Twenty-four. The number of Christmas Eve. The number of days “until,” once December starts. The number of little windows on the Advent calendar, until the big one is opened.
Twenty-four. The number of miniatures shows at the Curtiss Museum, ushering in the holiday season. It’s part of our regional holiday. People who were not year born when the first show opened (in the “old” museum) can now bring their children.
That original show was a dollhouse show, but now the exhibit also includes models, miniatures, and antique toys and dolls.
Roll into the lobby, for instance, and you’re seized by Lanny Wensch’s large sawmill operation, circled (ovaled?) by a garden-scale railroad. To its left is Jim Sladish’s little Christmas village, with its two tracks of trains and Santa sleigh circling overhead. To the sawmill’s right is one of the late Carroll Burdick’s miniature carousels, music and all.
Each of these is operational; the trains run, the carousel circles, Santa’s sleigh flies, the sawmill equipment does its thing. They also show some of the range of this exhibit. The little stores and houses of the Christmas village are mostly available commercially, as of course are the trains. Likewise the sawmill’s big train and tiny engines are commercial products, but the sawmill and its setting are home-built. There’s also some repurposing. The burly millworkers started out in life as action figures of the “He-Man” type. The carousel, at the other end of the range, was largely constructed from scratch.
Range and variety are hallmarks of the show. Still in the lobby a case of large electric trains sits next to a case of paper dolls from the 1920s. A few steps away are a fleet of die-cast airplanes, and an enthralling n-gauge model railroad layout.
Out of the lobby into the main museum are case after case of dollhouses – some commercially made, some scratch-built, some assembled from kits, and some “kit-bashed” – using the kits as starting points, and going wild from there. Some are actually toys, others are works of artisanship, some are perpetual-motion hobbies, always improving but never quite finished. Many are homes, some are farms, some are stores.
And some are not true dollhouses. These are the room boxes, about the size of the proverbial breadbox. Room boxes are artisinal creations, usually in fact focusing on a single room, be it hat shop, colonial kitchen, or comfy living room.
Some of the doll houses and miniatures go back to the 19th century. Others were being finished just as the exhibit case was closed.
Running the gamut from mid-19th century to mid-20th century is a substantial exhibit of toys and dolls (see if you can find Donald Duck, and Charlie McCarthy). Our family exhibits a pressed-board toy store – a gift to my father, in the Great Depression. There are the inevitable war toys, the toy airplanes, the blocks and bowling pins. Take a look at Eva Stickler’s 19th-century doll collection. She cut material from her own dresses to make dresses for her dolls.
Of course you can always wander away to look at the airplanes, motorcycles, workshop, and other permanent museum features. But before you can do that, see if you can find:
*Will Parker’s crystal-laden railroad layout.
*Two cardstock cathedrals.
*Several dollhouses from Marie Rockwell’s collection.
*Miniatures made from toothpicks.
*Toy cars from famous movies and TV shows.
*Creations by Mickie Vollmer, who’s also operating the museum’s upcoming dollhouse and miniatures vendor show.
*A antique-Buick kiddie car, lent by Guy Bennett Jr.
*An original Studebaker sleigh – just waiting for Santa Claus!