when i was nine years old i got a dollhouse for christmas. it was amazing… my mother had wallpapered some rooms and installed wainscoting in others and together we chose paint colors for the remaining areas. she had purchased a few key furniture pieces to have in place for christmas morning, but the house was mostly bare and i spent the next couple of years furnishing it. there was a shop called mz. mcphizz on solano avenue near my house and i used to walk down there and spend hours looking at the tiny candelabras and picture frames and dishes. they had loads of miniature room set-ups in glass boxes: a music room, a playroom, a parlor… and they were all inhabited by tiny people or little furry gray mice wearing clothes. ultimately, i filled my house with a large extended mouse family, which is funny now as i definitely do not welcome mice in my current house. (we DID get mice in our amsterdam apartment because we were the only family in our building without a cat - theo LOVED seeing them race across a room and i was always startled and horrified.)
i saved all my tooth fairy money, birthday checks and allowance for mz. mcphizz. after i had decided on a purchase i would be filled with anxiety about whether i had enough money for the tax, having no concept of how it was calculated. (i still get anxious about paying taxes.) i also tried to make a lot of things for the house: fruits and veggies from molding clay, table cloths from doilies, little plates out of the rubber circles pulled from the interiors of bottle caps. it was so much fun creating this little world and imagining the stories and adventures my mice were having. when i was a bit older, i sat at my father’s typewriter and wrote out the whole family history - how they immigrated from france (of course!) and started their lives in the states and made their american fortune importing cheese… they WERE mice. i knew all the personalities of the family members and what their interests were and tried to reflect that in their home. it was my first interior project.
last month, my mother took me and my daughter and her little girlfriend to point richmond, california on a tour of these darling fairy houses created by jimmie robinson, a local graphic designer and comic book artist. we walked up and down washington avenue discovering these tiny, whimsical dwellings in the front yards and along the sidewalks of the quiet beachside town. it was so exciting seeking out each little home, carefully tucked into the side of a tree or the corner of a garden. they are tremendously thoughtful and imaginative… one houses an artist, another the mayor, and “lulu” and “melissa” and “rosa” all have cottages. there is also a school, a post office and a library. all of the buildings are made with a varied collection of materials unique to that house. many of them open up so you can peer into their interiors and see what the fairies are having for dinner or what they are reading or the progress they have made on an oil canvas. we visited on garbage pick up day for washington avenue and one responsible fairy had already put her can out.
their architect, jimmie robinson, generously shared the history of the fairy village… he started building them about three years ago when he was waiting on flowers for planter boxes in his own garden. in time, the houses organically expanded to the gardens of his neighbors. they are all designed to match the personalities of the various people on his street. he does not sell them… they are made for the joy of the community and all the visitors who come to see this magical village of “little point richmond.” it is definitely worth a trip… these thoughtful fairy houses took me right back to my childhood and my little dollhouse filled with mice.
