Tiny TINY homes!

[osprey_archer]

I was reading Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life, and she mentions these enchanting miniature buildings made by Charles Simonds, “Dwelling places for an imaginary civilization of “Little People” who are migrating through the streets of neighborhoods in cities throughout the world...”

These tiny sculptures are SO delightful - even tinier and more adorable than the fairy rooms dotted around Ann Arbor - I just had to share.

Rubin also at one point lists her favorite children's book authors, including Mary Stolz, "who didn't get the attention she deserved," and I pumped my fist in the air in agreement. The one author she mentions whom I haven't read is Kristin Cashore... maybe I should finally give Cashore a try?

Comments

[ellenmillion]

Could you guess how much I would love that link??

[asakiyume]

Hahahaha, I bet you would!

[osprey_archer]

It is very Tiny Worlds!

[rachelmanija]

Those are WONDERFUL. Thank you so much!

[osprey_archer]

Too delightful not to share!

[asakiyume]

Wow, I just *loved* the two films on the front page of the Simonds website--the 1972 "dwellings" and the 1974 "dwellings." What amazing and beautiful documents they are, not just of Simonds's own vision and creations, but of a time and place. The kids' faces! The clothes, the hair styles. Did you watch them? In the first one, there's an adolescent boy talking to the man with the microphone (who's not Simonds, and when they get to talking about people breaking the little houses, he says, "They shouldn't do that, right? They should leave it, right?"--and then that same kid is talking to littler kids about the Simonds, how he's making little tiny houses for tiny people, and he says "He's not one of those who tries to kill them"--he's one who helps them, and he says, "He does it for his pleasure," and just--the fact of this whole idea blossoming for the kids, so wonderful. Later there's another, littler kid, watching, and he looks up, all delighted, and says "You can imagine if you was that size, living in there and shit"--SO RIGHT, KID, SO RIGHT.

Really amazing--thank you so much for sharing.

[osprey_archer]

I LOVE the kids getting so into it - the imagination of it - and at that age you can imagine it so hard you really do feel that maybe there ARE tiny people living in these tiny houses, even that these really are the ancient ruins of their old dwellings, never mind that you just met the guy who makes the little homes.

[galadhir]

Oh those are gorgeous! And they look so convincingly ancient too, like these are just the ruins left behind after the civilization has moved on somewhere else. Where are they now? That's extra exciting to wonder about.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I love the half-ruined look of them. Not merely tiny houses but tiny RUINS.

[littlerhymes]

Oh my they are TINY! HOUSES!

[osprey_archer]

TRULY tiny! They make dollhouses look big.

[landofnowhere]

Give Cashore a try! I suspect you would like the general cracktasticness of Jane, Unlimited, though I'd say that her secondary-world fantasy series is better overall.

[osprey_archer]

In Jane, Unlimited a Jane Eyre retelling? I saw from the summary that Jane is an orphan going to island mansion, which I guess doesn't NECESSARILY mean Jane Eyre retelling, but "orphan going to isolated manor house for life-changing experience" did kind of ping me that way.

[landofnowhere]

No, it's very much its own thing (or five different things, none of which is a Jane Eyre retelling), but it is drawing on the genre tropes (along with others)!