Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Humans have been modelling their lives in miniature since antiquity. Rendered on a Lilliputian scale, even the most mundane object sparks wonder. The City of London’s postwar overhaul unearthed tiny Roman pottery and mini medieval bronzes; mudlarkers have found troves of teeny 13th and 14th-century plates and bowls along the banks of the river Thames. In Europe, the tradition has its beginnings in the Bavarian “baby houses” of the 16th century, and the miniature rooms known as cabinet houses in which 17th-century Dutch merchants and their wives showed off their collections of cosmopolitan artefacts. “There’s a magical moment when you’re carried away with the spell of the thing,” says Susie Rogers, who together with her husband Kevin Mulvany creates detailed, incredibly refined architectural models.Working on a one-twelfth scale — a typical model is about the size of a fridge — it can take up to two years to complete a single private commission. Mulvany and Rogers are currently in the throes of one of their most intricate projects yet: an iteration of Holland Park’s Victorian jewel, Leighton House, including the extravagantly tiled Arab Hall. Rogers has been hand facing hundreds of mock antique Iznik, Damascene, Persian and William de Morgan tiles to adorn its decadent interior. Beyond standard architectural models, these are works of art in their own right; the pair collaborate with up to 50 master miniaturists — from furniture and cabinet makers to pewterers and silversmiths — to realise their exacting vision. When they made a room box replicating Versailles’ Salon de la Paix, they asked Canadian Old Master miniaturist Johannes Landman to recreate Charles Le Brun’s domed ceiling art and gilded pendentives, complete with chariots and doves. It took him more than a year to complete, before being assembled, jigsaw-like, back in England. This weekend, their beautifully dilapidated pavilion, titled “The Ghost of Versailles”, goes on display at Homo Faber, a biennial celebration of craft at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice curated by the Michelangelo Foundation, with art direction by film director Luca Guadagnino. It is one of a handful of miniature artworks set to captivate visitors in a small but significant way. As well as being an eye-wateringly expensive expression of status, these miniature models are proving a compellingly escapist fantasy for makers and collectors alike.Hannah Lemon, who is also exhibiting at Homo Faber, began making small art during lockdown. “It felt like everyone was renovating their home, but we were renting. I had this vision in my head of my dream house — so I brought it to life in miniature,” she says of her perfectly formed, plant-filled, open-plan interior, complete with roll-top bath, grandfather clock and Crittall windows. This therapeutic distraction quickly spiralled into a full-time occupation when @hannahlemon_art went viral, winning work from clients including Samsung and Amazon. Lemon now specialises in greenery, carefully constructing everything from rubber plants to Monsteras in Japanese air-dried clay. Each leaf is sculpted using a toothpick or needle, and the stems are forged from wire and clay. Lucy Clayton sees her miniature models as a chance to traverse centuries of interior design. The Kensington Dolls House Company, created together with her mother Rebecca, which is about to launch at Harrods, creates pieces with the same pedigree as a real home. With their Antoinette Poisson wallpaper and Fornasetti furnishings, these whimsical imaginary interiors draw on spaces as diverse as Villa Palladio Jaipur, Gloria Vanderbilt’s 1970s patchwork quilt rooms and the kitchen alcove at William Morris’s Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds. “It’s my dream property portfolio in miniature,” she says of the homes conceived with the help of architect Will Creech at Ben Pentreath. At Homo Faber, they will be presenting “The Blue House”, a folkloric frenzy of more than 50 ultramarine patterns, complete with Delft tiles and Robert Adam fireplaces finished with marble slips made from wasabi tape. For Clayton, working in miniature is liberating. “It’s fun being able to see something and execute it immediately. In real life you wouldn’t have the freedom to indulge,” she says of turning chocolate boxes into silk-clad ottomans and cladding entrance halls in de Gournay wall coverings. “It feels as though miniaturists are everywhere at the moment,” says Lemon, who charts its new rise in popularity to the ascent of social media platforms such as TikTok and television shows including Channel 4’s The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge. Everyone has experience of playing with small things as a child. It touches their inner childhood soulGrowing up in Japan, Lemon had a childhood passion for insects. At Homo Faber, she will exhibit a replica koi pond titled “Treasure Box of Nature”, which recalls her days spent sitting in the shade of a maple tree in her grandfather’s Japanese garden, studying the pool’s leaves, sand and rocks. Like all small art, it’s a testament to the act of noticing. “Everyone has experience of playing with small things as a child,” says Lemon, who moved to New Zealand in her teens, before emigrating to England. “It touches their inner childhood soul and memories.” The playful allure of life in miniature has never waned for Eric Lansdown. The 72-year-old began making aviaries and decorative cabinets for a San Franciscan antiques shop back in 1973. Now living in a 1,000-year-old fortress in the south of France, he creates elaborate structures that imaginatively conjure everything from French Renaissance châteaux to iterations of East Anglia’s Bridge of Sighs and the Brighton Pavilion, complete with domed towers and trompe l’oeil ivory. “It’s whatever strikes my fancy,” says Lansdown, who is in the middle of making a triumphal bridge that’s an ode to Ukraine. “The structure becomes a canvas for me to paint the ambience of a building — right down to the stains and cracks in the old stone.” He has spent recent months perfecting a series of Renaissance dormer windows — moulded and cast in polyurethane resin and wood, with their own hand-cast pewter finials. Even the windowpanes of his aviaries are wrought from wire and copper mesh that’s woven and soldered by hand. Lansdown has his sights firmly set on a miniature future. His profits help fund a reforestation project in the foothills of the Haut-Languedoc Regional National Park surrounding his studio and, as well as exhibiting his cabinet houses at Homo Faber, he’s part of the organisation’s official programme offering apprenticeships next year, in the hope that these specialist skills aren’t lost to the annals of time. Though small, the mightiest miniature art invites you to stop, look and remember — life can be at its most lovely when it’s little.“Homo Faber 2024: The Journey of Life”, September 1-10 at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice; homofaber.comFind out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
