68 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
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JULY/AUGUST 2016
PHOTO:
PHOTOSHUTTER
WINE
WINE LOVERS, I have found, are unrepentant collectors, not
only of bottles of wine, but also all the paraphernalia that goes along
with wine — the labels, corkscrews, corks and even those little
metal discs under the cage of champagne bottle stoppers. And, of
course, they collect wine books.
I confess that I was an avid wine book collector until I moved
into a condo and had to divest myself of some 700 volumes. It was
like giving away children. But there was one book I parted with
years ago that I still think about as a bittersweet memory. It was
the cellar book for Q ueen Mary's Dolls' House at Windsor Castle.
Its beige, hard cover bore the name "Berry Brothers & Rudd," the
renowned London-based wine merchant.
To be clear, the collector's item, which I had found in a second-
hand bookshop in London, was not the actual cellar book that re-
sides in the wine cellar of the dollhouse. Rather, it was the template
that was used to miniaturize the volume to the size of a postage
stamp — to be in perfect proportion (one inch to the foot) with all
the other contents of what has been described as "the world's largest
and most beautiful dolls' house."
If ever you chance to have tea at Windsor Castle, ask the Queen
about her grandmother's palatial, four-storey doll's house. She will
tell you, no doubt, that it was designed in 1924 by the British ar-
chitect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who took time off from another project
– building New Delhi – to indulge the royal whim.
Q ueen Mary, the wife of George V, was by all accounts a vora-
cious and rapacious collector of miniatures. According to a con-
temporary, "Her methods of collecting were notoriously ruthless:
she would admire an object so relentlessly and so forcefully that its
owner felt obliged to hand it over. Prudent hostesses hid their fa-
vourite things before she arrived."
e fruits of Q ueen Mary's hyperactive collector gene can be
seen in this most remarkable artifact. e dolls' house contains
| DETOURS |
Miniature Vintage
The story of the amazingly shrunk wine cellar and the book that resides therein
