Miniatyyrien maailmaan historian havinassa.../Miniatures and history in Karelia ...

 Everyone should have a dollhouse. I couldn`t get out of the thought my own old Karelian house. It was a a little difficult to get knowledge but facebook Karelian family- group turned out to excellent place.

So...

 At first I want to thank all the  helpful members in this group, you were important part of this project, including my mother who has to "feed" me now when I`m building the "house" in her home, my fathers, carpenter, forge:) 

Other sourcers were two books...

-Samuli Paulaharju`s Karjalainen talo...

-Heikki Kirkinen        Karjalantalo

I decided to do a miniatyre 1:12 of the old 1800´s Karelian house. I use also a photograph of my great grandparents house,  FINNA-museums repositories and imagination to designing because the exact knowledge wasn`t available. My family from my mothers side is from Karelian Suojärvi, more near to Petroskoi than  Viipuri.

 Here are the "timbers" from spruce, 18 mm x 20 mm.

My grandparents before the war in Suojärvi which now belongs to Russia.

I found out that early Karelian house there was often two-story big house, where animals lived downstairs, so-called tanhua and läävä. Above that was Sarai, where the hay    was keeping and dropped throuh the hole to the animals. To the sarai went ramp and horses could pick up the family from there, especially stormy weathers, it must have been convenient.

The furniture were simple and practically. Usually the children were sleeping on the floors and in the mornings the bedding were collected to fold to the bed where parents were sleeping in the room -  tupa.

Typical room - tupa, nowadays so-called kitchen and livingroom together. These looms are rare. Picture is from FINNA.

Here is oven.  The bench beside the oven called kolpitsapenkki. You could lay over it in the warm  or sit. But the most incredible notice was that inside the kolpitsa were stairs to downstairs .There were keeping chicken, pigs or it was kept like cellar where were vegetable etc.

I think this project will last over a year. I started to carve the timbers.

In the meantime I´m home, I carve the dolls and animals to the tanhua. Two Finnish horses and kyyttö -cows are almost ready..

Natalia, my great -grandmother is starting to walk...(high is 13 cm)

Now I´m painting them with oilcolours with several layers. It takes a long time but the result will be so beautiful and rich.

It has been a several hard years with corona ... it brings forth new, surprising sides from us... and it is not a bad thing necessarily... seems like I´m turning to the child again.

 Let´s be in touch ...