Want to make life more manageable? Miniature artists know the answer: sweat the small stuff
The home of your dreams is within reach, so long as you build it in 1:12 scale
For the last 10 years, Wei Xu has lived in the same Toronto rental, a house she now shares with her partner. When she first moved in, Xu was in her early 20s, and the space was already furnished — a detail that might prove irksome if you're the type who itches to experiment with maximalism or hygge or any other decor trend.
Xu is definitely that sort of person, and as she approaches her 32nd birthday, she still dreams of nesting in style. But until she has the necessary space, and salary, to accommodate a living room straight out of Architectural Digest, she has found another way to make do. She's become a DIY expert, perfecting everything from metal-smithing to carpentry — skills that are helping her realize her vision … at a fraction of the size.
Xu is a miniaturist, and she sees the world in 1:12 scale. Anything can be rendered at a ratio of one inch to one foot, but she has a special interest in cozy interiors. She builds little reading nooks, little bathrooms, little boudoirs: spaces that are infinitely cuter than the ones we actually inhabit. And by sweating the small stuff — literal small stuff — she's discovered something that so many others have as well: creating mini homes can make our full-sized lives feel more manageable.
A former business analyst, Xu was already a skilled crafter when she began pursuing miniatures in 2019, and her hobby quickly became a way to experiment with ideas she couldn't pursue in a rented house. "I explore what my personal tastes are," she explains, and if she's working on a new mini, chances are it's a replica of something that will forever languish in her online shopping cart.
On Instagram, she posts photos of her work under the brand name Honey Thistle. Her profile is full of petite scalloped armchairs and hand-woven baskets no bigger than a dime. House plants are an especially popular item in her online shop, where she sells hand-made furnishings.
In fact, Xu now makes her living as a miniaturist — though the shop isn't her main source of income. Rather, she works as a freelance content creator, collaborating with outside companies to bring their tiny visions to life. The scenes she creates for the lifestyle brand Hunker, for example, live on Instagram next to the sort of domestic eye-candy that fuelled Xu's home-decor cravings to start with. It's as if to prove miniature interiors can be just as impossibly alluring as the real deal — maybe moreso, considering we're still waiting on the invention of the shrink ray.
Big interest in little things
Minis are, at the very least, similarly popular — or they are on social media, where Xu's Honey Thistle account has more than 33,000 followers. Tiny things are coveted by collectors, a mix of dollhouse enthusiasts and ordinary folk — the mini curious, let's call them, people who might drop $30 on an itsy-bitsy couch just because it looks adorbs. (Search "miniature sofa" on Etsy and you'll find nearly 4,000 to choose from.)
And Friday, a whole new reality show featuring some of the world's top mini-makers will debut on CBC Gem. Best in Miniature follows a familiar competition format; think Blown Away or Project Runway, except everyone's furnishing a custom dollhouse.
Is there an outsized interest in miniatures? Kat Picot of Brighton, U.K., has been blogging about the pastime since the early 2010s, and as the founder of Shrunk — "a modern miniatures magazine" — she has a special interest in whether minis are truly trending. Still, in her observation, there's no denying the pursuit has evolved in recent years. Tools that allow crafters greater precision are now easier to come by: 3D printers, Cricut machines. There's the whole rise of social media to factor in — Instagram especially, and Picot credits Shrunk's existence to the community that's proliferated on that platform. Her quarterly magazine, which was launched through a 2020 Kickstarter campaign, met its goal of 1,500 pounds in 24 hours. "That was purely the power of Instagram," says Picot. "There was no content; the magazine didn't exist" — but a photo was enough to generate support.
And then there's the third, not-so-secret reason why minis are having a moment. "To be honest, the pandemic really gave it a bit of an injection," says Picot. It's a time-consuming hobby, and for those who were lucky enough to be idle while self-isolating, miniatures were a potential diversion, she says. Even just looking at minis offers "a bit of escapism." When she was developing Shrunk, Picot was picturing something closer to an aspirational lifestyle mag than a journal for dollhouse purists. And the magazine's esthetic leans toward current design trends with a touch of whimsy.
"Creating cool interiors: that was the crux of Shrunk. When I started it, I just wanted it to look like a cool interiors magazine — except everything would be tiny," says Picot. "Like, interiors we would love to live in ourselves, furniture we aspire to own."
The ultimate small-space solution?
Cielo Vianzon gets it. For the Toronto-based graphic designer, everything about miniatures is aspirational. A former Shrunk magazine cover star, Vianzon also appears on Best in Miniature, where she's introduced as a skilled mini ceramicist. And though she's relatively new to making minis herself — she began dabbling in 2019 — she's collected tiny objects from specialty shops for the last 15 years. "Miniatures, for me, are [about] having things that I can't get in everyday life," she says — things like her most recent purchase: an array of KitchenAid mixers in colours to suit every mood. "In miniature I can have as many as I like," she laughs. "You know what I mean? It's like living a dream in the world of miniature. So that's why I love doing it."
Never mind the money saved when your obsession is pint-sized replicas — there's a practical side to miniatures if your quarters are on the compact side. Vianzon, for example, lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her family. There's no room for a home art studio, much as she'd love to have one.
For now, the tiny pottery wheel she uses is just the right size for an apartment; she can drop it on the coffee table and throw a few bowls while watching Netflix. If the situation were different, she might be making full-scale ceramics in her downtime. But miniatures suit the realities of small-space living, while allowing her to pursue any number of craft techniques — skills she'll put to use while building the (miniature) home of her dreams. And yes, she has a tiny studio, complete with its own kiln.
It's this aspirational thing ... I'll make a miniature for now to tide me over.- Aubrey Srnec, miniature artist
Aubrey Srnec's passion for minis actually began as a tribute to her cramped Toronto apartment — her "teeny tiny" living room, specifically. In 2019, Srnec, who works as a visual merchandiser for Hudson's Bay, began replicating every detail of her 8 x 10 space in miniature, right down to her Kleenex box. It was purely meant to be a creative outlet — a hobby inspired by some intriguing minis she'd noticed online — and the results were documented on Instagram (@okay.minis).
Since then, she's become a little obsessed. Everything she sees has the potential to get shrunk, and if she'd kept updating her living-room diorama, it would've spun into a Droste effect nightmare. "My living room is just full of miniature supplies. I'd be making tiny miniatures of miniatures!"
Recently, Srnec's found herself chasing projects that scratch the same materialistic itch that was nagging Xu. "It's this aspirational thing — like, all these like cool pieces that I would love to own one day, but I'll make a miniature for now to tide me over." Sure, the cost is one thing holding her back from, say, splurging on an actual shelving unit, but there's the simple reality of square-footage to consider. If she wanted to, she could put the same fabrication skills to use and make a full-sized dupe of a cult design. But where would she put it? "I just don't have any space. That's my problem," she laughs. "I would have a huge collection of real-life chairs if I could."
More to the fantasy than furniture
Roxanne Brathwaite loves furniture, too. A freelance graphic designer, she's also the founder of Hollis Newton, a Toronto company that specializes in restoring and reimagining (full-size) vintage furnishings. But during the earliest days of the pandemic, lockdown restrictions kept Brathwaite out of her workshop. Stuck at home, with more free time than she could use, she began making tiny furniture instead.
Like Vianzon, Brathwaite appears on the new competition series Best in Miniature. On the program, her signature style is marked by a love of mid-century modern design and textures that draw you in: fluffy natural textiles, overflowing shelves, richly coloured woods. "If you were to walk into my place, I think you would get the same kind of vibe," says Brathwaite. You'd also find an enviable collection of teak furniture, by the sounds of it. When Brathwaite makes minis for herself, she usually replicates her own things. And since throwing herself into the hobby in early 2020, she's evolved it into more of an art practice, building "miniature suites" to raise social and environmental issues. A series appeared at Toronto's DesignTO Festival last year.
But there's still something aspirational about what she does. Building a home, even a miniature one, is about more than what you stuff inside it.
"One of my objectives is just to create a warm, inviting environment," says Brathwaite. Home is more than a material thing; it's a state of mind, she says. And in June of 2020, as the Black Lives Matter protests broke out, she says she began channelling her feelings — "anger, fear, frustration" — into the tiny suite she was crafting. "I started thinking about this whole concept of the home being a safe place. Like, who is it safe for?"
While building a miniature living room, she reflected on things that bring comfort. She imagined a space where she could drink tea with friends, listen to music or maybe just read a magazine in peaceful solitude. "[It's] just someplace that's really safe and comfortable and inspiring and creative."
No matter what's happening in the full-sized world, there's something about miniatures that forces a different perspective. For Vianzon, miniatures are a home within a home. After a long day, she retreats to her collection. "After doing household chores, I enter my room and my miniatures are there — my mini groceries, my miniature kitchen. It's the same household chores I'm doing every day, but they're in miniature size," she laughs. "When I see them, there's just a smile on [my] face."
Making miniatures has been something of an escape for Xu too, though she wonders if her habits might change this year. She and her partner have been busy the last few months with a life-size home-reno project.
"I will be moving to my own home — finally — in maybe a few months."
"Maybe the miniature content will decrease," she laughs. "We will see."
Best In Miniature is now streaming on CBC Gem.
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