Dreams of Having My Own Victorian Apothecary

This week I've excitedly begun a new chapter in my crafting endeavours, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but for a long time now I've wanted to own a period dolls house, not just any period though, I love the Victorian era, in that era herbs and remedies made from them - which is another of my passions - were widely available to help cure what ailed you, from either the local apothecary shop or from the local medical botanist.

Years ago Simon bought me a fully made up 1/12th Arkwright's Shop which is fashioned in the Victorian style, its a standing joke that he didn't want me to work with the dolls house because when we got it home, he promptly declared that it was put together all wrong and would have to be taken apart and put back together. That was in 2008 and until the other day, that 1/12th scale shop was still flat packed in the loft, on many occassions I've asked for it to be brought out and excuses were made, no space to house it was the usual and the shop stayed in the loft.

We visited the Museum of Childhood at Sudbury at the weekend and once again my nose was metaphorically stuck to the glass of the display case they have housing a large doll house in there. As I moved away from the display I repeated my request for my shop to be brought out of the loft, and sighed, expecting my request to once again fall on deaf ears. But when we got home, Si disappeared into the loft and he emerged a little later with the flat pack shop AND the Springwood Cottage flat pack he bought me for my 40th (I'm 54 now!!!). We have a sideboard that is perfect to display the shop on (I got that for my 50th lol) and space to create it.

To do the job properly it will take a while, first I have to install electrics then decorate the exterior and interior before I can begin furnishing the inside of the apothecary. If you followed the link to the shop details on the Dollshouse Emporium website you'll see that the shop is split into two areas on the ground floor, there are two rooms above and two in the attic.

In my head the main shop area will be the apothecary that Mr Slack, one of the Victorian medical botanists that I'm writing about who lived in Derby as an aside and he will be the minature proprietor of my little miniature apothecary shop. The side room will be a surprise that pays homage to my love of gothic mysteries, Harry Potter, witchy and wizardy and those shows that give us potions and spells to change the world and not always for the better 😉.

I want to add a herb garden to my apothecary shop, back in the Victorian era most apothecaries grew their own herbs in the gardens of their shop premises to make their remedies. Or if they lived in the inner city and their shop didn't have a garden, they went out into the local woods, meadows and hedgerows to gather herbs and plants to make remedies with locally sourced ingredients. This era of herbal medicine is very close to my heart, I'm researching and writing about two practitioners of herbal medicine from the Victorian era and have written several articles on the era with my herbal hat on. The photo below was taken when I visited the Black Country Museum a couple of years ago now.

They have a 'Chemist & Druggist' shop there that is a recreation of a 1920's chemist shop, although many of the items date back to the 19th century, as the business was a father to son affair, handed down with knowledge shared. I was amazed at how few people actually paid attention to the garden laid out at the back of the shop, I spent ages looking at the herbs and enjoying the way the beds were laid out for respiratory medicine, digestive problems etc. It would have been nice if more information was made available to the general public that connected the chemist shop to the garden and maybe a little booklet of recipes, but hey ho! Apparently the chemist whose name was Mr Doo used to make many of the remedies he sold himself, and had a considerable reputation locally for his home made medicines and pills.

I'm looking forward to making a trip to Blist Hill in the not too distant future to see the pharmacy that featured in the BBC series Victorian Pharmacy, if you haven't seen the series, below is the first of the 4 parts, you can find the rest on You Tube. I have the DVD and the book, and a few other books on Victorian herbal medicines, patented medicines of the era and strange cures based upon very scary ingredients, I may even add some articles on that subject to this blog as I share my apothecary makes and progress if people would be interested? Let me know in the comments in that sort of thing would interest you?



I've been watching Youtube tutorials on making medicine bottles and herb jars, lotions and potions too, and I've ordered a pack of 50 mini glass bottles to begin making the medicines and herbs that Mr Slack is going to stock in his shop. Although I fear that 50 will be nowhere near enough, I've ordered some different shapes of bottles and already have a few others on my radar and I've drawn up a list of items that can be used from other sources, e.g. the Tim Holtz Idea-ology domes will make perfect "specimen" jars as will the Ideo-Ology skulls.

As I delve more in to the world of miniatures, I'm seeing projects that others have made where I realise that I have tiny flower dies that I can use to help me to make 1/12th scale flowers, and small fern and leaf shape dies that can be used to make potted plants. Si has offered to 3D print some pots and things that I can decorate and I've realised that the array of paints, distress inks, alcohol markers and things like gilding wax and embossing powders that I have can all be used to make miniatures, which makes my heart sing 😍

Something else on my list of things to make are 1/12th scale books, there are a few printables out there for making herb books, but I want more, any good apothecary should have a well stocked library full of herbal information, as well as medicines, and as another of my passions in life is collecting herb books, making miniature ones for my apothecary shop is a must! I have a large collection of herb books including a 17th century copy of Culpeper's Herbal, so its only right that for my little apothecary I'm going to make some 1/12th scale herbals and receipt books for the resident medical botanist to use to treat and supply remedies to his customers and patients. Yes I could just put paper covered wood blocks in as pseudo books, but I want my books to open and be readable, its all in the details right?

I love how I'll be able to marry all my hobbies in one, I've started creating some plants for inside the living areas of the shop and I'm researching how to make miniature herbs like dandelions and lavender.  I'm also working on stitching a 1/12th scale rug, although my eyes aren't what they used to be so it could take me a lot longer than I think. I'll be sharing my miniature endeavours as and when I have progress or something that I've created that I think will be of interest to others. At the moment I'm waiting for things to arrive like moss, bottles and an assortment of other tiny components to make my creative dreams a reality.

I've already got some 1/12th scale furniture from the era, it surfaced from the loft yesterday (Si is still trying to find all my accessories, wallpapers etc), sadly when I unboxed the items they hadn't been stored very well, and some of the delicate bits had been broken, as can be seen in the main photo above. So I set to with wood glue and painters tape and I've repaired the broken bed and table, cleaned up the other pieces of dust and debris and even managed to trim down some brass panel pins to make new door handles for the wardrobe, which had apparently lost the ones it originally had but I have no idea how?

All fixed now though by my own fair hand 😁, when the glue has fully cured I'll remove the painters tape and will use some wax crayons to hide a few scratches that have appeared on the surface of some of the pieces. I have to say that there was a minor set back to my repairs, I fixed the bed last night, left it to dry but couldn't resist looking at my work late last night before I went to bed. My tired clumsy fingers fumbled and I dropped the bed on the glass mat and the bottom broke off again lol! Luckily it was an easy fix and I am keeping my fingers off for a while until its dry and I'm not too tired to remove the tape, carefully lol!

In other crafty news, my Tim Holtz glass media mat has finally arrived, I pre-ordered it back in April and I've been impatiently waiting ever since lol! I've also acquired a tin to store my alcohol inks in, but I need another one because guess what? That's right I have more alcohol inks than the tin holds lol! That's all for now, I have to go and sort out a way to store the miniature stuff until I can use it and try to find the copper tape for the electric installation, I may be some time lol!