Welcome, friend. My name is Colin and I’m known in miniatures circles as “MaineYankee”. This Workshop web site is kind-of about my projects, but it is really for you. As I go through the work, I stop at various stages to photograph and talk a bit about what is going on, what techniques or tools are in use, or to share something new that I’m learning. My hope is that you will learn something or get inspired to try something new. If I can help you with anything, please contact me via the comments here or by emailing me directly. I also invite you to follow me on Twitter @MaineMiniatures and on Facebook at the page MaineYankee’s Miniatures Workshop.

But why “MaineYankee”?

So, why am I called MaineYankee? That’s an interesting story. Years ago I worked at the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company. When I started exploring the Web, in about 1995, I started using that alias, just as a lark. It stuck, and even though the plant shut down in 1997 and I left there in 1998 during its decommissioning, I still like the nickname, especially as it applies well to the miniature workshop concept. I even used it when I lived in Raleigh, NC, but I added “in exile” on the end! Within two years I returned to Maine and spent a year up in The County as penance. For the past several years I’ve lived in Dresden, where the view out of my window is of a grassy hillside with grazing sheep, a smiling red barn, and glimpses of the mighty Kennebec as it winds through the valley.

And why Miniatures?

Dollhouses and miniatures are often thought of as hobbies for girls and their grandmothers, but that is a very shallow conception. This is more than dolls and playing house. This is art and history. So here is a bit of my story…

My parents met while attending Paier College of Art (then Paier School of Art) in Hamden, Connecticut. The year was 1961 and my parents were marginally part of the Beat Generation. Dad had graduated in ’61, but returned to add illustration to his fine arts degree. Mom was a freshman in the Fall of ’61. Before the year was out they were married and in May of 1962 they were off to Englewood, New Jersey where my father went to work for Prentice-Hall, illustrating text books.

Due to reasons neither one was ever able to articulate well to me, their marriage within five years. I guess you could say they had artistic differences, but they were always good friends, which was both helpful and confusing to the single child they had together. I equally loved by both, loved each dearly, but never understood either of them. My grandparents and others consoled themselves more than me by saying things like, “Artists are temperamental”, “All of love, but nothing of good sense between them”, and “The life of the artist is noble, romantic, and usually hungry.”

My formative years were spent living with my mother’s parents. There my mother finished growing up and I learned to love Colonial and Early American times, houses, and furnishings. I developed very close relationships with my grandmother, her sister, and with my mother. We shared many adventures and many hobbies, including assembling the hardest jigsaw puzzles, polishing rocks, scratching lottery tickets, and making miniatures.

After awhile my mother remarried and my first sibling, a sister, was born when I was nearly eleven. I was old enough to be very involved with the care of this very active little girl, and of course I was quite smitten with how wonderful she was. It was during this time, during the mid 1970′s) that I often attended local miniatures shows with my mother and grandmother on weekends. So, of course, I wanted to have a dollhouse for my baby sister. And that is why I was the only boy in junior high wood shop, maybe ever, whose project was a dollhouse. A two-story Colonial with hinged back and roof! I was ambitious.

The miniatures bug struck hard and I subscribed to The House of Miniatures furniture kits. Building them was a cinch after honing my fine motor skills with models of muscle cars for a few years. I quickly ran out of money, however, and had to stop delivery of the kits. Nor could I afford the windows and doors for the dollhouse. My mother separated from her husband and we moved. Soon after I went to work myself, leaving me little time for dollhouse. Still, I managed to add wallpaper and paint and several furniture items to the house by the time my sister was actually old enough to play with it.

Soon, however, my interests shifted. At sixteen life was all about cars and science-fiction gaming. By 18 I was in the Navy and into computers. My step-father cleaned the garage while I was in boot camp and chucked the dollhouse. At 21 I was married and moving around. By 24 I had my own daughter. In 1999 my grandmother passed away at 93. A year later my mother was gone, as well. By that time I also had a son and another daughter.

This youngest one is full of fun and energy, reminding me of my sister. She loves the outdoors, enjoys all kinds of crafts, and simply loves log homes. In November of 2005 there was an indoor flea market in part of the building where I was working. One lady had a number of toys, including many miniatures. The crown jewel of her display was a dollhouse… a log cabin dollhouse! I bought the house, a dining set, and a braided rug for my little Bea for Christmas. I also bought a kit to make a rustic kitchen set, perfect for the log cabin.

Christmas morning was amazing. Little Bea was stunned. I had decorated the cabin with snow on the roof and a Christmas tree on the front porch. I had displayed it at work to keep it out of the house until Christmas Eve, and several ladies there had added items, including lights and food for the table. The effect on Christmas morning was quite magical. The magic lasted as I spent the week after Christmas working on projects to further furnish the cabin. As I was building the kitchen items I was reminiscing about the kits I used to build as a kid. It was then that my wife said, “You know, we have some kits. They were in with the craft stuff that your step dad gave us after your mom died.”

To my complete surprise, my wife produced my finished kits, one that I had left half done, a few that I had left unbuilt, and several that I had never seen before. I was floored. I knew that my mother had not kept the old kits, but as I looked through the box I found several more miniatures items, including a rug that my grandmother hand french-knotted nearly thirty years earlier. Apparently, my grandmother had kept all of our miniatures. They were passed to my mother, who never took them out of the box. She had not had time to go through all of her mother’s things before she got sick herself. My wife did crafts with my mother,  so my step dad gave most of the craft stuff to my wife after mom passed. It was a long and winding road, but it lead back to my youngest child and to me returning to a hobby that I had so much enjoyed thirty years before.

So now I am a middle-aged man who plays with dollhouses. Unashamedly. I was taught to think negatively of being an artist. Today I am a craft artist. Unashamedly. I love America, the American Revolutionary period, the Founding Fathers, and the domestic arts of the day, and I love to recreate them, in great detail, in miniature. Unashamedly. I invite you to join me here and on Facebook and on YouTube, to enjoy the expression of art and history and pure enjoyment that is the “hobby” of miniatures.

- Colin, the Maine Yankee