Views of out and inside the Wetherburn Dairy, subject of Patricia Richards’ class.

With the much anticipated Maysville Study Program front and center in many peoples’ minds, the preregistration deadline for the Williamsburg Study Program is rapidly approaching, seemingly very much under the radar. This study program, which has been a yearly fixture in Colonial Williamsburg for more than 20 years, is a fabulous post-holiday get-away. Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg is a fabulous location for this little retreat with its plethora of lovely historic buildings, relatively mild, mid-winter weather and reasonable hotel prices.

Like all past programs, this year’s Study Program has four great classes on the schedule, taught by experienced Artisan and Fellow members of the Guild, with projects drawn from the collections of Colonial Williamsburg. Pete and Pam Boorum will be teaching an 18th century side table that hails from their home state of New Hampshire. Jane Graber will be instructing her students in the shaping and decorating of red ware plates, bowls and platters. Patricia Richards will guide her students through construction of a 1/12 scale version of the Wetherburn Dairy that sits behind the tavern of the same name on Duke of Gloucester Street, and Bill Studebaker will be helping his students build a dressing glass (mirror) patterned on one that has come to this historic town from Charleston, South Carolina.

The 18th century New Hampshire side table that is the inspiration for Pete and Pam Boorum’s class.

For those that are interested, there is also an exclusive behind the scenes tour to visit the warehouse where are stored the architectural fragments from Williamsburg’s important colonial structures. The study of these fragments provides restorers an invaluable stream of information from which informed guesses can be made as to which materials and colors would be most appropriate for their work.

The dressing glass (mirror and drawer) originally made in South Carolina, that will be the inspiration for Bill Studebaker’s class.

As part of the study program, registered students and guests each receive a pass that admits them to Colonial Williamsburg museums and historic buildings for the duration of the program; as well as affording them a discount on their purchases there. The special IGMA rate at the Lodge is good for days before and after the program so you can stay as long as you want. Information and registration forms can be found a www.igma.org.

Jane Graber will be teaching her students to shape and decorate platters, plates and bowls in the same manner their colonial ancestors did in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This minute spice chest is the project for Bill Robertson’s Williamsburg class.

There are not many places where you really get the feeling that if you just slipped through the right door, you might find yourself emerging into the 18th century; well, Colonial Williamsburg feels that way to me. As an adult, I’ve been visiting Colonial Williamsburg in January for a Guild Study Program or three, and crowds of tourists at that time of year, are non-existent.

The limited tourism schedule is one of the reasons IGMA can continue to hold study programs in Williamsburg each year. The reduced number of visitors means that lodging rates and classroom rentals are relatively inexpensive, and also that the curators and other staff are happy to assist us with research and planning while there are fewer demands on their time and skills.

Tools for the Colonial hearth is the subject of Alan Hamer’s Williamsburg class.

This year we are pleased to offer four classes-two in woodworking, one in metal, and one in needlework, along with an optional Monday seminar on painting floor cloths with Williamsburg’s own, Sue Rountree.

Sue and her husband, Joe, are kind enough to welcome attendees, students and guests, to their home for the program’s Friday night dinner-the ceremonial opening to the weekend. Of course we’ve already had the chance to take in a tour or two-this year a special viewing of the exhibit Architectural Clues to 18th Century Williamsburg at the DeWitt Wallace Museum, and a private viewing of several of Colonial Williamsburg’s historic buildings.

More information is available on the IGMA website, and brochures are in the mail to all IGMA members.

Dutch Delftware Monteith Bowl , taught by Lee-Ann Chellis Wessel, IGMA Fellow member.

Large cities, like New York, are well known for their historic properties and vast museums, perfect inspiration for a study program you think; unfortunately, hotels in those cities put the cost of hosting a program out of reach to most of our members. This year, it was decided to offer a study program in conjunction with the Guild Show, whose location in Teaneck,New Jersey offers easy access to New York City, without the high cost of actually staying in the city.

Bannister-back Armchair taught by Mark Murphy, IGMA Fellow member. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

The Brooklyn Museum was chosen because for their decorative arts galleries, in particular their early Dutch colonial collection which includes the Jan Martense Schenck house dating from the 17th century. Three of the projects chosen for the study program classes come from this early period of American history, the fourth coming from the 19th century.

The program will begin with a tour of the Brooklyn Museum decorative arts galleries, which will allow participants to view all of the class projects that are on display, before returning to the show hotel where they will begin the 18 hours of instruction to recreate these pieces in 1/12 scale.

Fireplace Wall, North Room of the Jan Martense Schenck House, taught by Peter Kendall, IGMA Fellow member. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

For more information on classes and registration, visit www.igma.org.

Thonet Child’s Armchair, taught by Bill Studebaker, IGMA Artisan member. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Jamie brings exceptional knowledge of period gowns, corsetry and underpinnings to his classes. His students will be using pure silk (dyed) for this court gown, and the weight of this fabric and other trimmings will be discussed in detail. Cotton lace will also be used.

Students will be given size 12 Sharps by John James and will learn step-by-step how to execute the bucket panniers that hold the skirt out sideways. The stiffened underskirt will be extensively decorated, as will the lavish over the skirt. These pieces will be sure to complement the bodice.

Students in this London class will have access to numerous patterns to use for embellishing the over skirt. In addition, a variety of ribbons, trims and lace will be available. You can certainly craft this gown as you see (and sew) fit!

Before you create any period gown a knowledge of the corsetry and underpinnings is vital to create the right pose of the body and the hang of the gown.

Jamie will carefully instruct students on how to appropriately assemble each gown on to the mannequin provided in class. The final touch? Forming the lavish powdered wig trimming into a style that suits your taste. Students will learn a secret trick to creating drape, movement and gravity.

One of the greatest benefits of this particular class by Jamie is that many of these techniques can be applied to other periods of fashion. If you have a knack for great style and love classical periods, this class ought not to be missed!

All materials are provided but students are asked to come to class with small, sharp scissors (to be used on fabric and paper).

This year’s IGMA classes in London will take place days before the 2016 Kensington Dollhouse Festival which is open to the public on Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14 at Kensington Town Hall on Hornton Street in London. For show hours and information, please visit dollshousefestival.com.

For more information on Jamie Carrington, click here.

Posted by Kate Ünver

The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.

There are often many reasons to attend a miniatures show beyond the obvious attraction of great miniatures for sale; the Guild Show is no exception. For most of its history, the Guild Show has offered a great line-up of classes and special events; this year a Guild Study Program is being added to the schedule to tempt miniaturists with a more intensive learning opportunity.

The restored north room of the Jan Martense Schenck house, the inspiration for Peter Kendall’s class at the Guild Show Study Program.

If you’ve ever had the chance to attend an IGMA Study Program, you will know that they are comprised of 18 hour classes with projects based on pieces in an historically or culturally significant collection or location. From the plethora of possibilities in the New York City area, the Brooklyn Museum was chosen for its outstanding collection of decorative arts from the earliest periods of New York’s history. Three of the four classes will be focusing on pieces from the early Dutch colonial period, the fourth class, somewhat more modern, focusing on a mid-nineteenth century child’s armchair in the iconic, Thonet bentwood style. Program participants will enjoy a visit to the Brooklyn Museum to view the project inspirations before classes begin on August 3.

A Thonet child’s bentwood armchair, inspiration for Bill Studebaker’s Study Program class.

If  you’re not interested in this 3 day program, there are many other learning opportunities at the 2016 Guild Show-classes ranging from a few hours to full-day in length and in a variety of media…from flower to cake making, learn faux finishing, paint a panel, or make a wearable vignette in a pocket watch case! Sign up for the Broadway event and enjoy dinner and the classic spectacle ‘The King and I’ Thursday evening, or hop on the bus Friday morning with Mike Barbour to explore the fabric district-treasures are guaranteed on these exciting adventures.

The Classes and Special Events brochure will be available beginning at the Chicago International Show in April, and as usual, all the information can be found on the IGMA website.

Photos courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Brad Hillgartner working on his study room box in Peter Kendall’s class.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2016 Colonial Williamsburg Study Program.  As co-chair of the IGMA Education Committee I was there to supervise, but I abhor the possibility of wasted time, so I figured I might as well take a class while I was at it, and signed up for Peter Kendall’s structure class where we recreated, in 1/12 scale, two walls of the Governor’s Palace Study.

Some of the work of the basket makers from Bonni Backe’s class.

It was an ambitious class-and as an occasional instructor myself, I am very aware of how difficult it is to predict the length of time it will take a group of people with various skill sets to complete any specific process. We must all have been about equally skilled as at the end of our 18 hours of instruction, we all left with room boxes at approximately the same stage of completion.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was elated to have had a chance to work with power tools I don’t have at home, on processes I was familiar with, but have little chance to practice. We sawed, routed and beveled, assembled cornices from multiple moldings, mitered and installed moldings as well as flooring, aging it to resemble the original old Southern pine floors of the original structure.

Joanna Marsland’s efforts in Bill Studebaker’s class on display at the graduation luncheon.

Other classes traveled similar routes, from cutting and installing inlay on a bottle box and stand, to carving four matching cabriole legs for a walnut tea table. And lest you dismiss basket weaving as ‘fluff’, the students in this class worked long and hard to complete their market and painted splint baskets, challenging their full scale fingers to manipulate 1/12 scale splints in a neat and orderly fashion.

All attendees were offered the chance to take the Behind the Scenes tour of Williamsburg’s conservation facility. There they heard and saw how the experts conserve and restore Colonial Williamsburg’s many treasures. Museum passes also allowed unlimited access to the Dewitt Wallace and Rockefeller Folk Art Museums for the duration of the study program.

Jan Gautney and Tom Fisher hard at work in Iulia Chin Lee’s class.

Social interaction was also on the schedule, with dinners both Friday and Saturday evenings and a graduation luncheon on Monday where all student projects were put on display. A thoroughly rewarding weekend, and a wonderful break in the winter routine, as many of us dream of June, and that wonderful week in Castine, which seems impossibly far away when you’ve just had 28+ inches of snow dropped on you!

After discovering miniatures, it didn’t take long to begin coveting the truly fabulous work coming from American and international artists at shows like the Guild Show and the Chicago International. I knew, though, that there was another wonderful show in London, with dealers that rarely crossed the pond to show in America. I finally got a chance to attend the Kensington Dollshouse Festival in London a few years ago with my sister, and we had a ball. We stretched the trip into a week, taking in the show and a whole host of other activities. Two years later I had the chance to return, this time as a dealer and as a teacher at the IGMA classes now being offered in the days just prior to the show. What a terrific opportunity to combine miniatures and travel!

IGMA classes in London

This year the Kensington Dollshouse Festival takes place May 13 and 14, with the IGMA classes being held Tuesday, May 10 through Thursday May 12, immediately preceding the show. The classes on offer this year will be taught by Geoff Wonnacott/furniture, Tine Krijnen/bookbinding and Jamie Carrington/costuming and will range from 1 to 3 days in length. The dates may seem like eons away now-but those able to plan this far in advance will find many hotels offering quite nice deals. Be sure to consider adding a few extra days to your stay, London is jam packed with fascinating museums, historic houses and cultural destinations enough to fill months of vacation time!

So, what is on the agenda for the 2016 program? There will be two furniture classes, a structure and an accessory class, representing a variety of skill levels and differing amounts of work involved before your project will be complete.

A market basket will be the first project made in Bonni Backe’s basketmaking class.

How much are you up for? Going alphabetically, Bonni Backe will be teaching a class on basketmaking. There were no tupperware containers or plastic shopping bags in the 18th and 19th century. If you needed to carry things around or store them in your house, you frequently made your own containers, and baskets, served that purpose quite often. Students will use black-ash splint to weave a 1/12 scale market basket on a rectangular form. When that is done, the class will move on to replicating a small basket from the Colonial Williamsburg collection that features a decorative pattern of painted splints.

A graceful tea table will be replicated in Iulia Chin Lee’s class.

Iulia Chin Lee will be teaching a class replicating a mid-18th century tea table from Virginia with ogee molded edges around its rectangular table top and gracefully shaped cabriole legs. The enjoyment of tea was a common social interaction in many communities and this table would have been a source of pride for any colonial housewife.

The two-walls of the Governor’s Palace Study that will be constructed in Peter Kendall’s structure class.

Peter Kendall specializes in teaching the building of structures, always thoroughly researched and meticulously planned out. This class will feature, in 1/12 scale, the construction of two walls of a small study in the Governor’s Palace, a bookcase wall and the adjoining wall with a recessed window and window seat.

The two piece bottle case that students will be recreating in 1/12 scale in Bill Studebaker’s class.

Bill Studebaker has chosen a cellarette as the inspiration for his class, though in the 18th century, it was most likely called a bottle case. In those days, it was necessary to lock up smaller, and more valuable household items, anything from sugar to wine. This class will be making 2 pieces, the upper box with hinged lid, and a fitted stand with drawer.

Check out the IGMA website for more information on the classes and the program, including how to register.

High boy in need of restoration at the Colonial Williamsburg conservation laboratory.

One of the special opportunities available to participants of the Colonial Williamsburg Study Program, is the chance to join the Behind-the-Scenes Tour of the conservation facilities at the DeWitt Wallace Collections and Conservation building. Depending on what work is in progress, the tour will progress through several laboratories where you might see and hear about the process by which Colonial Williamsburg’s treasures are restored and preserved. In 2015, the tour made a stop at the paper conservation laboratory to view

How to keep track of hardware removed in the conservation process.

several objects, including the trunk that was the inspiration for Pat Richards’ class, before moving on to a lab where a spinet was being worked on. Our last stop was the wooden artifacts conservation lab where we saw a variety of objects, including a very large wagon wheel and a highboy with japanned decoration, in the process of being

A fan set out for viewing in the paper conservation laboratory.

studied and conserved.

Visit the IGMA website for more information on classes and registration for the January 2016 program.

The tailor’s work area in the millinery shop in Colonial Williamsburg.

While the location of the Guild’s fall study program moves about the country, bringing learning opportunities to some of the many locations where IGMA members reside, the winter program has been taking place every January in Colonial Williamsburg for about 20 years. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that its off-season at that time, and so, very affordable. While affordability is an important component, even more crucial is the fact that the Colonial Williamsburg museums house world-class collections, and employ top-notch curators who are eager to work with us. The curators assist our instructors with detailed information, photos and

A toy fort currently on display at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in an exhibit entitled ‘The World Made Small’.

measurements on the pieces they’ve selected as their class projects, and the curators and conservators arrange for students to see those pieces close-up, whether they are currently on display, or in storage. This access allows the students to see first hand, details they might not otherwise have a chance to see, like specific methods of construction and patterns of wear that testify to the piece’s usage over time; invaluable knowledge when you are seeking to replicate those pieces in miniature.

Chief Curator Ronald Hurst hosting a tour of the Southern Furniture exhibit at the Dewitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Williamsburg.

And, when you’re not in class, there is all of Colonial Williamsburg to explore. With fewer crowds you can converse with the costumed interpreters and get a real feel for life in colonial times, you can eat in one of the period authentic taverns and shop in the many workshops and stores. Your registration fee includes a pass for admission to all the buildings on the grounds-and gets you a discount in the shops as well.

Visit www.igma.org for all the details on the 2016 Colonial Williamsburg Study Program. This year’s classes include basketmaking with Bonni Backe, a tea table with Iulia Chin Lee, the Governor’s Palace Study room box with Peter Kendall and a cellarette with Bill Studebaker.