Small things – Hilke Kurzke

Message No. 1 — Message in Bottle No. 1, 2012, thrown into the river Rhine and found two weeks later after a short drift

As you all know, I have been working on my project message in a bottle for two and a half years now. The contents of the bottles vary over time, although I have some favorites (like fish stamps) that pop up again every now and then. Generally the content of the bottles moves on with me and what I am currently thinking about.

flaschenpost 30-32 — Bottles 30+31+32, 2013 – secret script. All thrown into the river Elbe, none found yet

The Mystery Bottle — Bottle no. 52, 2014, never meant to float, instead place in the Beeston public library, found on the beach of Whitby two months later

Message in a Bottle No. 63 — Bottle No. 63, spring 2015 – one of five bottles with this mini book. Two of them were found already

flaschenpost no 072 folgende miniature worlds — Summer 2015, bottles No 72 + 74 + 77 + 78 + 79, “miniature worlds” with a scene and a mini book in it; not dispatched yet.

During this year I have been making miniatures. One of the reasons of course is that I simply enjoy it. I don’t understand completely why, but there is something cool about miniatures. But as always with my bottles, is is also a sign that I have something else in mind that involves miniatures. Something I don’t want to talk about yet. So forget that I even said that. Why was I talking about this at all?!

Ah, yes, I really wanted to talk about a wooden box I recently won a bid on on ebay. It contained water colours, acrylics, oil paints, linseed oil, a plastic palette, a cheap brush – that sort of thing. But the fun thing is that the box itself is made from wood. So I took out all the paints (I’ll use them eventually, I guess, I am especially curious to see whether the oil pains can be used for kitchen lithography). All the little tubes ect. were held inside plastic moulds which I also ripped from the box. The only bad thing about that was that the glue stuck to the box. Sticky, still flexible (the bit of hard hot glue was easy to remove= – I couldn’t even scratch much out from there.

glue traces in awful box — glue residue in box

So I decided to simply cover the two halves with billiard table cloth which I happened to have in my stash. (This is one of the many reasons why it is good to have a lot of things somewhere that I am sure to never really use: some day I might. I need to remind myself of this fact every now and then.)
Of course this doesn’t cover the elevation that eahc of this glue spots creates, but I don’t care overly much. All in all I am just happy that it worked that well:

Billard Table Cloth in the box — both halves covered in billiard cloth

And this is how it looks now / how I use the box: It holds all my miniature making equipment:

I can easily fit everything so that I can close the box. Works great, and I am very happy about my box and the fact that I now have a proper place for all the tiny bits and bobs I keep with the thought of maybe making something small from them. – See, I found the topic from the start again, after a bit 🙂

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