The Grand Duchy of Stollen

The Rathaus in-progress. . . S pent about an hour this morning working on the spire that sits atop my rathaus, and I must say I am pleased.  Again, it is far from perfect, and later painting will help hide some problem areas, but for a non-professional modeller, it's not bad.   My modelling skills don't allow me to reproduce a more ornate spire that resembles the late Baroque types like you'll across the North of Germany and along other stretches of the Baltic coast, so this seems like a reasonable compromise.  This particular spire though, in my own defense, is not unlike some of the tall, slender prototypes that you'll see in Copenhagen, Riga, or other Baltic cities, so it works for me. The Grand Duchy of Stollen, prior to disappearing from the maps in the third Partition of Poland, was in the neighbrhood of The Duchy of Courland after all. Coming back to real life for just a moment, there are just a few small touch-ups to the rathaus to take care of tomor...

To provide a sense of size, the building in the left foreground -- the large university/palace/government building with two dormers and two wings -- is 10 inches long from end to end. The round dormer on Customs House -- center right in the photograph -- came together fairly easily.  Believe it, or not, I sketched out the dormer shape by hand, cut it out with tiny, very sharp scissors, shaped it, and glued it into place.  It usually never is that easy, but once in a great while. . . The three-gabled structure in the rear left corner of the picture above will become, once a batch of balsa dowels arrive in the mail, The Hospital of the Holy Ghost.  It is based on the actual complex of the same name in Luebeck, Germany as I've written previously. H ere's where things stand at the moment with the latest batch of town buildings as of Tuesday afternoon May 30th.  Not perfect, but I must admit to feeling rather pleased wth how things are coming along....

Finally nailed it and got the multiple pieces that comprise this roof glued into place.  Time for a break! T he angles on my first town building, featuring a type of mansard roof -- referred to in German as a 'mansardenwalmdach' -- with a couple of gables thrown in for good measure, were murder to figure out and trim correctly.  Considerable, um, trial and error (a pleasant euphemism for some blue language hissed beneath my breath) shall we say.  But I've got it now, and following roofs should come together somewhat more easily.  Two smaller roofs for a couple of modular wings a little later this afternoon, and then the University of Krankenstadt will be finished, and I can move onto the next one in the queue. -- Stokes    And a short 90 minutes, or so, later, the roofs on the two wings were glued into place and more or less done.  Just chimneys to add now, but I'll come back and do those just before painting begins once the rest of the to...

  Unlike my previously scratch-built buildings, this time I have made a number of simple drawings and sketches of how the finished structures will look, more or less.  This followed several weeks of examining many old buildings, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, that still exist in Denmark, across the north of Germany, Northern Poland, and into present-day Lithuania and Latvia. T he last week or so has been fairly relaxed around Totleigh-in-the-Wold in general and, more specifically, down here in Zum Stollenkeller Mk. II since my return late last Sunday evening from the big annual conference organized by The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Minneapolis.  So, I have had lots of free time to make headway on the latest building project.  Other than a rear wing for one, or possibly two of the planned buildings (the hospital and the university), the walls of the basic structures have all been cut out and cemented together.  Next u...