When I was working on my blog post on large dollhouses, I came across this great artist called Kevin Jackson, who creates the most astonishing projects in the Tudor doll house style.
And I knew that I had to write a blog post on him and his work, so I contacted him.
But most of all: he responded and I’m grateful that he wanted to give me some more information about his journey to creating these amazing houses and I’m sure that you will too!
So let’s dive straight into things!
A Little History On The Artistand his Tudor dollhouses
Kevin Jackson had a very successful and interesting career in building full-size show houses at exhibitions in the UK for 20 years.
After he retired, he started building unique and one-of-a-kind 12th-scale Tudor doll houses.
Building these doll houses started out as a hobby, but it has now turned into a full-time occupation.
After building and selling his first Tudor doll house, Kevin decided to visit a dollhouse and miniature show and was surprised to find a lack of interesting, character doll houses available.
After doing more research, Kevin found out that the majority of the dollhouses for sale had mostly the same designs.
Most of them were made from precision-cut panels, with mass-produced windows, walls, doors, etc, and there were very few people who specialized in a Tudor doll house.
At that exact moment, he decided to develop his own range and style of Tudor houses, incorporating as much detail as possible, and thus “KJ Dolls Houses” was born!
How Does Kevin Jackson Work – The Processon the Tudor doll houses
As Kevin does not follow any detailed plans but instead relies on his own imagination to create each house, no 2 houses are ever the same, the designs evolve as he works.
Each house is on a scale of 1:12 and takes approximately 2 to 6 months to build, and prices range from £2000.00 to in excess of £12000.00 plus.
He pays a lot of attention to detail and the use of good quality materials, which makes them valuable as collector items for the quality-seekers for dollhouse enthusiasts.
All the wood for the beams, posts, floor boards, bargeboards, and brackets is solid timber as the grain of real wood gives a more realistic finish, yet in miniature size.
All the steps to do in his work:
The wood is wire brushed to bring the grain of the timber out.
And the edges are then carefully distressed to give an aged appearance, before receiving at least 3 coats of stain.
The leaded windows are handmade with a special finish on the ‘glass effect’ which gives it a textured relief when touched from the outside, just as Tudor glass would have looked.
The windows come complete with internal ironmongery which is also handmade.
To duplicate how Tudor timber frame houses were originally joined together, the outside of the houses feature individually cut, drilled, and fixed timber pegs, in the positions where the structural joints would occur.
On average this results in 100-130 separate pegs being fitted to every house.
The internal floor boards are all handmade and then laid one at a time.
To add a realistic touch, each one has joints carefully cut into them, complete with nail holes on both sides of the joint.
All the ‘heavy oak effect’ doors are handmade and have a full set of handmade authentic-looking dummy hinges and twisted metal pull ring handles.
What Is Included In These Tudor doll Houses for sale?
Kevin prefers to build each house on a commission basis, whereby he is creating a house to his customer’s specific requirements and is hopefully turning their dreams into reality.
He has now managed to do this on several occasions and is always looking for more difficult challenges.
All houses come fully lit with handmade lights. The majority of the houses now even come with remote-controlled electrics including a real smoking chimney.
The roofs, paving and chimneys are plastered and sculpted by hand, all of which are then painted and treated with matt varnish to protect the finish.
There are also features available custom-made, like:
ceiling beams
Fireplaces
balconies
(wall) lights
Sometimes even:
hidden speakers
Mp3 player
Bluetooth connectivity
etc
All of the items (Tudor furniture, baskets, etc..) in the range are handcrafted by Kevin and are built to the same exacting standards as his houses.
Some Customer Reviews
Nothing but 5-star reviews for this amazing artist!
A few examples from his website:
The “Wow” Factor – A Review by Maria.
Elizabeth Cockrell Loeb – Arkansas, USA
Dreams Can Come True
Freek and Anne fromThe Netherlands
This review is important also because it talks about shipping outside of the UK in a special crate!
I received a further update on Kevin Jacksons’ work on my Facebook group.
Quote:
” Last year I announced that my arthritis was forcing me to give up on my passion for building unique one-of-a-kind very realistic Tudor doll houses.
Which I’m happy to say resulted in 3 more orders for my very large and detailed Ultimate Rochester houses, one local to me in Devon, the attached completed house going off to Sweden with the next one off to California.
The customer for the attached house had some particular requests for her custom-built house, such as:
removable loft hatch covers to create more floor space,
a projecting window with a window seat,
along with me using the tiles, she sent me to form a feature panel on the back wall of the undercover area beneath the external stairs, all of which I was more than happy to incorporate into her house.
The projecting window turned out so good that the next customer in California also requested it for her house.
All of my houses come with a selection of accessories to get you started, including all of the items that can be seen in the attached photos, including the dining hall furniture which I also make, along with all of the metal tableware needed to dress them.
They also come with fully remote-controlled electrics which have dimming, memory, and flicker functions which make the fires and candle lights look even more realistic.
I also build in hidden speakers that can be plugged into an external device to enable you to play medieval minstrel music in the background which then makes the minstrel gallery across the back of the Great Hall come to life.
I would be more than happy to send anyone interested more photos of either this house or of the many others I have made previously and to discuss a bespoke build with anyone interested.
I said last year that I would continue building houses to order as I can no longer manage to build houses and take to shows to sell, and that once I have no more orders that will be the time to stop.
The house for California will take me 6 months to build, after which I could start a bespoke build for the next and maybe the final customer!
I have been playing with a new scanning app on my iPhone and would be happy to send anyone with a later-model iPad or iPhone a 360’ scan of the house shown in these photos.
Should you have any questions or like any further details please do not hesitate to contact me.”
My Final Conclusion
I hope that you enjoyed this blog post on the Tudor-style dollhouses from Kevin Jackson, because I sure do admire his work!
If you have any questions for him, you could contact him personally;-)
For general questions on my website or on any other topic, please feel free to comment below in the comment section or join me on one of my social media channels below or on my +3100 members Facebook group.
4 thoughts on “Looking For A Tudor Doll House? – Kevin Jackson Knows How To Craft Them!”
I love your blog on Kevin Jackson and his doll houses. This is such an interesting topic and actually gave me so much more appreciation for doll houses! Such beautiful art really. Your site is full of insight, and you reaching out to him directly to get his history is excellent!
First of all, I would like to say that it was very noble and respectful of you to first go and contact the author from which this article is based from. I understand that this was your blog and your own take on how the author did so, but seeing as you came from and have the same line of expertise or interest, that was still a very good move on your part. Not a lot of people give credit to where it is due. I like that you introduced the maker of such nice Tudor doll houses starting with detailing Kevin Jackson’s own story of how he came about finding his hobby and eventually turning it into a viable source of income, and of course art and inspiration to others who do the same and appreciate his pieces. The attention to detail in each masterpiece he makes, speak much on his dedication to make each a work beyond mere art. His attention for detail as well as the time he takes to produce each project is tremendous – I can’t even begin to think of how many hours goes into conceptualizing it, let alone making imagination into reality.
Yes, of course, I wanted to contact Kevin, to get his permission also on using his pictures and some more information about his path to success and his education, I thought that was quite important to do!
Not everyone likes it when you pick their pictures from their website or so;-)
I love your blog on Kevin Jackson and his doll houses. This is such an interesting topic and actually gave me so much more appreciation for doll houses! Such beautiful art really. Your site is full of insight, and you reaching out to him directly to get his history is excellent!
Hello Stephanie !
Thank you for your positive comment and I do appreciate that I got you into the dollhouse world in this way 😉
Enjoy!
Kind regards,
Lizzy
First of all, I would like to say that it was very noble and respectful of you to first go and contact the author from which this article is based from. I understand that this was your blog and your own take on how the author did so, but seeing as you came from and have the same line of expertise or interest, that was still a very good move on your part. Not a lot of people give credit to where it is due. I like that you introduced the maker of such nice Tudor doll houses starting with detailing Kevin Jackson’s own story of how he came about finding his hobby and eventually turning it into a viable source of income, and of course art and inspiration to others who do the same and appreciate his pieces. The attention to detail in each masterpiece he makes, speak much on his dedication to make each a work beyond mere art. His attention for detail as well as the time he takes to produce each project is tremendous – I can’t even begin to think of how many hours goes into conceptualizing it, let alone making imagination into reality.
Hi Johnny!
Yes, of course, I wanted to contact Kevin, to get his permission also on using his pictures and some more information about his path to success and his education, I thought that was quite important to do!
Not everyone likes it when you pick their pictures from their website or so;-)
Thank you for your positive comment and,
I wish you happy crafting!
Lizzy