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Down to the smallest detail Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Marjorie Cook of Shady Cove peers through a miniature Alaskan museum she created. Cook does all the work herself, down to painting and framing the artwork that hangs on the walls. Her two dozen miniature displays are a treasure few from the outside world get to see. Shady Cove woman's miniature scenes look just like the real thing, except they're a lot tinier By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune SHADY COVE - Marjorie Cook finds great pleasure in creating small treasures. A trimmed-out Thanksgiving dinner table, including turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, fits neatly onto a cake plate. A basement laundry room, complete with dirty clothes and a honey-do cork noteboard, is crafted inside a laundry soap bottle. And a miniature art gallery, featuring Cook's own fingernail-sized paintings framed and hung, is displayed in an area no bigger than a sewing box. "The frames are harder to do than the paintings," says Cook, 76. "You try to get those little rascals square." Cook has hand-built these and two dozen other miniature displays that are tiny snapshots of the big world outside her Shady Cove mobile home, and they are scenes precious few in the outside world have seen. She uses light wood and simple household tools to replicate snippets of full-scale life down to such a degree that the plate of eggs and bacon in her cafe are a half-inch across. "I guess the only real reason I do this is because it's fun," Cook says. "But I can tell you that it does get out of hand. Way out of hand. "But smaller," Cook says, "is better." Yet Cook's miniature artistry has a similarly minuscule audience. She is a lifelong painter and quilter who never had an art show other than the one she built, so only a handful of neighbors and a few Girl Scout cookie-sellers have seen Cook's little worlds. "Marj has a remarkable skill," neighbor Fred Nunn says, "that I think should be recognized." Cook never recognized her interest in little things until a decade ago, when she helped a friend rebuild and decorate a small doll house. "By the time we got done with that, I thought, you know, I'd like to try one," Cook says. Her creations run in scale from an inch to the foot down to less than a quarter-inch to the foot, says Cook, a miniature herself at just a few wood-shavings over 5 feet tall. It takes months to create a single display. She hand-cuts and paints the furniture, builds the backdrops and accessorizes them with items she finds. Bar-stool cushions in her bread box cafe sit atop the handles of plastic disposable razors, while the turkey in her Thanksgiving display has the body of an acorn and tiny leaves for feathers. "I just look around, see something and think, hey, this will work," she says. Food items are typically made from clay she molds and paints, while little items like bowls of Jell-O are globs of clear glue she paints. The work is all done at her kitchen table, and the finished products are placed into containers that fit the scene's theme. An old wooden wall-clock case is now a miniature clock shop. A gutted telephone provides the foundation for a telephone company office. And a wooden bread box now houses a bakery. "What else would go in a bread box?" she says. Cook now is working on a replica of a Les Schwab tire store, where her son works, and it will be built into an old hubcap. "You know, one thing leads to more," Cook says. "Quite more. I get carried away, to say the least." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.