Owners love their homes so much that they are commissioning high-priced miniature versions of them to display. How high-priced? Sometimes they pay thousands for these replicas, Bloomberg reports.
The miniature homes are small enough to fit on a tabletop and are known for their attention to detail reproducing the home’s architectural features.
Lisa Macpherson, a veteran marketing exec, recalls two years ago giving her boyfriend a miniature version of his home in Chicago that he had closely collaborated on with the architect but was leaving to move to Virginia. She worked with a U.K.-based firm called Chisel & Mouse to get a miniature duplicate of the home, using blueprints, satellite images, photographs, and other details to make sure the home was recreated in every detail.
“For someone in love with their home, seeing it reproduced at scale, with every detail perfect—it would be a knockout gift,” Macpherson told Bloomberg. “Even a couple years later, it’s still a big darn deal. It’s on a glass cocktail table here in Virginia—it’s the centerpiece of the room.”
Chisel & Mouse say that custom miniatures have become a growing focus of the firm. They create made-to-order scale models of homes. The miniatures take around 12 weeks and can cost up to $2,000.
Some homeowners create replicas for aging parents who may need to leave their beloved home for assisted living or for homeowners who did a big renovation and want a keepsake of all their efforts. Chisel & Mouse also says it has worked with condo developments who gifted buyers with a model of the future building as a closing gift.
“I thought the idea of having a model of my house was such a wonderful hearkening back,” says homeowner David Stutzman, who commissioned a plaster model replica of the townhome he helped restore. He displays the replica on a bookcase and positioned it to face due west, just as the house does. “The rendering was so detailed—the cornice, the lintels on the brickwork,” he told Bloomberg. “There’s this really beautiful blood-red door on our house, and we wanted that to show up, too.”
Source: “Forget Tiny Houses; the Design-Obsessed Now Want Homes in Miniature,” Bloomberg (March 28, 2018)
