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"I'd appreciate it if you're able to work those things into the model," he told her. "They belonged to my mother. You understand, of course, they have quite a sentimental value as far as I'm concerned."

Mrs. Grace Bisby of Santa Ana, California, nodded.

"Certainly, I know just how I'll use them, and I think you'll like it."

This was nothing new to Mrs. Bisby, who has become locally famous for the replicas of rooms which she has created on order, placed in individual shadow boxes and frames, then covered with glass. Most of these miniature rooms that she has turned out in the last twelve years have been small duplicates of the room of a close relative or loved one of her customers. Personal trinkets such as thimbles, wedding rings, earrings and cuff links have been worked into the completed creations.

By flattening the rounded ends, Mrs. Bisby has turned thimbles into miniature wastebaskets, and the rings have invariably become frames for snapshots. These "framed" photos are then attached to the walls of the tiny models.

DEPENDING upon the amount of work which is required to complete one of her "third dimensional remembrances," Mrs. Bisby's price for the tiny models runs from $50 upward.

Antique frames complete with glass to keep out dust and dirt are invariably used to complete the tiny shadow boxes. In most cases, Mrs. Bisby asks that the customers supply their own frames, and she has found that they usually wish to do this, since the one they select generally has a sentimental value. In other cases, she has gone to local second-hand and antique stores to purchase frames which she feels will fit the character of the room she is working on at the moment.

Normally, the small "sets" are built into a space about eight inches high, ten inches wide and usually not more than six inches deep. This, however, is not a set rule, for the sizes of the frames change with the customer. Whenever possible, Mrs. Bisby likes to use a scale of one inch to one foot, but this again is subject to change with the desires of her client.

Once the shadow box is completed, all the fixtures and furnishings in and firmly cemented in place, the box is then glued to the frame. All of the fixtures and furniture must be "fastened down" so that the model may be moved about without disturbing the arrangement.

In reproducing the rooms, Mrs. Bisby has been called upon to utilize a variety of personal materials. One man, for example, brought a pair of delicate antique earrings with the request that she "find some use for them" in making the model. After a more than usual amount of consideration, she decided that by cutting the shank off the tiny pieces, she could use them for bookends to hold a set of books on a miniature table. When she was done, her client agreed that "they look more like bookends than what they actually were."

MRS. BISBY began her novel hobby about twelve years ago, when she read a newspaper feature on designing miniature furnishings. She decided to give it a try in order to fill some of the spare time that she found hanging heavy on her hands. Armed with an ordinary razor blade, some fine sandpaper and a jigsaw, she started to make the furnishings for a tiny bedroom. She now has a completely furnished twenty-room house, which covers one wall of her sitting room.

This five-story project has removable glass panels over each room, protecting it from dust. Nearly all of the furnishings are handmade; a few items such as a tiny sewing machine and a miniature washing machine were purchased by friends and presented as gifts.

This particular house has seven bedrooms, causing Grace Bisby to grimace and comment that "it's awful that a house of this size should have only one bath."

In building the twenty-room mansion, she used old stickpins as crossed sabers over a fireplace and minutely crocheted rugs are scattered about the floors. For linoleum in the bath, kitchen and laundry room, she has used squares of oilcloth with linoleum like patterns. Cuff links are used as door knobs.

"Anytime that things get slack, I change the furniture around or replace it with a new piece—just to keep my hand in," she says with a laugh.

IN MOST of the miniatures which she turns out for individuals, Mrs. Bisby is called upon to furnish dishes or vases full of flowers. For vases she uses short pieces of copper tubing, which when filled with "flowers" make artistic looking pieces. The flowers, themselves, are invariably fashioned of tiny bits of straw upon which she bas cemented colored sea shells of minute size. It takes close inspection to ascertain their real composition. For dishes she invariably uses large flat buttons which have dish like recesses in their surfaces.

For one model, Mrs. Bisby needed a tiny decanter, and was confronted with the problem of how to make it. The decanter which was a part of the real room's furnishings had been of fine cut glass. The Santa Ana woman finally hit upon the idea of using beads of various sizes. Using a large glass bead as the bottom of the decanter, she cemented it to the table upon which it was to stand.

For the smaller upper part of the piece she used another bead, cementing it to the top of the lower section with clear household cement. For the glass stopper she used still another bead of a smaller size. When it was done, the man for whom she was recreating the model was amazed at the similarity between the original decanter and the tiny miniature.

Although Mrs. Bisby had had to purchase a string of beads at a local novelty store to accomplish this, she didn't allow the rest of the string to go unused. One use for example: as glass "casters" for antique chairs.

Invariably those who assign her to complete these projects hand her a half dozen or so snapshots, asking that these be incorporated into the finished project. In some cases, as has been mentioned, she uses wedding bands as the frames for these, or perhaps the back of a locket. The standard "frame" for these photographs, however, is an ordinary button—one of the larger sizes such as are used on heavy coats. The head and shoulders of the pictured person are cut out so as to fill the button, leaving the ridge around the edge to serve as the actual frame.

Another room replica which Mrs. Bisby recently completed required as a finishing touch a set of glasses on a table.

Mrs. Bisby was in a quandary as to how to get glasses this small until she saw a piece of quarter-inch glass tubing such as is used in chemical laboratories. On several ⁵/8-inch lengths of this she used a paint-smeared pin point to paint a design on the "tea glasses."

Once the paint had dried, Mrs. Bisby cemented the glasses to the surface of the miniature table in an upright position. It requires a minute inspection to ascertain that the short lengths of tubing are not actually the miniature glasses they appear to be.

Much of the wooden furniture in these miniatures is fashioned from blocks of balsa wood, a substance which is easily and cheaply purchased at any neighborhood hobby shop. Using an ordinary razor blade, she has little difficulty in carving the piece to whatever scale she has selected, since this wood is notoriously soft and easy to work with. She then stains the balsa to match the shade of the piece in the real room, which she is using as a model.

Another favorite wood is the thin, soft sheets used in cigar boxes. Shaping this usually requires a jig saw to cut out the rough outline; then a knife or the razor blade and later, fine sandpaper is used to finish the parts, which are then glued together. In one of her models, Grace Bisby built a complete desk of cigar box wood. The small drawers—less than ¾ inch square—were of balsa wood, actually opening and closing.

THE FIRST thing that Mrs. Bisby does in creating one of the tiny rooms is to build the shadow box the size that is wanted and to fit the frame that is to be used. This box also is usually of soft wood. In many cases she has created the broad rear wall or back of the shadow box by gluing together sections of balsa of the type and width used in making model airplane wings.

This wall she either paints the color of the actual wall or covers with wallpaper the same general shade of that in the room, if necessary painting on the pattern.

Into this room goes the necessary furniture plus the personal odds and ends such as the crossed sabers from stickpins, or the wastebasket from a thimble. On one occasion, Mrs. Bisby was required to use a piece from a woman's dress as upholstering for an easy chair, which she fashioned from corrugated paper, then stuffed w1th cotton before slipping on and gluing the cover, which she had sewed by hand.

One of the more elaborate models which the ambitious woman is now completing is a two-story replica which features a fireplace and chimney of real rock protruding upward through both stories.

The frame for the chimney is of corrugated paper, while the floor of the upper story is of the same material. The cardboard chimney has been plastered with bits of real granite cemented to form with a prepared binding mixture that can be purchased at any hardware store. The bits of granite were obtained from a local monument works, which had chiseled them off in manufacturing tombstones.

Mrs. Bisby placed a pair of miniature andirons in the fireplace, and for logs, used short lengths of ½-inch diameter from a tree branch. A piece of copper screen properly shaped and bound about a piece of brass wire as the frame is the screen for the fireplace.

Real carpeting, most of it coming from the discarded scraps of a local shop, is used on the floors of many of the rooms, an effort being made to match that in the real room. The carpet, of course, is glued down with household cement.

"There's no real art attached to turning out these models," Mrs. Bisby assures one. "It's more a case of being able to follow a scale, building the pieces to whatever measurements are needed, and being able to utilize the materials which the client wants incorporated into the finished product.

"In one case, for example, a man had an old wicker rocking chair which had belonged to a close relative. The chair was broken and most of the wicker was the worse for wear. However, he asked that in constructing the room, I recreate the rocker and use a portion of the real wicker.

"I didn't think it would work out at all well, but I was wrong. It was surprisingly lifelike, although the wicker was of normal size and the rest of the scale was reduced some twelve times."

GRACE BISBY lives alone in a small apartment In downtown Santa Ana, where she works as a hostess in a local restaurant. There are few times when one or more of the tiny models not being put together and the various parts and furnishings scattered about the apartment in stages of construction. Depending upon how much of her spare time she chooses to use in "building," she turns out from twelve to twenty of the rooms a year on assignment.

In order to keep the assignments coming in, Mrs. Bisby has organized her own promotional system, which gains her valuable publicity.

Each year, she gets a two-week-long plug from a local furniture store when it uses a number of her productions in one of its window displays. It is an annual event for the store to feature antique furnishings and show how they can be combined with more modern pieces in furnishing a room. While the full-sized furnishings make up most of the window display, the miniatures are used to illustrate other combinations.

The store owner first thought of this idea when he went to Mrs. Bisby with an assignment to do a room based upon his own mother's parlor. He was so satisfied with the finished result that he asked if he could use it in his window. Mrs. Bisby not only consented but gave him several other completed models to use also.

A large placard announcing the creator of the work was used in the window, giving her home address. As a result of this bit of free publicity appearing on one of the city's most traveled streets each year, Mrs. Bisby has received numerous commissions.

Mrs. Bisby's work also appears in hobby shows and doll exhibits throughout southern California, bringing more attention to her work. In setting up such a display at shows or fairs, Mrs. Bisby attempts to get actual pictures of the room which she has copied and display them along with the models which she has made, thus allowing prospective customers to note the accuracy of her reproduction.

This simple program of public relations has helped her to keep continually busy, and she seldom lacks for work.