photo by: Emma Delk
Unique Miniatures Owner Wendy Barbeau, right, reviews one of the drafts of the resign replicas made for “The People’s House: A White House Experience” with General Manager Amanda Donaldson.
WHEELING — The women operating the Wheeling-based small business Unique Miniatures can now give a tour of the White House without ever stepping inside after spending four months recreating items from the president’s house for the exhibit “The People’s House: A White House Experience.”
The 47 replica items created by Unique Miniatures owner Wendy Barbeau, General Manager Amanda Donaldson and HoH Share Inc. team members are now on display in Washington as part of the White House Historical Association’s exhibit. While the miniatures that Barbeau and Donaldson create are typically small enough to be displayed in a dollhouse, the effort to create the various miniature fireplaces, picture frames and framed mirrors for the exhibit was not on a small scale.
The custom order that sent the two down a path of research, mold-making and resin-pouring began with Barbeau and Donaldson having a Zoom meeting with a woman from the D.C. area in the spring of 2024.
When the woman informed Barbeau and Donaldson the client they would be making replica items for was the White House Historical Association, Barbeau said the two were “speechless.”
The replicas were specifically going to be used in a large-scale White House model that reproduces the building’s South Facade and 19 rooms complete with furnishings and accessories. Unique Miniatures recreated fireplaces, picture frames and framed mirrors for the various rooms.
After the Zoom call, the two began brainstorming and planning for the project. The first step was for Donaldson to conduct in-depth research for the various pieces they would replicate.
A road bump in the research process was tracking down clear photos of the various pieces of furniture they needed to replicate, as where picture frames and mirrors are hung in the White House can change from administration to administration.
“A room in one administration would be used as a bedroom, and then that same room would be used as an office in a later administration,” Donaldson said. “These switches back and forth would also mean artwork and picture frames would be moved around. We would think, ‘Oh, this frame will be easy to find, just look for this painting,’ but then those paintings and frames were switched when the next president entered the house.”
While what paintings hung in which frames changed, Barbeau noted that the furniture they had to recreate did not change. She added that this was helpful as the “timeless” aspect of the White House decorations benefited their design process for their miniature-making.
Replicas of furniture from the White House created by Unique Miniatures are on display at the Washington museum, located just across the street from the White House grounds. (Photo Provided)
Unique Miniatures sells replica items in various architectural styles, from Baroque to Rococo. This came in handy for Barbeau and Donaldson while designing the replicas from the White House, as the two could use elements from miniature molds they had already made in the same styles of rooms in the White House. This included the Federal style, used for the Green Room, and the Victorian style, used for the Treaty Room.
Donaldson also frequented local antique and thrift stores to find furniture similar to the pieces used in the White House that they could deconstruct to help create their replicas.
“We found a lot of our frames that we deconstructed at antique and thrift stores, because a lot of modern furniture is made to be generic and ordinary,” Donaldson said. “We had to think outside the box and go to hole-in-the-wall places. It was magic when we found something that really matched what we had to make from the White House.”
The replica of the picture frame for the portrait of First Lady Edith Roosevelt is Unique Minatures Owner Wendy Barbeau’s and General Manager Amanda Donaldson’s favorite piece they made for the exhibit. (Photo Provided)
Though the business could handily recreate the various architectural styles used in the White House, the scale needed for the exhibit models was not one with which the pair was familiar.
Unique Miniatures sells on a variety of miniature scales, with Barbeau noting that most miniatures are modeled on a 1-to-12 scale, where 1 inch on a scale model or miniature equals 12 inches to the original object being copied. The scale needed for The People’s House was a 1-to-5 scale.
“Barbie doll items are on a 1-to-6 scale, so the 1-to-5 scale we had to do for the exhibit was kind of a weird scale that was not between the Barbie doll scale or the 1-to-12 dollhouse scale,” Barbeau said. “We had very little idea how to plan for the materials we would need because we usually don’t make molds that large.”
Unique Miniature has a three-step process for creating a miniature. The process begins with creating the master, which is the model for the miniature. A silicone mixture is poured over the master, which hardens to create a mold. Resin is poured into the silicone mold for the final step to create the body of the miniature, which can then be sanded down and painted as needed.
Barbeau and Donaldson collaborated with HoH Share and its Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community to create the project’s masters. The two worked with HoH Share Executive Director Kate Marshall to craft certain sculptural elements for the replicas, including figurines attached to the front of the China Room fireplace. Other artists who participated in the project included Ashlie Howard, Heather Ewing and Ryan Ewing.
Members of the HoH Share team also taught Barbeau and Donaldson how to use woodworking tools to cut out pieces of wood for the masters and create wood details for the miniatures.
“We learned a lot of skills that we didn’t have before this project, especially with the woodworking,” Barbeau said. “There would be some very ornate and detailed stuff that we would have to make out of wood on a small certain scale.”
Other materials used to create the masters included hand-sculpted and 3-D-printed figurines, clay sculpture material, glue-soaked twine and tiny metal stars. Combining the various materials to create the masters became known among those working on the project as “Frankenstein-ing.”
Each of the 47 replica items took 10 hours to create, with the team often working on multiple pieces simultaneously. The team produced miniature versions of 15 White House fireplaces, 23 picture frames and nine framed mirrors.
These replicas included the ornate mirror that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom; the fireplace in the Diplomatic Reception Room with a blessing carved by President John Adams and frames holding paintings of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
Donaldson sands rough edges from one of the 47 replica items produced by Unique Miniatures for The People’s House.
The piece the two are most proud of is the picture frame they recreated for the portrait of First Lady Edith Roosevelt, which hangs in the Green Room.
“That piece represents the culmination of a whole summer of teamwork, what we learned from the folks at (Mother Jones), what we learned about working with resin and the confidence we developed to create masters,” Barbeau said. “That’s what makes the piece special to me.”
Unique Miniatures delivered the last replicas for the project in early September. The museum display opened Sept. 23, with the Unique Miniatures being featured in a section containing miniature replicas of 19 White House rooms.
Barbeau visited the exhibit in early December and said she was “astounded” by the technology used to create the three-floor site located on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
“The purpose of creating the museum was to provide a closer look at the White House than is available to many people because of the limited number of visitors able to tour the White House each year,” Barbeau said. “The White House Historical Association created this exhibit, which is free and open to the public, to make the White House available to anyone.”
When she saw her work displayed in the museum, Barbeau recalled the learning process of creating each piece.
“We did some really impressive, amazing stuff,” Barbeau reflected. “I remember looking at one of the picture frames and saying, ‘I built that.’ I’d say by the end of the project, we felt really confident in our skills to build out things on our own.”
In addition to gaining new skills as miniature-makers, the project also familiarized the two with the layout of the White House so that they could give a tour of the rooms without ever having stepped inside. Through her research for the project, Donaldson could even recall which portraits occupied specific frames in the White House during different presidencies.
While the two do not plan to use their encyclopedic knowledge of White House furniture in the near future, they do plan to use the skills they learned from the project and the partnership they forged with HoH Share for future projects.
“There’s no way we could’ve accomplished this alone,” Barbeau said. “This project helped me realize this business can provide a place to work not only for folks with barriers to employment but also for young, new artists.”