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00:00They say it's the little things that mean the most and in this series we're taking that to heart.
00:09We're stepping into a world where cherished places from the past are brought back to life in miniature.
00:16It's like being detectives isn't it?
00:18From family homes.
00:20I just miss it so much.
00:22To grand public buildings.
00:24This building was so magnificent.
00:27I found my identity there.
00:29Each tiny model tells a big story.
00:32It's a beautiful project because it's all about love.
00:36The craft and skill of our team of miniaturists.
00:39I'll make it happen.
00:41Perfect.
00:42Shines through in every delicate detail.
00:48Oh it's fabulous.
00:50Oh my goodness.
00:52I don't believe it.
00:54Oh gosh.
00:56It's beautiful.
00:58And while our models may be tiny, the memories they stir are immense.
01:03Welcome to the marvellous miniature workshop.
01:07Our little village workshop is opening up for business.
01:21And a new model is about to take shape.
01:24But for this build, memory is the only blueprint.
01:28At our workshop, the makers want every model to be as accurate as possible.
01:35And that usually means using loads of photographs so they can replicate every tiny detail perfectly.
01:41But what if there aren't any photographs?
01:43Can it even be done?
01:44Can it even be done?
01:45Can it even be done?
01:46Can it even be done?
01:47Can it even be done?
01:48Can it even be done?
01:49Can it be done?
01:50What if there are any photographs on this?
01:51Can it even be done with the main contribution, the main contribution to the workshop.
01:52care assessor Sandra from Glasgow. Over the coming weeks we'll recreate a place
01:59that was very special during her childhood. But first let's find out why.
02:09Hi. Welcome. Welcome to the workshop. Thank you. So nice to see you and
02:16congratulations you're officially the most glamorous woman we've had in the
02:21workshop so far. So Sandra tell me what brings you to the workshop today? I would
02:26love a model of my grandparents kitchen in a Glasgow tenement. Something that I
02:33can pass on to say that was me. Lovely. Have you got any photographs of this flat?
02:39Sadly no I haven't but I do have a photographic memory. Okay exciting.
02:45Well let's see what we can do with that. Come and meet Abby our miniaturist you'll love her.
02:51Someone with all the right ingredients to make a tiny
02:58kitchen is our miniaturist Abby. Hello Abby. Lovely to meet you. So can't wait to hear your
03:04story. Tell us everything we need to know please. I was brought up by my grandparents from 1952 when I
03:11just turned two. This is a picture of me. Sandra. At that age. Oh love. So good. Look at your little curls. So sweet.
03:22And why did you have to live with your grandparents? My mother passed away when just a week before my second birthday.
03:32She had pancreatic cancer. Gosh. My father had to go and work down south.
03:39So my sister and I were split between two grannies. Gosh. This is so sad.
03:45I'm so sad for you and I'm sad for your sister and for your dad but I'm sad for your mum
03:49because as a mum you would never want to leave your babies would you?
03:53It's just so sad. Definitely not. This is my mother.
03:59What a beautiful young woman she was.
04:02I can see here you've had this restored. Is that right?
04:04I have no memory whatsoever of my mum so that was me actually seeing her face properly for the first
04:11time. Wow. That's amazing. You've got her eyes haven't you? I was going to say the similarities.
04:16Yeah the real similarities. So a lot of heartbreak in your young life. Do you have happy memories of your
04:24childhood? I have wonderful memories of my childhood. I was very very fortunate staying with granny and grandan
04:30and I knew I was absolutely loved. Yeah. I knew that. That's my granny, Sadie. She was as sharp
04:38as a tack but she had a heart of gold and that's me and I'm about eight there I think. One of my first
04:47memories is she gave me a pram. A tiny pram but you know a doll's pram. Beautiful. And I always remember
04:57that. And this one is my granda. A picture of my granda. Granda was a lot of fun with children.
05:05He was brilliant. You know I would say, Granda will you hear my prayers? And I would say,
05:13Hail Mary full of grace. And he would say go and wash your dirty face. Do you know what I mean?
05:20Which is that? Granda. And I would go, oh you're going to go to the bad fire. Do you know?
05:27And so your home, you call it the house, it was in a tenement block, is that right? Yes. A tenement block,
05:33it was a row of shops underneath. We had a front room and we had a kitchen and a toilet.
05:42So the kitchen was where everything happened. The kitchen had a recess.
05:49Granny and granda slept in there. Inside the kitchen? Yes. Gosh. But you don't have any
05:54photographs of the inside of the actual kitchen? No, sadly I don't. In those days people didn't
06:01have a camera. Of course. But I remember every single thing in that flat. Okay.
06:07Then all. So no detailed photographs of inside of the flat. I just want to say no, we've locked
06:11all the doors Abbey, so don't try and make a, don't try and leg it. Okay. Okay. How do you feel
06:16about that? A bit daunting. But let me show you this. This might help in a little bit of a way.
06:24This is great. Okay, so you've been busy with the scrapbook. So we can see the layout of the flat.
06:29This is great. I can see the window at the sink. Yes. At the back there, the bed recess where
06:36granny and granda would have slept. Yes. And this over here is the television,
06:41which my granda christened the font of all knowledge. Yeah, you've written that there.
06:46I was wondering what that was. Yeah, absolutely. So you've found some photos of things that are
06:50very familiar that may have been in the flat. Yes. So hopefully that will give you an indication
06:56that this is very helpful. Look at these. It's like being detectives, isn't it? We have to piece
07:00together all these different snapshots and then put it together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
07:04I can't wait. Yeah. I just cannot wait. I can't wait. I'm so excited about it.
07:09I just really hope I do it justice for you. Good luck.
07:17Abby gets straight to work, trying to find the perfect photo-free recipe
07:22to bring the tenement kitchen back to life. I am currently sketching Sandra's tenement home,
07:30a kitchen, a bedroom, a living space, all in one. She's given us a beautiful floor pan,
07:37which is very detailed, but we don't have any dimensions. We don't have any photos. So I'm
07:43going to have to use a bit of artistic license in composing the model and making sure it relates to
07:49her memories and her life there. Abby carefully constructs an open room box with foam board.
07:58She prints yellow floral wallpaper to match samples in Sandra's scrapbook,
08:04cuts it into thin strips and carefully glues each one into place.
08:09So the scrapbook is really, really useful. It's got so much information in there and Sandra's got an
08:15almost photographic memory when it comes to her home, which is wonderful, but it's also a little
08:22bit daunting as well. I really need to make sure that I get every little detail right.
08:28Sandra still lives near the river Clyde, not far from the docks where her grandfather once worked.
08:50And she often passes the tenement building where she lived as a child.
08:54As I'm looking up, it's the middle flat up there. They've all been renovated now,
09:05made bigger, but we didn't know any different. My granny, she was very house proud. The front door
09:13deck was scrubbed, the scrubbing brush, which I don't think they do now. I still miss
09:19Sunday mornings when my grander would make us a big fry up. When we came back from Mass.
09:28I want to go up there. I want to go in and relive it all. So it's very poignant coming back here.
09:37Because this is still my home. Do you know? Yeah.
09:52Sandra left home to get married at 17. And tragically, within a year, both her grandparents passed away.
09:59It was so hard. And I didn't realise how bad that would be. But it was like I had been floored.
10:13My gran and grander were my everything. I loved them deeply.
10:24It was as though
10:27you're a granddaughter. But I was really a daughter.
10:31you know. And they just meant everything to me.
10:45So that was hard.
10:46And that's why I never went back. Because it was too sore.
11:01Sandra never set foot inside her grandparents' home again.
11:05But now, nearly 60 years later, she's visiting Glasgow's Tenement House Museum.
11:16To see if the kitchen there sparks any more memories.
11:19It's really emotional for me. It's like walking into my granny's kitchen.
11:31The museum is a perfectly preserved real tenement flat that was lived in from 1911 to 1965.
11:42It is uncanny coming in here. It's lovely.
11:46Um, there are a lot of things that remind me. The sink is exactly the same. The bed recess was very similar.
11:59We had a range like this taken out. And the fireplace that replaced this was cream tiles.
12:11It's lovely.
12:11It's lovely. But it's weird. It's weird. Because it's as though you've just gone back in time.
12:20There are a lot of reminders here.
12:24Oh, my. My most precious one was my stool. Oh, the things I did with that stool.
12:33It was a boat. It was a doll's house. It was a bed for my dolls. Mind you, I fell off it and broke my arm.
12:42To have a model of my grandparents' home would be fantastic.
12:51It would take me back in time to a good place, a happy place.
12:56So, that would be very important to me.
13:09Fortunately for Sandra, a miniature version of her granny's tenement kitchen is on the menu.
13:15And Abby's cooking up something special.
13:19I will be making an Art Deco fireplace.
13:25Sandra has given us this beautiful reference photo.
13:28You can see the cream glazed tiles. So, I'll be making those in miniature.
13:32So, I'm currently just putting down some paint effect on this mount board using acrylic paint.
13:40This specific Art Deco fireplace, the colour of the tiles wasn't solid.
13:45It had gradations and variations in there. So, by modelling it with the paint this way,
13:51we can achieve a more realistic look.
13:56Now that the tiles are dry, I can start cutting the tiny, tiny grout lines.
14:02I'm now peeling the grout line paper to reveal the whites of the mount board underneath,
14:12which gives the illusion of a grout line.
14:21The tiles are individually glazed with a silica mixture to give them a glassy sheen.
14:28Then Abby applies real household grout.
14:32I have made a fireplace base out of a grey board and I'm cutting the tiles to size so they'll fit on our
14:43fireplace model. I need to be quite careful to get the dimensions right.
14:49With the mantelpiece complete, Abby adds a little hearth and uses gardener's perlite
15:00soaked with black ink to make tiny fragments of coal.
15:07Next, Abby turns her attention to the recessed bed, once a staple of tenement living.
15:13It is a kitchen, a bedroom, a living space, all in one.
15:18According to Sandra's memory book, Abby needs to make a maroon silk eiderdown.
15:24So she backs a piece of silk with felt and hand stitches the two together in a grid pattern to
15:31create Sandra's grandparents' bed covering. A bolster cushion, two pillows and a matching blanket
15:38are also glued neatly into place. With a hot iron and a careful touch, the bed is dressed to perfection.
15:48For the curtains that hung at the window next to the sink,
15:51Abby carefully cuts, pins and hand stitches floral fabric, shaping it into perfect pencil pleats.
15:59And she's made a basic mid-century cooker, carefully fitting the tiny oven door and assembling the gas hob.
16:08This particular area with the fireplace and the sink and the cooker in the cupboard is really where
16:16all the action happened, where family life happened and where Sandra grew up.
16:21Next, Abby tackles the little wooden stool that Sandra remembers beside the fireplace,
16:27cutting each part from two millimetre plywood, gluing the joints with precision
16:33and staining the surface to match aged wood. A simple object that was once transformed by childhood imagination.
16:42It's really important to get these little details in there that show family life, show the love that they had
16:49and I think it will translate really, really well to miniature.
16:54Getting the details right is what matters here.
17:00And to make sure the model rings true, I'm heading off to dig a little deeper into the realities
17:06of tenement life in Glasgow. And see what more I can uncover about the world Sandra grew up in.
17:14I'm meeting the director of the Museum of the Home, Sonia Solicari.
17:19Sonia, hello.
17:20Hello, so lovely to see you. How are you?
17:23Very well, thank you.
17:24You need to pick your brains. So we are going to make a miniature model for Sandra,
17:30who was raised by her grandparents in a Glasgow tenement. So what is a tenement and what is their story?
17:37So tenements are essentially apartments. So they're building blocks with multi-dwellings.
17:43The reason why they came about was because from the 1800s, you know, Glasgow was going through
17:47huge expansion with the shipyards and factories. You know, the city was very much in full swing
17:53of the Industrial Revolution and people were flocking there for work. So lots of landlords stepped in and
17:58started to build these blocks very, very quickly to accommodate a growing workforce.
18:03And were they nice places to live?
18:04It was really mixed. So there were some very well-appointed tenements. And then on the other
18:10end of the spectrum, you could get extremely cramped conditions that were quite unsanitary.
18:15There could be up to 50 people sharing a toilet in the backyard. In fact, I've got some photos here.
18:20These are out the back in the backcourt. A lot of the living conditions were quite shocking and we
18:26would find completely unacceptable today. By the 1970s, the decision had been made to clear
18:31vast swathes of the tenements. So they were demolished and replaced predominantly with high-rise
18:37apartment blocks. Some tenements do remain and they're in that wonderful sort of red or blonde
18:42sandstone and so they're very popular today. Now we're going to go inside the tenement now and into
18:49Sandra's kitchen. And Sandra said they had three dining chairs, two armchairs. She's not got any
18:55photographs, but she did mention utility furniture. So what is utility furniture?
19:00So utility furniture is really interesting in the history of British furniture because it was only
19:04produced during the Second World War. And it was in response to the shortage of materials at the
19:09time because the war was on and furniture was rationed. So the government produced in 1943,
19:14we've got a copy of it here, the utility furniture catalogue. And in it, it really lays out all the
19:19approved designs. So they were really minimalist, I suppose. It's about making sure that the materials
19:26were used in the best possible way, so there was no waste. And so if it was rationed, so you could
19:30literally only get it by, you'd have rationed papers for it? Yeah, so the only people who qualified
19:36for utility furniture were newlyweds and people whose homes had been bombed. Parts of Glasgow were quite
19:41heavily bombed, so it would have started to make its way onto the second-hand market as well. So there
19:46would have been quite a bit of it around at that date. This is great, isn't it? This is so good.
19:51This is hopefully going to ring a thousand bells for Sandra. I mean, it's quite stylish in its
19:55simplicity. It's quite nice and simple. It's very much to contemporary taste. But actually,
19:59at the time, a lot of people favoured furniture that was a little bit more ornate and floral.
20:04Sonia, can I be cheeky and borrow this? Because I think it's going to be brilliant for Abby,
20:07our miniaturist, to work from. Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully she gets the inspiration she needs.
20:16Back in the workshop, Abby wastes no time putting my interior's intel to good use.
20:26Sandra's floor plan showed two armchairs next to the fire.
20:32And now Abby knows exactly where to go for inspiration.
20:37I've actually based the easy chair on the one from the catalogue. It's a similar shape,
20:43but I've added on some lace details as people would have at the time to kind of jazz up and
20:48customise their own furniture. Next, Abby turns her attention to the products that Sandra's granny
20:55might have had in her kitchen. Tin cans emerge from rolls of card covered in silver paint. Then she
21:03carefully glues their vintage style labels with pinpoint precision. Bisto, Brasso and Sifter,
21:11kitchen cupboard relics so real you can almost smell the gravy. Then comes a loaf of bread,
21:17modelled out of polymer clay and baking powder, so that realistic air bubbles form when heated,
21:24with a crust-tinted rich brown. Each individual slice is buttered with cream gloss paint.
21:32And a Scottish classic, Tunnock's Tea Cakes. First made in 1956, Tunnock's quickly became a childhood
21:42memory for people all over the UK. But Abby's production line is a little bit different.
21:49She moulds and cures tiny balls of resin with a UV light. Then she covers each dome in chocolate coloured
21:58paint. Their iconic wrappers are made by applying sticky tape to the printed red logo, soaking in
22:06water to remove the paper and gluing the tape onto silver foil. Next, each logo is cut into a tiny
22:14circle and wrapped around a miniscule tea cake to create the tasty treat young Sandra got when she was
22:21good. Finally, Abby turns her attention to a special gift Sandra has always remembered. Sandra mentioned
22:32to me when we met that her granny and granda bought her a toy pram. So I thought it would be a really,
22:39really lovely surprise for her. I researched online toy prams in the 1950s, just to see the different
22:49styles and types of body. Abby cuts the pram shape out of grey board and glues a strip of paper to the base.
22:59She strengthens the whole thing with wood glue before making decorative mouldings with a carefully cut
23:05sliver of sticker. I'm currently painting the body of the pram, which I've made from paper and thick cardstock.
23:19The wheels are laser cut plywood discs with jewellery wires for spokes and washers for hubcaps.
23:28The pram hood is made from a laser cut plywood frame and wrapped with vintage silk.
23:35And once all the pieces have been glued together, Abby adds a finishing touch.
23:40When I create pieces, I like to make them look like they're from someone's memory. So sepia-toned
23:49and old. So by adding black tea to the body of the pram here, I'm just dampening down the colour,
23:56making it look like it could be from Sandra's memories. This is a beautiful project because it's
24:03all about love. And it's really about trying to bring Sandra's memories back to life for her.
24:19It's been a month since Sandra first came to us hoping for a model of her beloved grandparents' cosy
24:26in the kitchen. And now it's time to find out if Abby has managed to work memory miracles.
24:36Sandra, hello! Come on!
24:38Hello! Come in!
24:39Oh, it's great to see you. How are you feeling?
24:43Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah? Very excited.
24:45Yeah. In fact...
24:47Goosebumps? Yes! OK.
24:49How are the emotions? Mixed. I hope it's how I remember it.
24:54Well, does that pile on the pressure, Abby? Just a little bit. A tiny bit.
24:58Can't wait to unveil your childhood home where you didn't have much.
25:02Yes. Didn't have much money, but you had a lot of love.
25:05Yes. Absolutely.
25:07Come a little close, Sandra. Are you ready?
25:09OK. Three, two, one.
25:15That's fantastic!
25:16Oh, my goodness. It's so lovely. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
25:24For the first time in nearly 60 years, Sandra can see her grandparents' home once more.
25:31A masterpiece of craftsmanship where every surface, texture and tiny detail is rich in memory and meaning.
25:40I'm absolutely amazed because it's exactly the same.
25:43Yeah. It's exactly the same. And the breadboard.
25:48Oh, you've done so, so well.
25:52Oh, that's great. And cards.
25:54My granda teaching me.
25:55At the heart of the room, the cream-tiled fireplace is flanked by two utility armchairs.
26:03And the recessed bed proudly displaying its hand-stitched maroon silk eiderdown.
26:09What have you spotted?
26:10Oh, well, first of all, this was her pride and joy.
26:14My granny's pride and joy because it was silk.
26:17You can't sit on it.
26:18Oh, the bedspread.
26:19You know, the instructions were, do not jump.
26:23You can sit on that bed.
26:25The minute she got out the door, I was up on the bed, jumping, you know.
26:30It's just wonderful.
26:34That's good, isn't it? It's really good.
26:36Yeah.
26:37Everywhere you look, there are echoes of Sandra's childhood. The toy pram her granny gave her.
26:44My little pram. And it's exactly, you know, it's exactly the same.
26:49The old stool that became a gallant ship in her imaginary adventures.
26:54That is perfect.
26:56Even the treats for when she was good.
26:59Oh, that's great. Tonnock's tea cakes.
27:02Yeah.
27:04That's a good one.
27:05It's that by there, look, next to the wagon wheel.
27:08So it is, oh, my God.
27:11Oh, wow.
27:12That is absolutely brilliant.
27:15It's put me right back in the middle there, sitting at the back of that chair.
27:21It's a bit overwhelming, actually.
27:24I'm feeling elated.
27:25It's closure. It's going to heal a lot of wounds.
27:31A lot of sadness.
27:33A lot of happiness.
27:34It's a wee treasure.
27:36And it will actually be an heirloom for my family.
27:42I can go to that any time and just bring my memories up.
27:48Family's everything, and it's all there.
27:51So I am absolutely over the moon with it, and I can't thank you enough.
27:54And you.
27:56Well, it's been an absolute pleasure.
27:58Well done, Abby.
27:59Come on, come here.
28:00Oh, come on, come on.
28:02Hod me up.
28:03Oh.
28:05Oh, come on.
28:11Oh, come on.
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