Boxcraft Table and Chairs.
Mantel and Settle made from cardboard boxes.
Piano and Grandfather’s Clock made from boxes.
Almost all chairs I made were cut from narrow box covers and jewelers’ hat-pin boxes. One hat-pin box will make two chairs. Each half makes one. (For chair, see [Diagram Six, C], page 177.) Hat-pin boxes will make high-backed chairs. Other box covers make other kinds. When you cut an ordinary chair with a low back, begin to cut the rim from the side of your box near the center on one long side. When you make a chair from a hat-pin box, cut the rim off your box two thirds of the way around, leaving one end only with the rim on. The part without rim is the back of the chair. Press that upward, and cut the legs of the chair from the end that has a rim left upon it.
I made a grandfather’s clock by standing a hat-pin box on end. I glued to its upper front part the face of a penny watch. You do not need to spend a penny. Just mark the face of a clock in pencil and glue it to the front of your clock.
Really, I am very proud of the piano. It is not every doll-house that can have a piano—but you can make one, for it is easy. You will need a shallow letter-paper box and a narrow box such as fountain pens come in from the store where they are bought. Paste one long side of the narrow box across the front or back of the letter-paper box after you have stood the letter-paper box upright. The narrow box should be placed about where you think the keyboard belongs. (See [Diagram Six, F], page 179, for making a piano from two boxes.) The music-rest is a bit of folded box rim glued to the central part of the piano above the keyboard. The keyboard is marked off with ink upon a strip of white paper and pasted upon the top of the narrow box. You can easily draw the first part of some music that you know, and place it on a tiny sheet of white paper to make a “piece” for the piano’s music-rest.
A mantel for the living-room may be made from a flat letter-paper box. Stand the box upon one long rim and place its printed side to the back. Cut from the front a mantel opening like the opening for a fireplace. (See [Diagram Six, G], page 180.)
The Morris chair is made like any other chair. (See [Diagram Six, C], page 177, for cutting a chair from a box.) It has two bent box rims glued to each side to make the arm rests, and the cardboard is cut rounding from the front rim of the box in cutting its legs.