My castle is based on one of those IKEA boxes , with additions of cardboard tubes and balsa. The exterior and part of the interior is covered with stone card from the model
railroad store. The stone card is index card weight, with a printed and embossed stone pattern. It came in postcard-sized sheets, and I hid the joins as best I could. When I had covered all of
the castle, I thought the colors of the stone were too bright so I made a "dirty wash" from water and black and brown acrylic paint and applied it with a cotton ball. When the wash was dry, I
added the ivy.
I got the inspiration for the castle from various photos of old castles, mainly from a book I have on castles in the Loire valley in France. I also spent lots of time studying the drawings in
David Macaulay's book Castle (a childhood favorite of mine - I got it for my 8th birthday).
Why would anyone build a castle with just two rooms? Well, I needed a house for some Tudor furniture I had built (I'm not particularly found of roomboxes), and it had to be a grand house,
in order to justify the four-poster Tudor bed I wanted to build. A castle seemed to be a good idea, but it had to be a small one! I didn't want to build enough furniture to fill a huge
building. I decided that a small castle from an IKEA shadowbox would be nice, as the glass front would permit me to view the interior, without having to dust it. The overall design is intended
to suggest that this is just a part of a castle, rather than the entire building. I'm very happy with the design, with one small exception - the flagpole with a streamer on it has been knocked
off at least twice, when I've been transporting the castle (it usually hangs over my desk at work). Doing repairs is no fun, so this time I've made the flagpole detachable.
Most of this furniture is based on 1:12 designs from the dollhouse magazine Puppenhäuser und Miniaturen (I understand it's the German edition of a magazine printed in the
Netherlands). My instructions for a fireplace similar to the ones in this castle were printed in Little Enough News ,
volume 5, issue 6. You can also find instructions for the firedogs, the chest, the chandelier, and the upstairs candle stand in that issue of LEN.
The shield on the fire hood has a motto on it - it says "Dieu et mon droit" (French for "God and my right"). This motto was used by King Richard I in 1198 and adopted as the royal motto of
England in the time of Henry VI.
The door at the right is presumed to lead to the stairs tower. I gave the walls a few coats of paint mixed with sand, for a coarse stucco surface, but I didn't paint the door areas. This made
the doors sink in so they're more or less level with the surface of the walls.
A baby is sleeping in the cradle. The clothes press and box chair are based on photos of 1:12 scale furniture, the cradle is built from 1:12 scale plans in Dolls House World .
The fireplaces are covered with embossed card, like the exterior and cellar. The embossing shows through the paint as stone shapes on the hood. The bed is my 1:48 scale version of a bed in
The
Home Miniaturist. The turned posts are commercial turnings that I cut to length. I cut some cross hatches on the big bulges in an attempt to add more detail.
Food cellar with barrel of wine and other supplies. The glass front reflects some light, giving a misty look at this angle. As the cellar has a rather low ceiling height, I could make the other
rooms more grand.
A poor prisoner who died in chains?
No, this is a thief who broke in intending to steal the family's treasures. He went prying about in the cellar but had a bit too much of the wine he found,
and trying to find his way back upstairs he mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up in the dungeon where he passed out and died on the spot. No one knew he was there, so his skeleton remained
forever and a day in the dungeon.
(Many thanks to Pam Scott of Little Enough News for this highly acceptable explanation of why there's a skeleton in my
castle's dungeon!)
The lord of the castle is about to take a seat in his chair. His wife thinks she heard their son cry, so she's heading upstairs to take care of him. Another photo of the couple is found on the
dolls page.
My castle is based on one of those IKEA boxes , with additions of cardboard tubes and balsa. The exterior and part of the interior is covered with stone card from the model
railroad store. The stone card is index card weight, with a printed and embossed stone pattern. It came in postcard-sized sheets, and I hid the joins as best I could. When I had covered all of
the castle, I thought the colors of the stone were too bright so I made a "dirty wash" from water and black and brown acrylic paint and applied it with a cotton ball. When the wash was dry, I
added the ivy.
