There's a lot of it about

What is it about miniatures? They seem to be everywhere these days.

We first started thinking about it when Cookie pointed to a number of them on his always excellent Made in England by Gentlemen.

There's Little People, "left in London to fend for themselves":

Adalberto Abbate's Microscultures:

Abbate's work reminds us of (and is possibly the inspiration for) the unifying narrative to last years' season of CSI, the Miniature Killer:

And Cookie also mentions Panique au Village, which we think must be the source of the current Cravendale milk campaign:

(And whilst on the subject of Cravendale, here's a lovely behind-the-scenes clip on YouTube.)

All this talk of little things reminded us of the popular fake tilt-shift pool on flickr, in which landscape shots are manipulated to look like miniatures. Here's a rather good example, courtesy of kosheahan:

Even home deco magazine Livingetc is at it with this styling suggestion:

Perhaps it all started with the Chapman Brothers, whose Disasters of War and Hell both use miniatures as a medium. Perhaps not.

Like many bigger, more significant news debates (is there more youth crime/lower moral standards/more political sleaze/[insert your pet topic here] than 50 years ago?), it's hard to gauge whether there really is more of this stuff or whether we're simply aware of more of it thanks to the media, in this case the internet.

Answers on a postcard, please, to Staufenberger Towers.

Comments

[giorg]

u can see abbate here!! museum riso

http://www.palazzoriso.it/node/85/opere

[samantha]

i love adalberto abbate . :D

[Amber]

Amazing stuff and fantastic detail. I did miniatures for a while when I was a teenager and this makes me want to start up again.