Craftsman marks 25 years of creating Teesdale in miniature

A UNIQUE craft business that has taken typical Teesdale scenes across the globe is celebrating 25 years of trade.

Farmer Trevor Dixon, from Langleydale, makes intricate detailed miniature scenes of stone walls, bridges, shooting butts, barns and other dale features which have gone as far as China and America.

Animals, such as sheep and dogs, are created by another artisan and added to the scene.

He started his business, Dalestone Crafts, in 1992 after seeming something similar in Cumbria.

He said: “I was in the Lake District and saw some walls made of Lakeland slate, I thought I could make some using local stone.”

Having been a drystone waller all his life, making the miniatures was a natural progression. Unlike mass-produced moulded countryside scenes, each of Mr Dixon’s hand-made structures is unique and no two are alike.

The work is painstaking and he carefully chips small stones into shape using a pincer tool. Then using tweezers and PVA glue, he delicately builds the walls. The farmer started taking commissions to build houses about six years ago.

He said: “What I really started was walls with sheep and dogs. I don’t do many of them anymore.”

The house walls are made from stone, while the gates, doors and window frames are wood. PVC completes the windows and cardboard is sued for tile slates. A pebble dash effect, when needed, is achieved by painting a mix of crushed stone and PVC glue onto the walls.

The result is a detailed representation of the client’s home.

Mr Dixon said: “I go to the house take photos of all the details. I might pace it out. It [the model] is not true scale, but it looks right.”

Completing a model, he said, takes about 60 hours over a 20 to 30-day period.

As well as international tourists buying Mr Dixon’s countryside scenes at fairs and markets, he has sold many to American soldiers at a North Yorkshire airforce base who have taken them back to the States, and GSK bought a batch of models to take to China.

Mr Dixon said: “Some of my earlier work is in just about every continent.

“It is nice to think there is a piece of Teesdale on the other side of the world.”