The Hall

Today I thought I'd continue the tour of my Amsterdam canal house. So far I think I have shown you some photos of the Kitchen, the Bedroom and the Entrance Hall. It is now the turn of the Hall.

The story of my Canal House is that it is a 17th century house which was remodelled in the 1740's. In 1893 part of the top floor is destroyed by a fierce fire. Below is the photo as it appeared in De Telegraaf, an Amsterdam newspaper which had its first edition in that year (well OK then, I manufactured the photo in photoshop, but it looks pretty real, don't you think?).


After the fire the building was restored by its owner Mr. Leo Rickx. In the parts of the building destroyed by the fire Mr. Rickx introduced elements of the Arts & Crafts style which he had become familiar with during his stay in England. As you can see through the glass double doors, the original early 18th century Entrance Hall was untouched by the fire of 1893. The Arts & Crafts console was made by Kari Bloom of Miniton Miniatures.





Almost all of the wood used in this Hall is teak, which was given to me by a carpenter friend. The Hall was the first room in the house I started to work on back in 2004.
The banister gave me some problems as I just couldn't figure out at which angles to cut them. My carpenter friend explained to me that in real life a specially cut angled piece is fitted between the two straight pieces of the banisters. It took me over a year, but I finally managed to make a curved piece to fit the banister (and it is almost a perfect fit, lol).





From the Hall you can take the stairs to go down to the kitchen or up to the Salon, the Study and Library and the bedrooms.

The house is set in the modern day, so items can be found from every era. The newel post is the perfect place to hang a couple of handbags. I love the 70's shoulder bag by Annelies de Kort.




I made all of the panelling, doors, door handles, risers on the stairs and the parquet flooring of teak wood. The door to the right leads into the Dining Room, this room was also untouched by the fire of 1893. Above the door is a miniature watercolour which I painted in 2004: 'Winter landscape with pollarded willows'. Pollarded willows are very characteristic of the Dutch landscape with its meadows and canals.

Update Monday February 8: Apparently there were some problems with the comments today and yesterday, caused by the snow script running on this blog. I removed the script, so everything should be working again! Thank you Patricia at Woolytales Miniatures and Sara from Graphic Pretties !