Small worlds

To miniaturist Nancy Shane, dollhouses are not just toys

The hook unclasps; the wall opens with a woody grate.

Suddenly, like a giant out of a fable, you're an intruder in a potting shed fit for your pinkie finger.

On the rough wooden floor, a trail of wood chips. By the door, a smudged apron. On a workbench, Raid and paper towels. Elsewhere: hay bales, rakes, bags of potting soil, a basket of leaves, a man-powered lawnmower, circular blades hungry for grass.

But nobody's home - they must be out, tending the garden.

"I never put people in my buildings," said Nancy Shane, inventor and stylist of this tiny world.

Peering in at her creation through red-rimmed glasses, the distinguished dollhouse maker, or "miniaturist," added: "It's always as though people are expected back."

This is a realm where "thinking small" never means limiting yourself. Where people exist but are never present; where furnishings and decorations measuring mere inches represent as much craftsmanship as their full-scale equals.

It is minute - but, to loyalists like Shane, in no way minutiae.

As the slender and freckled architect of the diminutive describes it: "It's a hobby that takes over your life."

And, apparently, your home. Shane's Wenham saltbox - a decorative cat crouched on a mailbox at the base of its sloped driveway, leaning birdhouses cluttered among the trees out front - is a house containing houses; rooms within rooms.

Downstairs, a workshop looking out on a snow-buried backyard is arranged with one-room shacks, beach houses, and bungalows roughly the size of shoe boxes, tiny doors cracked open and beckoning. Individual "room boxes" - or dioramas - lining shelves offer glimpses of a variety of downsized lives spread out over centuries.

Upstairs, meanwhile, are the big houses - big, at least, by contrast - English Tudors, barns with dozing donkeys, nine-room chateaus, thatched-roof cottages, all at least three feet tall and displayed on stands like an eclectic housing development.

Most rooms are clasped closed; removable facades, open backs, or swing-up tops offer what feel like voyeuristic views of parlors, kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms.

All told, Shane's collection represents more than 25 years of meticulous handiwork and near-microscopic furnishing.

But these aren't playthings - you'll find no dolls here.

Think of Shane, rather, as an architect, project manager, and interior decorator: Just like a human-sized house, there are decisions to be made about wallpaper, paint, curtains, wiring, baseboards, molding, and doors. Upholstery swatches and wood samples to be studied.

Typically, the full houses come as kits - similar to human-sized modulars - of bare wood. With the aid of shrunken table saws, lathes, and extra-strength glasses, Shane paints, shingles, and bricks facades and roofs; she then finishes off architectural details with air-dried clay, plaster, cement, rock, and tile. The realistic look of "weathering" is achieved with special painting techniques, color-stripping, and rusting.

Finally, Shane outfits interiors with tiny accoutrements purchased from all over the world.

In the end, the effect is "very realistic," noted Lynne Warren of the Prides Crossing section of Beverly. With a collection of antique dollhouses spanning four centuries, Warren previously ran Cottage & Castle, a miniature/crafts boutique in her hometown.

"She arranges things in a fun way," Warren added, calling Shane a lover of whimsy. "Some people just put things in and it's very staid. Nancy's houses actually look lived in."

But achieving that homey feel can sometimes take months, Shane explained - and, as is often the case with full-sized architecture, her slight creations are never truly complete. She's always rearranging - and, every once in a while, she "renovates."

"It's always evolving," she noted.

As is the hobby: Lilliputian as it may be, it is also, in a contradiction, massive.

Conducive to eye strain and hunched shoulders, miniatures inhabit hundreds of glossy magazines and websites; boutiques (eight in Massachusetts, including Den of Antiquity, in Danvers); trade shows that draw thousands; seminars and classes.

All over the world, artisans specialize in hand-carving and upholstering furniture for minuscule behinds, cutting and polishing popsicle-stick-sized floorboards and hand-braiding floor rugs the diameter of coasters.

"There's nothing in real life that you can't find in miniature," Shane explained.

Still, don't expect correspondingly small price tags. These trimmings, some dwarfed by thimbles, can fetch more than the life-sized objects they imitate. For example: A platter of food one-fiftieth the size of the real thing can go for $35; a bonnet-top secretary desk too small even for Barbie can snare as much as $455.

Shane admits the money she has splurged on her passion is "sinful."

Still, the small-scale world has taken her, quite literally, all across the full-sized one.

Over the decades, the mother of three has taken courses and attended shows throughout the United States and overseas. In turn, her fastidious work has been displayed at various galleries and has corralled industry awards.

"There are few miniaturists that I have seen that have such great attention to detail," said John Wadhams, executive director of Wood Memorial Library in South Windsor, Conn., where Shane's creations were recently on display.

He described the historic touches and the care put into furnishings - she even polishes forks and spoons so that "they gleam."

"It's an innate artistic sense of style," he said.

Indeed, details are abundant in her depictions of miniature lives. Overwhelming, even - like a game of "Where's Waldo?"

Everywhere, detailed touches: trashcan figurines cascading with chubby rats, inch-long books individually tucked into shelves, lace curtains, flickering stoves, mischievous cats. (Accompanied in real life by Shane's feline, Tiffany, who skitters away from strangers' feet.)

Against the wall: a circa-1920s seaside snack shack. White clapboard faded by time; on the counter a debris field of half-eaten watermelon pieces and grease-soaked tubs of onion rings; grill sizzling with inch-long hot dogs hand-rolled by Shane.

Nearby: a free-standing, centuries-old doorway. Met by walls of crumbling brick and uneven cobblestone, mildew creeping in. It is an entry to nowhere. Only imagination can let you in.

Elsewhere: a roof-top artist studio, sloped windows looking in on matchbook-sized paintings (real artists put brush to tiny canvases). A silver trailer with black-and-white tile floors and red leather seats, hitch propped up on a cinderblock. A quintessential New England barn tugged by inertia - sagging roof crafted from dampened cardboard, wood worn by rusty water, gapped clapboard sides letting in the wind.

Worlds suspended, they wait for humans who never come.