A review of Pictorial House Modelling by Edward W. Hobbs

After stumbling across the work of Laurence T. Gieringer I’ve gotten interested in finding the oldest books about making miniature buildings. My archeological approach is admittedly haphazard, but stumbling around did find this 1926 book, Pictorial House Modelling: A Practical Manual explaining how to make Models of Buildings, by Edward W. Hobbs, published by C. Lockwood & Son in their Technical Press Manuals series. My copy is a 2013 reprint published by Read Books.

This reprint is not of the highest quality, although I bought it because of easy availability and relatively low price. The misspelling of ‘Pictoral’ on the cover is a clue. The biggest disappointment is the photographs, which are the pictorial in the reprint’s Pictoral. The photos are rough and grainy, and don’t do justice to the innovative way the original used step-by-step photos to explain construction techniques. Later books like Ahern’s and Stokes’ rely heavily on line drawings to illustrate building methods, but here the presentation is almost 21st century in its use of photos. After seeing this I’m now on the lookout for an original to see if its photos were any good - maybe Read was saddled by poor quality photos in the original.

The reprint also has an odd essay prefacing the main work called ‘Model Building’ that reads like it was added by the reprint’s publisher, but is uncredited. It gives a condensed history of model building along with some observations on where the hobby is today. I would have instead prefaced the reprint with something that gave a little history about the original book and its author, along with some thoughts on where the book stands in relation to others in the field of making miniature buildings. But, maybe that’s what this post is for :-)

The first thing I wondered was, who was Edward W. Hobbs? A page at the Brighton Toy & Model Museum came to the rescue. You can read about him there, but one thing I should highlight is he published extensively on model building and DIY subjects with 27 known books to his name, and for a time was employed by Bassett-Lowke as their ships and boats expert. From his bibliography it looks like Pictorial House Modelling was one of his earliest works, and he followed up on the subject in 1937 with House Modelling for Builders and Estate Agents, also published by Lockwood.

Although Hobbs’ name is on the cover, inside he notes that Joyce Inall prepared many of the models made specially to illustrate this book. It appears that all the construction photos feature Inall as the hand model performing the steps, although that’s never explicitly stated. So, the book appears to be a collaboration between Hobbs and Inall, even though Inall isn’t credited on either the cover of the original or the reprint. Although I’m glad to see the text does credit her contribution.

Speaking of hand models, I found this rather arty video on Vimeo of Jo Ray enacting a selection of Joyce Inall’s hand positions superimposed over photos from the book. It’s hard to describe what this video is about, so have a look:

Pictorial House Modelling (After Miss Joyce Inall) 2015 (extract) from Jo Ray on Vimeo.

Ok, as for modelling methods, the book shows mainly how to construct small buildings from cardboard. For the simplest models, say those comprised of only four walls, drawing the walls as a continuous strip, and then folding the strip into a structure is recommended, as we saw with Railroad Modeler’s Penny Model features. Surface detailing is for the most part painted or drawn on with little in the way of physical three-dimensional detailing. Although, the few photos of professionally built models do show built-up detail. In general, the book’s construction methods are similar to those presented in the 1920 manual training textbook my grandmother studied from in teacher’s college. 

Regarding scale used in the book, Hobbs states: The novice is counselled to make a start on a model of modest size to a scale of 1/8 in. to one foot, a scale that has been adopted for many of the models illustrated in this book. This works out to approximately 3.175 mm to the foot, which is a little smaller than HO’s 3.5mm to the foot, so the construction methods shown are quite suitable for use in HO scale. HO was invented sometime in the 1920’s, and it wasn’t until later in that decade that it started to become more well known in model railroading, so it’s not surprising to see no mention of HO in the book (I need to look into the details of HO’s development as its 100th anniversary will occur sometime in the 2020s).

Should you buy this book? That depends. If you’re looking for techniques to use, I’d say no because I’d recommend more up-to-date tools and methods, even if you’re going to use cardboard. If you’re interested in the history of making miniature buildings, definitely yes. It’s well written, the instructions are clear, and its presentation method of more-or-less step-by-step photos is surprisingly modern. And it’s good for getting a sense of what were probably thought to be doable methods for home hobbyists, although professional techniques seemed to be more advanced.