Happy August, fellow CDHM'ers! This issue marks the debut of a fun new series of articles describing the evolution of the miniatures hobby in various countries around the world, beginning with my own country, the United States of America.

Thinking about the evolution of American miniatures made me nostalgic. And reminded me of the exact level of craziness to which a miniatures person thwarted will stoop.

One of my favorite things in childhood was my Mother's old tin dollhouse with its rooms of plastic furniture. Every Sunday we made the trip to grandmother's house for Sunday dinner and visiting. While the adults did the visiting, one of my things was to play with the old house, which was (shudder) OUTSIDE on top of a steel drum full of play sand next to the base of the rock cliff.

No, I don't know why my grandmother put it there. I can only assume it was because neatnik that she was, she wanted it out of her house and at the time (I was all of about five or seven) I wasn't thinking about preservation or how much that house would mean to me later when it was gone.

Luckily before that awful day I had saved much of the furniture, toting it back and forth in shoebox rooms of my own creation.

One black Sunday I arrived and my toy was nowhere to be found. Mom always swore if my grandmother had had an inkling how much I would mourn the loss of that house she would have never thrown it out.

It was many years before I found another tin house at an antiques store and purchased it. And a few more years before I found a duplicate of the one that got away on Ebay. Surprisingly enough I didn't buy it. I did, however, go for the two-porch version in the next listing that was a fancier model of the same T. Cohn house my mother had owned.

She still teases me about that house, telling me I just had to have a better one than she did. Hey, this one had a garage besides two porches...

It still, however, had the classically painted interior. I am now the proud owner of not one, not two, but three of those colorfully litho’ed metal houses, two of the original Playsteels and the two-porch version.

I have them on a shelf in my basement above one of my workbenches, full of furniture - some from that saved-til-it-frayed shoebox, some picked up at flea markets, antique stores and Ebay. They still make me smile and are good for instant transport back to childhood - rearranging the furniture in the rooms around the painted pieces on the walls, figuring out how to fix a missing sofa leg, adding a bottlecap here or there for an empty pie pan - all the other teeny things that fascinated me even then are still good to go now.

Another lost and found from my childhood was a tiny - and I do mean tiny - collection of carved ivory animals that resided in beans the size of a lentil. They kind of look like a lentil but are a lot harder with little ivory stoppers in the tops.

These Good Fortune Beans were in my Christmas stocking one year and somehow I have managed to keep track of them. Or I thought I had. I have an old Army footlocker of my Dad's that is full of Childhood Treasures (including a couple pieces of dollhouse furniture from The House). I thought I could pull out the trunk and dig out the beans for this month's editorial and share them - I've never seen their like anywhere.

Not there.

I thought back. When was the last time I'd seen them? I didn't think it had been too long ago, they are one of those fascinating curiosities I can't put away for long without pulling out and marveling at anew. The last time I had them out was with my old microscope (yes, I am a big enough science nerd that I had my own microscope) to check out the details – and they are tiny enough to fit on a slide!

The only other place to look was the Toy Drawer in my desk. (Most writers have one of these - filled with all sorts of interesting things meant to divert your attention from actually working…).

In the very back of the drawer behind the yoyos and the assassin's gun (shoots sucker darts – great for nailing unsuspecting dogs and starting a game of keep-away that REALLY diverts your attention from working) and other assorted attention-stealers was a worn brown packet - Good Fortune Beans!

The next trauma was trying to pry the itty bitty ivory stopper from the top of the dried bean. I've managed to open one pod so far - apparently it's been a while since I admired the carvings.

I'm not the best photographer, but tried to show these in scale and close-up for you to get an idea of their teeny size - a microscope might have been better. The different animals were hand carved of nail-clipping size bits of ivory. There are 12 different animals per bean and are supposed to bestow the luck of each animal on the owner.

I’m a little partial to the llama.

The beans apparently are based on a legendary parable. Watch for it next month!

Until then, happy crafting!

The Miniature Way Editor