In one day,
walking in Amsterdam,
you can find all sorts of unusual things.
In one day walking anywhere,
you can find remarkable things!
Just look and you’ll see.
Cheers to you,
from the unusual, the remarkable, the strange,
the beauty that is around you everyday!
In the 17th century, women in Holland created and displayed miniature dollhouses, in much the same way that men of their era, collected and displayed curiosity cabinets. (You can click the images to enlarge them)
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has three of these dollhouses, two are pictured here, one from 1676 and another from 1686.
These dollhouses were not meant for children and could cost as much as an actual canal house at the time.
One dollhouse creator Petronella Oortman, commissioned artists of her day to create a perfectly to scale house with marble floors, sculpted ceilings, hand painted wall frescoes, and doors that opened on a garden with a working fountain. She commissioned miniature porcelain from China.
There is something about these miniature worlds that fascinate us to this day, whether it be scale model trains and towns, or intricate dollhouses.
Many humans like to be creators and masters of their own perfect little worlds, absent the stress and strife of real life. They are miniature dream worlds where everything is beautiful and peaceful.
These old dollhouses are time capsules, that allow us to travel back in time and imagine what life was like in 1686 living in Holland, on the canals, in this house.
Creating a house like this must be like Zen meditation, the creator lost in the bliss of their own imagination.
I would love to make one, but can well imagine the mounting costs, and how much I might get into it.
But it is free to look at these amazing houses, that others have built before us, and it sends our imaginations soaring across time, back to them.
Cheers to you and may your New Year be happy and peaceful~
It’s November, and one must open one’s windows in order to cool an overheated room. This is when the uniqueness of Amsterdam wafts in, making me think back a lot of years, “Is that incense I’m smelling?”
“Wait no, that’s pot.”
Amsterdam sure is aromatic.
And mellow.
I can see why they have so many incredible pastry shops, and people eating in them all night long!
I mean they even have cannabis lollipops. I never liked pot when I was young, but breathing deeply in my room now, inadvertently of course, as I type this, does bring up the possibility that this might be more medicinal to me in my soon to be descending senior years. I seem to be feeling really relaxed……
Amsterdam is unapologetic about pot. Here you can see oodles of it growing inside this historic old house boat in the UNESCO World Heritage Area.
In Kinderdjik Holland one finds idyllic scenes like these windmills built in the 1700’s and still in use today.
Holland is justifiably famous for its flowers,
and it’s artists!
Cheers to you from Vincent,
Holland, and I~
(Sorry for the repost but this did not show up in my reader!)
It’s November, and one must open one’s windows in order to cool an overheated room. This is when the uniqueness of Amsterdam wafts in, making me think back a lot of years, “Is that incense I’m smelling?”
“Wait no, that’s pot.”
Amsterdam sure is aromatic.
And mellow.
I can see why they have so many incredible pastry shops, and people eating in them all night long!
I mean they even have cannabis lollipops. I never liked pot when I was young, but breathing deeply in my room now, inadvertently of course, as I type this, does bring up the possibility that this might be more medicinal to me in my soon to be descending senior years. I seem to be feeling really relaxed……
Amsterdam is unapologetic about pot. Here you can see oodles of it growing inside this historic old house boat in the UNESCO World Heritage Area.
In Kinderdjik Holland one finds idyllic scenes like these windmills built in the 1700’s and still in use today.
Holland is justifiably famous for its flowers,
and it’s artists!
Cheers to you from Vincent,
Holland, and I~
