeper. Maids, footmen, scullery staff, gardeners and boot boys were lower staff and would have had ordinary staff crockery.

Today was Farrah Fawcett's Birthday! Born on Feb 2nd, 1947. As a life long fan and admirer I was fortunate enough to meet Fawcett at the Museum of Art in LA (LACMA).

 

Gracious and sweet. It was, truly, something I will never forget.

 

myfarrah.com/ and this Flickr account originated from that "fandom," and continues to this day.

 

I was also fortunate enough to meet and become friends with a phenomenal artist, Noel Cruz, who has repainted and restyled many Fawcett's since 2012 and I'm forever grateful to him as well for supporting my madness.

 

Farrah is wearing a Shantommo fashion (shantommo.com/) and photographed in a diorama by the now retired Ken Haseltine.

 

Photo by Steve McKinnis of stevemckinnis.com.

 

See more at 1sixth.co/ & 1sixthworld.com/. Books available on Blurb (www.blurb.com/b/9282662-1sixth) . a variety of issues are available on blurb as well as on iTunes and Apple books at: itunes.apple.com/us/book/id14… Visit www.1sixth.co

  

These are all hand made n scale city models made by myself, painted, aged weathered etc. Some still need some minor tuning and lights to be added.

 

I finished my CMR (Custom Model Railroads) Gas and Electric Building in N scale last night. I took some of my older styled buildings and group them on the top of my stove in a mock set up. I really like how this building looks with the others.

 

I've still got so many models to build still but I'm excited how these older styled buildings look in a mock set up. I'm still a very long ways away from starting my train layout.

 

I think The Gas and Electric Building is one of my favorites. :D

 

Cheers

The bunker at Devil's Slide, an old World War II spotting station, used to triangulate advancing enemy ships for the six-guns further up the coast. It never ended up having to sound the alarm. Once part of a bigger complex of buildings, now it is exposed and eroded, creating a bizarre monument along the Pacific Coast Highway.

 

A few peeps in the cliff top for scale.

Today, I show you a MOC I made for a Commission. It’s a bank truck made for Ant Bandit who makes a brick movie for DC Kids and The LEGO company. It was a cool experience !! :D

 

It’s a classic Bink Truck with the dark blue and white colors. It’s mining scale and a minifig can fit inside. The inside is a little detailed but not as my previous MOCs. It was not the deal here.

 

I hope you enjoy this MOC and the video! Let me know in comment what you think about, if you want more information about or if you have advice ! Put a thumb up if you like it and don’t forget to subscribe to to the channel to stay tuned ! See you soon ! By !

 

Showcase video :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FrS24OjaY&feature=youtu.be&...

 

DC Kids video :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdf6...

 

Ant bandit Channel :

www.youtube.com/user/Ajnies807

 

PDF Instructions and Part list available on Rebrickable :

rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-5380...

 

It's real! After completing my digital model, I couldn't resist to build it with actual bricks straight away.

The model is accurate to minifig scale, but I was still blown away at how massive it is in real life. I changed the colour scheme to red because of part limitations, so once everything is available in yellow there will be some updates:)

CREDIT for some of the cockpit detailing goes to BakerBricks on Eurobricks: www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/182388-m...

--

model info:

Length: 56 cm / 22 in

Width: 24 cm / 9,5 in

Parts: ca.1340

Mariah Carey in the Regent Miniature Mansion by Ken Haseltine with Santa.

 

As repainted and restyled by Noel Cruz. More repainted art by Noel Cruz is featured in the 1Sixth Winter Hardbound Edition available in Hardback/imagewrap or paperback cover. Also as a PDF or eBook. Order here: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth

 

eBook: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth?ebook=690084

 

Photos by Steve McKinnis of stevemckinnis.com

 

Countdown to Christmas is available as a book/pdf at www.blurb.com/ebooks/pc9227a5b507c417297c7 and as a magazine at www.blurb.com/b/11010810-countdown-to-christmas.

 

About the Ebook

 

As a self-challenge for December 2021 a photo was taken every day up to Christmas Day (sometimes multiple photos a day) featuring 1/6 scale dioramas, Elf on the Shelf and Santa to celebrate the upcoming holiday. For any collector of smaller scaled items this is a must for any fan of Christmas in general.

Birds with scales

 

Although this may come as a surprise to you, but birds also have scales, they just don’t cover the entire body. A bird’s main characteristics is its feathers, which cover the entire body but the legs. A bird’s legs are covered by keratine-formed scales. Depending on the species, these scales can be found on the fingers and tarsals, or they can extend to the ankle joint, whereby the whole leg is covered with scales.

 

Woodpecker

 

Under the name woodpecker you can find several bird species order Piciformes. These birds can be found all over the world, known for their characteristic beak, which they use to drill holes into wood to feed. Like other birds, a Woodpecker’s legs are covered in overlapping scales.

 

Fun fact: they have long sticky tongues which they use to extract food from tree trunks.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin

 

Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,723,914 (2018) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and contiguous with its capital, Potsdam. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which is, with 6,004,857 (2015) inhabitants and an area of 30,370 square km, Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.

 

Berlin straddles the banks of the River Spree, which flows into the River Havel (a tributary of the River Elbe) in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the Spree, Havel, and Dahme rivers (the largest of which is Lake Müggelsee). Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes. The city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects.

 

First documented in the 13th century and situated at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417–1701), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), and the Third Reich (1933–1945). Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the city was divided; West Berlin became a de facto West German exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961–1989) and East German territory. East Berlin was declared capital of East Germany, while Bonn became the West German capital. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany.

 

Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics.

 

Berlin is home to world-renowned universities, orchestras, museums, and entertainment venues, and is host to many sporting events. Its Zoological Garden is the most visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. With the world's oldest large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an increasingly popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts and a very high quality of living. Since the 2000s Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene.

 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unter_den_Linden

 

Unter den Linden (German: "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime) trees that line the grassed pedestrian mall on the median and the two broad carriageways. The avenue links numerous Berlin sights and landmarks and rivers for sight-seeing.

Jill Munroe aka Farrah Fawcett then Majors (version 1.0). Farrah as painted, styled by artist Cruz for www.myfarrah.com. Farrah is wearing a Fashion Royalty fashion and Red Heels from the Christian Louboutin Barbie® Shoe Collection in a Regent Miniatures diorama by Ken Haseltine.

 

Farrah is on facebook www.facebook.com/FLFawcett

 

On Tumblr at; farrahlenifawcett.tumblr.com

 

Photo/Graphic Layout & web sites www.ncruz.com & www.myfarrah.com by www.stevemckinnis.com.

Kiss? Whose to say... (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television) Nichelle Nichols as Uhura ushered in Star Trek from Desilu Studios that began the enormous Star Trek Chain of creator Gene Rodenberry.

 

Nichelle is repainted and restyled by Noel Cruz of ncruz.com for myfarrah.com. Also featured is William Shatner as Captain Kirk by Quantum Mechanix at qmxonline.com. You can currently pre-order Scotty via SIdeshow Toy (and some of the other Star Trek figures) at www.sideshowtoy.com/collectibles... Still to come are Sulu. No release date set yet from Quantum. Star Trek Diorama by Ken Haseltine.

 

For more about Nichelle Nichols visit her web site www.uhura.com/

and on IMDB: www.imdb.com/name/nm0629667/ and as featured on Comedy Central's Drunk History www.cc.com/video-clips/b5ir47/drunk-history-nichelle-nich...

 

Farrah is on facebook www.facebook.com/FLFawcett. On Tumblr at; farrahlenifawcett.tumblr.com. Join Farrah on Instagram at www.instagram.com/farrahlfawcett. On pinterest at www.pinterest.com/myfarrah/

 

Photo/Graphic Layout & web sites ncruz.com & myfarrah.com by www.stevemckinnis.com.

This year's SHIPtember was GREAT!!!

 

Took on the challenge to do three SHIP's at three different scales: micro, minifig and miniland. It was fun to do once...

 

Kudos to everyone who took part this year! It's rad watching all the SHIP's come together and all the originality out there! As I look at the SHIP's, I'm constantly thinking "why didn't I think of that!?" Well done everyone!

Chatsworth - Grounds and Gardens.

 

Rock Garden & Strid

 

The Rockery was built as a reminder of the 6th Duke’s visit to the Alps during the Grand Tour of Europe. Work began in 1842 and the stone was brought from Dobb Edge, north of Stand Wood. The largest construction, the Wellington Rock, is nearly 14m high and has a waterfall running down it. There is a maze of paths threading round and beneath the rocks.

 

Work also began in 1842 on the excavation of the ‘Bolton Stride’ or Strid – a narrow chasm, filled with a rushing watercourse and surrounded by further rockwork. This was based on a real feature - a chasm cut by the River Wharfe - on the Duke’s Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire. The surrounding rocks were planted with wild currants, bilberries and other plants brought from Bolton Abbey.

 

In 2002-3, partial restoration was undertaken on the much collapsed higher rockery. At the same time a platform was established with views extending west across the Strid, over the Ring Pond and Serpentine Hedge, into the Park beyond.

 

In 2007, the present Duchess planted a collection of dark or black flowers in a border called the Dark Side, at the northern entrance to the Rock Garden.

 

www.chatsworth.org/attractions-and-events/garden/about-th...

  

The Rockeries and The Strid: in 1842 Paxton began work on a rockery of a gargantuan scale, piling rocks weighing several tons one on top of another. One of them was described thus by Lord Desart in the 1860s: "In one place a sort of miniature Matterhorn apparently blocked the path but with the touch of the finger it revolved on a metal axis and made a way to pass." It is now locked in place to comply with health and safety regulations. Another rock is so balanced that it can be swayed with little pressure. Two rocks are named for the Queen and Prince Albert, and another for the Duke of Wellington, all of whom visited Chatsworth in the 6th Duke's time. The Wellington Rock, a construction of several rocks piled on top of each other, is 45 feet (14 m) high and a small waterfall drips over it into a pond. Sometimes in the winter the water freezes creating icicles. The water flows into a pond created by Paxton called 'The Strid', which is named after a stretch of the River Wharfe on the Devonshires' Bolton Abbey estate, where the river is compressed into a turbulent chasm just a yard wide. Chatsworth's Strid is a placid stretch of water fringed with rocks and luxuriant vegetation and crossed by a rustic bridge.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House

I took yesterday off from my model but today I painted the window ledges on the facade pieces. I photographed some of the wall sections I did tonight. It took me about 3 hours to do this. So that's all I got done tonight on my model. :D

It's really coming together now!! I have made 3 separate orders for this build and have exhausted the first two with the third still somewhere in the mail. This thing is taking a ridiculous amount of bricks but man it's gonna be worth it. I think the wing needs to be about 6 studs taller but maybe a smidge more. Once I get my last order of bricks I'll of course experiment and go from there. I also threw in a storm trooper at the bottom to show the scale of this thing. I have also tested it with the wing extended and it works... kind of. There is a little bit of bending in the wing but I have some 1x16 bricks coming that will hopefully alleviate that. However, I had a mishap with ordering parts and they won't actually be here for a while... no Imperial march for me :(. Oh well though I'm still excited for this one to be done, whats a few more weeks lol.

Hey! Long time since my last post!

 

This is a (close to) minifig scale of the King's Row payload from the videogame Overwatch.

 

This model was built YEARS ago and I mean years. I didn't mean to hide it for so long but the plans I had for it are still not happening.

I wanted to post it to show some more "recent" level of my work, that my skill is more than just mechs and a few cute animals.

 

I'm actually traveling shortly, like several hours from posting this, for an exciting experience that I hope to share more about later.

So I'm posting this last minute for myself to show off to some hopefully new friends who might be looking.

  

Instagram: @buildingwithbuck

I'd like to wish all my Flickr friends and followers a very happy Saint Valentine's Day. May you spend at least some of the day with those you love. It's not about chocolates, flowers or cards, but about the connection of hearts, minds and spirits.

 

Valentine's Day cards are often sent anonymously, giving the recipient the excitement of wondering who the sender may be. The tradition of sending cards or postcards to loved ones on Valentine's Day goes back hundreds of years and the very first cards were handmade and designed with a special valentine in mind.

 

This Valentine's Day postcard by an anonymous artist features Jack and the Beanstalk. With a cherubic face, blue eyes and a halo of golden hair, Jack is the epitome of Victorian and pre-war Edwardian childhood innocence.

Dressed smartly in a Tudor inspired outfit, he scales the beanstalk.

 

The card reads:

 

"Jack climbed the stalk,

But not for gold,

As stated in the rhyme of old,

'Twas for your heart,

More precious far,

Than gold or even jewels are."

 

Printed in Bavaria, for Ernest Nister of London and E.P. Dutton and Co. of New York, this card pre-dates the Great War. Prior to the First World War, it was common for British firms to have cards printed in Germany, Austria and Bavaria because their printing presses produced far better quality illustrations. This Valentine's Day card is number 3130 and features a small amount of gilding.

 

Although as stated earlier, Valentine's Day cards are usually anonymous, this card was given to Theodore from his Aunt Claire.

Humayun's tomb (Urdu: ہمایوں کا مقبرہ Humayun ka Maqbara) is the tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun. The tomb was commissioned by Humayun's wife Hamida Banu Begum in 1562 AD, and designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyath, a Persian architect.It was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent, and is located in Nizamuddin East, Delhi, India, close to the Dina-panah citadel also known as Purana Qila, that Humayun founded in 1533. It was also the first structure to use red sandstone at such a scale The tomb was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and since then has undergone extensive restoration work, which is still underway. Besides the main tomb enclosure of Humayun, several smaller monuments dot the pathway leading up to it, from the main entrance in the West, including one that even pre-dates the main tomb itself, by twenty years; it is the tomb complex of Isa Khan Niyazi, an Afghan noble in Sher Shah Suri's court of the Suri dynasty, who fought against the Mughals, constructed in 1547.

It's quite hard to understand the scale of the artwork that covers the inside of the Markthal in Rotterdam. This shot makes it particularly difficult given the lack of anything of a known scale but here the intention was to try and capture as much of it as possible in a single shot.

 

Click here to see more of my shots from Rotterdam :

www.flickr.com/photos/darrellg/albums/72157700872931264

 

From Wikipedia : "The Markthal (English: Market Hall) is a residential and office building with a market hall underneath, located in Rotterdam. The building was opened on October 1, 2014, by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. Besides the large market hall, the complex houses 228 apartments, 4600 m2 retail space, 1600 m2 horeca and an underground 4-storey parking garage with a capacity of 1200+ cars.......

 

The inside of the building is adorned with an 11.000 m2 artwork by Arno Coenen, named Hoorn des Overvloeds (Horn of Plenty). The artwork shows strongly enlarged fruits, vegetables, seeds, fish, flowers and insects.

 

The artwork of Coenen was selected out of 9 international candidates. The work was made using digital 3D-techniques. This enormous file of 1,47 terabytes needed special servers, these are also used by Pixar Studios for making animated movies. The digital 3D-animation was separated in 4000 pieces and then printed on perforated aluminum panels. The 4000 aluminum panels are now on the inside of the hall. Right after the opening in 2014, the artwork got a lot of attention from around the world. Some called it The largest artwork in the world or The Sistine Chapel of Rotterdam."

 

My Website : Twitter : Facebook : Instagram : Photocrowd

 

© D.Godliman

Tangled is my most favorite Disney animated movie so I built Rapunzel's tower. There is only enough space for one small room. I made it to be play scale, so it is much smaller than the interior of the movie. This is as far I will make digitally for now, and I'm planning to build it in real life with a more detailed interior.

Mariah Carey in a Barbie Fashion in the Regent Miniature Mansion by Ken Haseltine is counting down the days.

 

1/6 Scale Flickering Fire Blocks by Playscale Furnishings in Australia on Etsy at : www.etsy.com/shop/PlayscaleFurnishings.

 

As repainted and restyled by Noel Cruz. More repainted art by Noel Cruz is featured in the 1Sixth Winter Hardbound Edition available in Hardback/imagewrap or paperback cover. Also as a PDF or eBook. Order here: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth

 

eBook: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth?ebook=690084

 

Photos by Steve McKinnis of stevemckinnis.com

 

The story of Zircon Crystals and Earth's age in a Nutshell.

 

How tiny Zircon Crystals - Zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4) helped determine the age of the Earth (at approximately 4.5 Billion years old since the crust cooled), with Radiometric U-Pb (Uranium-Lead) dating.

 

Zircon Crystals trap Uranium Atoms in its crystal structure and naturally repel Lead Atoms when the crystal forms. Once the crystal structure is formed, nothing is able to escape. Over time the isotopes of Uranium start to transmutate into other elements in a process that is referred to as a decay chain.

 

An Uranium Atom first transmutates into a Thorium Atom (which takes a few billion years). Thorium is far more unstable, and in less than a month it turns into Protactinium. Within a minute Protactinium Atoms transmute again, and so the transmutation continues down the decay chain. At the end of the radioactive decay chain, the initial trapped Uranium Atoms finally decays into stable Lead (Pb) Atoms, which will remain Lead forever. The decay rate and time associated with each transmutation is constant in the Universe, which makes it possible to calculate the age of the crystal with Radiometric dating.

 

As Zircon Crystals are tough, it is the oldest geological time-capsules that survived in Earth's dynamic and ever-changing crust since it cooled. As nothing can get in or out of the Zircon Crystal structure, it is the most accurate way of geological dating.

 

By comparing the Uranium to Lead ratio in Zirconium silicate crystals on Earth, from Moon samples and from visiting Meteorites, Scientists were able to calculate that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. The error margin is 50 million years, which is small considering the time-scale.

 

The background history of Radiometric dating:

In 1896 Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie discovered that certain isotopes undergo spontaneous radioactive decay, transforming into new isotopes. Atoms of a parent radioactive isotope randomly decay into a daughter isotope. Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry for her work.

 

About Lead:

The spin-off from trying to date the Earth by finding the Uranium to Lead ratio in Zircon crystals, was that the Scientist Clair Patterson discovered the unusually high amount of toxic Lead in the environment when he tried to analyse the Zircon in a Mass Spectrometer. This was due to the widespread use of Lead-based fuel, Lead-based paint, etc.

 

Our bodies require metals like Iron in the blood to transfer Oxygen through the body. The body is fooled and assumes that Lead is a good metal, but Lead not only destroys cells, but also blocks the signals of Neuroreceptors in the Brain.

 

After a lifetime of persistence and mounting evidence, Clair Patterson eventually won the case against the large Oil Companies that tried to discredit his findings. Since then the widespread use of Lead in everyday products were banned (which is why we now use unleaded fuel to power our vehicles).

 

Interesting reading:

More about isotopes and the Radiometric dating process.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_lead_dating

earthsky.org/earth/this-zircon-crystal-is-the-oldest-piec...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain

 

Thank you to Sumarie for letting photograph her beautiful Zircon Crystal specimen.

 

Photo usage and Copyright:

Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.

 

Martin

-

[Home Page] [Photography Showcase] [eBook] [Twitter]

[Facebook] [3D VFX & Mocap] [Science & Physics Page]

 

North Chapel. Large Baroque Monument Reaching from Floor to Ceiling,

On a scale more fitting for Westminster Abbey! Probably by John Nost. Central Pedestal, surmounted by an Urn,Drapes held up by two Putti. Sir John Banks stands on the left , bewigged in a semi Roman costume, a pensive Lady Banks, opposite him, and son, Caleb lying between them, propped up on a cushion, also bewigged and in Roman costume.

 

THE BANKS MONUMENT IN THE NORTH CHAPEL, 1700

MEMORIAE SACRUM

HINC FELICEM EXPECTANT RESURRECTIOREM

JOHANNES BANKS DE AYLESFORD IN COMITATU CANTII BARONETT

UXOR ETIAM EJUS ELIZABETHA, JOHANNIS DETHICK MILITIS

COMITATU NORFOLCIAE OBIN PRAETORIS LONDINENSIS FILIA

NECON FILIUS UTRIUS QUE COMMUNIS CALEB BANKS

MARITUS QUIDEM SED LIBERIS ORBATUS

HIC PRAETEREA NATI SUNT LIBERI QUATUAR

MARTHA,ELIZABETHA ET MARIAM, MARTHA ET JOHANNES EXTINCTUS

QUORUM ALTERA NEMPE ELIZABETHA NUPTA FUIT

HENEAGIO FINCH, HENEAGII COMITIS NOTTINGHAMIAE

SUMUA ANGLIAE CONCELARII FILIO NATU SECUNDO

AUS PICIIS SERENISSIMAE REGINAE ANNAE BARONI DE GERNSEY

MARIA VERO JOHANI SAVILL, JOHANNIS DE METHLEY

IN COMITATU EBORACENSI ARMIGERI FILIO PRIMOGENITO

EXUVIAS DEPOSUERUNT

CALEB BANKS SEPBRIS 13 ANO 1696 AETATIS 37

ELIZABETHA OCTBRIS 21 ANO 1696 AETATUS 59

JOHANNES OCTBRIS 18 ANO 1699 AETATIS 72

Sir John Banks, Baronet, died 1699, born in Maidstone 1627, the son of a prosperous Woollen Draper and former Mayor, he was a Merchant and Financier, he was also a Member of Parliament.

1644 He entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

1652 Was part of a business supplying the Navy. This activity brought him into contact with Samuel Pepys, who became a friend.

1654 Married Elizabeth Dethick, daughter of John Dethick, a wealthy London Merchant, who was Lord Mayor in 1655, and knighted by Cromwell in 1656. Soon after, Banks became involved in the East India Company and the Levant Company.

1654 – 59 M. P. for Maidstone

1662 Made a Baronet by Charles 11

In the 1660's Banks prospered supplying the Navy, particularly during the Anglo – Dutch wars.

1668 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

1669 Became a Director of the East India Company, and was Governor of the Company in 1672 – 4, and in 1683. He was also involved in the Royal African Company, of which he was a deputy Governor in 1674 – 6.

1670's bought a large, new house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and carried out much rebuilding on Aylesford Friary, which he had bought earlier.

1679 – 1690 M. P. for Rochester

1690 – 1694 M. P. for Queenborough

1695 – 1698 M. P. for Maidstone.

Banks seemed very skilled at smoothly adjusting to changing political fortunes, from Republic to Restoration and the changes after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, lending money regardless of political colour.

His income during the latter part of his life was about £5,000 per annum; his estate was worth about £180,000. He was the first and last Baronet. Most of his wealth passed to daughter Elizabeth and her husband Heneage Finch, who became the first Earl of Aylesford in 1714.

 

Sir John Banks long P.C.C. Will is dated 22nd November 1697

There is an Indenture, dated 22nd June 1680, between John Banks of the 1st part, Henry Thornhill of the 2nd part, John Knatchbull and Edward Rudge of the 3rd part, concerning his real and personal estate, the Rectory and Parsonage of Northfleet, the glebeland, houses, barns, buildings and tithes of the said Rectory, purchased from Sir John Sydley of St. Cleere, this property to his cousin John Banks for life.

His Mansion in Aylesford (Friars) and lands called Great Buckland, North Buckland, and properties in Westbere in Maidstone, Hartlip, Burham. Bredhurst, Mears Court, and properties in Aylesford, Ditton, Newhithe, Burham, Maidstone, Boxley, Detling, Bearsted, Rainham, Bredhurst, Borden, Newington, Bobbing, Milton , Rodmersham, Kingsdown, Milsted, Newenden, Hunton, Linton, Farleigh, Marden, Headcorn, , and 2 houses called Homeplace and Ouldhouse, with land in Minster and Borough of Ossenden in Kent, houses and land in Iwade, and other land and property on the Isle of Sheppey; including those held on lease from the Hospital of St. Katherine; also the Advowson of the Rectory of Ditton and fee farm rents, all this to daughter Elizabeth and her husband Heneage Finch, for ever; in default of heirs, then to to his daughter Mary and her husband John Savile, in default of heirs, to his "own right heirs".

If Elizabeth dies in Banks lifetime, above to Heneage Finch, for life, after Finch dies to Elizabeth's children in specified order. If Mary dies as above, then legacy passes in same manner.

The Fleet and Fishery at Newenden, held on lease from the Crown, to daughter and son in law Elizabeth and John, also leaseholds held of Dean and Chapter of Rochester, at Marden. Out of latter an annuities of £300 to daughter Elizabeth,

and £100 to cousin John Banks, £10 to cousin Mary Hunt, to cousin Elizabeth Bishopp, £10 to cousin Stephen Grigby, £10 to cousin Thomas Grigby, £10 to Samuel Read, £10 to Rebecca Mee.

His house in Lincoln s Inn Fields, and properties in the Isle of Thanet, in New and Old Romney, Lydd and elsewhere in Romney Marsh; his farm rents in Essex, Stafford and Derby to the Saviles, same terms as earlier legacy.

Live and dead stock to the Finches and Saviles.

Personal estate, in Aylesford house to the Finches, in Lincolns Inn Fields to the Saviles.

East India stock, silver plate, money, debts shared equally between Finches and Saviles.

Property in Hinxhill, former inheritance of uncle John Banks, father of cousin John, to the Finches and Saviles, equally.

His executors are to build 6 houses near his mansion in Maidstone for 6 poor parishioners of Maidstone. Each to have ground room with chimney, and a "little buttery", and one upper room with chimney, also a small individual plot behind each house. The cost from personal estate; also £60 per annum towards maintenance of the poor people and repairs, equally dived among the 6. Residents who are not "orderly and sober" can be removed; the Saviles are to make rules and give preference to his former servants.

Lands in Isle of Thanet, leased from Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, and from Queen's College, Cambridge,to cousins, John Rudge and Samuel Read, in trust, rents to be distributed as Mary Savile directs. If Mary dies in Banks lifetime then to John Savile, for life; after he dies to his 1st son to reach 21 years, if no son then to daughter.

Desires to be buried at Aylesford, with wife, son and other children. If he does not make vault in his lifetime in chancel, where wife and son are buried, executors to make one on same ground and lay him with his wife and children, and repair that end of chancel, if needed for the security of the vault. Executors to put up monument, cost not to exceed £400.

To his sister -------- ? £50. To late servant, James Sherbourne and to each servant in family at time of his death, £50.

£50 to put out apprentice 6 poor children living in Aylesford. £40 paid to Mayor of Maidstone to distribute to poor of the town.

The Manor of Rushenden and land near Queenborough, on lease from St. Katherine's Hospital, to the Finches, they to keep lease going for their eldest son, then to his male issue.

Land and property in Bonnington near Romney Marsh to the Saviles, same condition as above.

Land in Isle of Sheppey called South Marsh to the Finches.

Finches and Saviles are joint executors.

Witnesses: Richard Hoare, John Lily and Henry Hoare

 

Codicil dated 7th October 1699

To the Finches Manor of Wormseale? in parishes of Bobbing and Newington, purchased from Henry Eve, and land in Maidstone, purchased from Thomas Selby.

To the Saviles all land in Romney Marsh near Lydd, purchased from -------- Lee.

Witnesses: John Rudge, James Sherbourne and Martin Tomkins

Proved 11th December 1699

Table: flea market repainted

Toy shelf: thrift store cutlery organizer spray painted

Wrapping paper: printed

Bows: 1:12 scale

Scissors, red pencil caddy, and tape: Rement

Pencils: made by me from toothpicks

Boxes on table: held microscope coverslips

Toys on shelves: a mix of my son's toys, Hallmark ornaments, erasers, Barbie minis, and various things I've collected along the way

 

The first production ADL Enviro200 MMC ever built - a development and testing vehicle - has now been converted into a completely autonomous vehicle with the help of Fusion Processing software, with a driverless bus trial now taking place within Stagecoach Manchester depots. The bus is able to take itself to fuelling points and the washing station, and then park up in the depot, without any further driver input than simply selecting the destination on an in-cab touchscreen. At this stage, the driver does remain in the cab to supervise, but doesn't have any input. A full-scale passenger-carrying driverless bus trial, also using Fusion Processing E200 MMCs, is expected on a new route across the old Forth Road Bridge next year.

 

UK Bus & Coach Show, National Exhibition Centre

3 October 2019