I went to visit my sister a few days ago at her winter home, a double-wide near Leesburg, Florida. She bought it just last year and will save me the trouble of lengthy trips back to Elkhart to visit. Hopefully, her kids will come to see her and me, their only uncle. They are the only family left in northern Indiana. As soon as we got comfortable around the dining room table with conversation, she placed two small boxes in front of me.

The first box contained a Waterford Crystal thimble (labeled #298) that I gave to my mother many years ago. I apparently spotted it at Bloomingdale’s in Chicago. She always had a knack for organization, so I’m sure there is a detailed list, documenting each addition to her collection. The second box was for me to give back to my son and held a glass thimble etched with Mickey Mouse ears (#279), a memory of the Disney gift he once gave his grandmother. My sister has a whole garage full of our parent’s stuff, but she chose only these two items to deliver. Neither of us have room for much, but fortunately most of my mother’s keepsakes were miniatures. My sister must have finally gotten to the point emotionally where she can begin to reluctantly part with these family treasures. Perhaps other items will be delivered on her next trip here.

My mother collected stamps and thimbles for fun, along with her other hobby of photography. I already sold her collection of postage stamps started by her father when he was the Elwood, Indiana Postmaster. She always had a fond appreciation of small things and maybe stories like Tom Thumb. She did some sewing, but I don’t really know where this fascination with thimbles came from. It certainly gave me something to look for when we traveled, bringing her back a souvenir from our journeys. I had also wrapped some up as Christmas gifts including a porcelain thimble as part of a hinged Limoges Box. It’s now part of my wife’s collection of these pricy, hand-painted trinkets, that like my mother have kept a numbered log of each special prize.

My mom’s interest in dollhouse miniatures and love of photography eventually grew into a small business called the Calico Cottage. She would personalize dollhouses with framed photos of family members, like you’d find in a real home, and shrink them to fit where Tom Thumb might live. She would convert a normal-sized family photo into a scaled-down version and build a tiny wooden frame around it to be hung in the bedroom, living room, or kitchen of a dollhouse. She also used antique jewelry settings as decorative frames and had metal frames manufactured in various small sizes. In retirement, she and my dad would travel to miniature shows all over the country.

As more of these thimbles that I gave as gifts come back into my life, I’ll certainly have many more memories to share. As a sidenote, there were some miniature room settings that she crafted with some of my personal photos, hanging on the walls of their retirement home. These rooms could have been part of a dollhouse but were designed for people that don’t want or can’t afford an entire miniature house. There were also cases filled with never-used photo-less frames and files of photocopies that customers sent to shrink down to fit these custom frames. She always sent the originals back as promised.

A faint memory of my mom that I’ll close with is a visit over 60-years ago to the Thomas Edison home in Ft. Myers. We were staying with my grandparents in nearby Englewood and went to the historical compound for the day. All of us were astounded with the massive dollhouse that he built for his grandchildren, complete with miniature working light fixtures. Perhaps, this was an inspiration to my mom long before she started her business. I went back to see it last year, but the scale-model home was no longer there. I could only imagine it filled with tiny framed Edison family photos.