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Post Modern Post Industrial Miniature Doors

The constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic and the social restrictions it brought meant that doors increasingly closed between us and the outside world. The Knock Knock collection challenges us to consider what may lie behind these closed doors – large and small, simple and ornate, prosaic and magical.

Jon M Wilson

Urban sprawl and gentrification affect us all – the country towns of yesteryear become the bustling market hubs, and grow into small cities. Urbanisation overtakes the rural life, and housing density rises – the needs of a city must be met, as the population rises and the demands increase. The self-sufficient – near subsistence – lifestyle of the countryside fairies and elves is no longer as sustainable or desirable when the city lights beckon.

Bringing the urban environment a touch of magic that is usually reserved for forests and gardens. Function over form, with magical realism that speaks of working lives and metropolitan dwelling.

We’ve all seen the whimsical fairy doors that spring up amongst the bluebells and daisies. We’ve all seen their delightful colours and enchanting decorations peeking out from the leafy idyll of forest glades and woodland nooks. They are a glimpse into the world of the fairy – dancing in the dewdrops, and flitting through the dappled light of nature’s canopy.

What has remained hidden behind the scenes, just out of sight, is the world that supports these artisans and artists.  Behind every fairy who spends her – or his – day weaving the silken cobwebs into dreamcatchers and chai cosies, is someone who carved their table and chair, someone who made the hinges and nails that make their beautiful fairy door what it is.

Yes, there’s the fairy artiste who gathers the dew, to mix with the delicate pollen of the tulips and daffodils to make their organic, all natural pigments and tinctures to paint their auras, and express their feelings in bold swirls of colour on the pebbles of the river bank. But who makes their clay pots? Not the whimsical Toby Jugs and grinning troll mugs for tourists, but the everyday working pots that hold fragments of charcoal, a couple of grams of deep red earth, or some distilled organic goop in shades of rich green. Who brews their coffee? Who services their… other needs – the light, the dark and the in between?

The Knock Knock collection captures and celebrates the ordinary parts of the world, capturing an imagined miniature world. Functional, rugged, prosaic doors suitable for a blacksmith or a coffee shop, a tinker or an adult emporium.

I want to create an authenticity to the interaction with the object that has nothing to do with whether the object is real

Jon M Wilson, with thanks to Adam Savage

In practical terms, this collection of miniature doors (at approximately 1/12th scale) is a post-industrial, non-gendered interpretation of the established ‘fairy doors’, without the trappings of pinkness, sweet femininity and the imposition of traditional gender roles on the imagined owners of the doors.

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