New project -- Edwardian room box!

I've been thinking about doing a roombox for my Mum for a while now, and last week I decided I was going to do more than just think about it.

My darling Mum is 84 years old, and a real child at heart.  She's been a textile chemist, a broadcaster, an author and an educator through her long life, and she has a particular interest in costume history.  She loves the Edwardian period, best of all.  So I thought I'd make her a little Edwardian roombox.

It's been fun planning it and shopping for it.  (It's a nice change of pace from the Tudor period, that's for sure!)

On my trip to Toronto this week I picked up a few things for the project from the Little Dollhouse Company:

It's going to be a simple rectangular roombox, with a window in one end and a fireplace in the other.  It will be electrified.  I bought a ready-made window, and a really cool fireplace.  It is not electrified and had a horrible resin "fire" in it, but the grate pried out remarkably easily and the fire came off, and I  bought a good quality set of logs/flames to take its place, so with a little drilling and some messing about, I think it'll look super. I also think I'll tile the inside of it.

I also picked up a Reutters Tiffany lamp, a ceiling rose, some William Morris-y wallpaper and a little fox terrier.  (Mum had a wire-haired terrier named "Skipper" when she was a girl, to whom she recited "The Burial of Moses" and other poems she was learning.

There will be a woman and a little girl in the roombox, along with the dog.  Now, my Mum was a child in the 1930s, not 1915, so the little girl isn't, strictly speaking, supposed to be her, but just a little girl with dark brown hair who happens to have a terrier :)

I want to make up the basic room box as quickly as possible so I can give it to her before we leave for England on May 20th.  That way, I can bring her some presents home with me from our trip!

My Mum is on the internet (in fact she's the web master for the Costume Society of Ontario website), but as far as I know she doesn't check this blog.  If she does see this before the roombox shows up -- surprise, Mum!

Edited to add the following photo, Edwardian Interior, by Harold Gilman

I love this!  All the paintings and photos on the wall, the textiles on the furniture, the flowers.  This is it!