Making some miniatures for Kate's Cottage

Hello everyone,

So how are you all? It has been a few weeks since I posted. I hope you are enjoying your weekend. It has been quite tough here. Last week I got the nasty flu that I got from the kids. It is to be expected once they go back to school. Then this week my husband Gilbert had to be operated on. He had a hernia repair. It is not a big operation but the recovery is quite painful.

I wanted to welcome three new followers of my blog; Welcome Lucille Turpin, Ultimate Kick and Lori. WELCOME!

Today I will be sharing with you some polymer clay miniatures that I have been making for Kate's Cottage. There is so much that I still need to do and make for this cottage.

Making miniatures for Kate's cottage

Like you have seen in the previous post I have made 2 fire backs for the fire place. I am really pleased with the out come. As the fire place on the ground floor has a fire spit, I wanted to add some sort of fire crane for the little cauldron. The fire place is too little so I had to improvise. I managed to make one of polymer clay where you will see a cauldron hanging from it.

Crane in the fire place

Tudor food can be some how tricky or let's say I don't know much about it. So through book and a few tutorials I managed to do these.

Here is some the cottage loaf and some bread rolls as starters. 

Cottage bread and rolls

Cottage bread

bread rolls

I have also made some Tudor Jumbles which where like pastries at that time. I have made three types of jumbles which are the plaited, rings and knots.

Tudor Jumbles

The most common is the mutton and vegetable pottage which was commonly stewed in a cauldron and served on trenchers, the trenchers where usually made out of wood with a hollow center and had also a small salt hole by the side. This vegetable stew was likely to be served with bread. For desert they would have pears in wine syrup. In Tudor times forks where not invented so wood spoons and knives where used in the period.

Here is the mutton and vegetable pottage in the cauldron. I have used polymer clay and resin water. I have added soapy bubbles to the cauldron to make it look like it is boiling.

Cauldron with vegetable pottage

 Then with the same mixture I filled a pewter serving bowl and made the trenchers filled with the food, spoons and knives out of polymer clay.

Served pottage on trenchers.

I also made a bowl full of the pears with wine syrup.

Pears in wine syrup

There is still so much I need to add and make. I wanted something a bit different from usual. I have actually made something which was totally not my favorite but definitely a must for the Tudor period. To make it all too clear I do love animals and I just can't imagine myself harming them but then again I am no vegan or vegetarian. 

I have made the wild rabbit food preparation. You can see that it is no longer alive after being hunted and well gutted. Very gruesome indeed. You would probably say that, this is not the method of cleaning or skinning a rabbit. You would say first skin it then gut it. You are right but in the Tudor period it was different.

Like we all know there was no such thing as a fridge to keep the food from going rotten, so once the rabbit was caught and slaughtered, the hunter would clean it (gut it ) so the rabbit won't get spoiled but they wouldn't skin it immediately. They used to believe that the skin would preserve the meat from going bad so the skin was usually removed just before cooking. So here is the wild rabbit. Poor thing I feel sorry for it.

Rabbit - Food preparation

 I also made a bowl of quail eggs which were very common in the Tudor times. Quail eggs are much smaller than the normal chicken eggs and so I had to make these much smaller and tiny.

Quail eggs

So far this is how all my new hand made miniatures look like in the room. I might be changing their place in the future as I will be adding more.

Hope you like what I have done so far.

This is all for today. At the moment I am busy working on the outside of the building so keep tuned for more updates in the next few days.

Take care and see you all real soon.

Hugs,

Rebecca xx