I recently came across an abandoned stash of tiny doll shoes. When TeenGirl was little, she would take the tiny shoes off her tiny dolls, and if she momentarily lost one, she’d be distraught. My wife finally got all the shoes in one place, put them on a ledge, and we all forgot about them. This magazine article describes a subculture based on the aesthetic of miniatures, and the mastercrafting of bespoke artifacts. I gain some of the same pleasures from modeling objects and scenes in Blender 3D.

I went to Chicago with the idea that miniatures could charm, seduce, supply short-term distraction for those who wanted it. I left with the notion that they were, for some at least, a form of pain management — brilliantly literal and apparently effective. And perhaps there is value, more now than ever, in specificity. At a time of vague promises, blunt-force sloganeering, and unfounded factual claims, a person who spends two weeks making a fastidiously measured and proportionately diminished salt shaker can seem, to me at least, like a sage. —Alice Gregory, Harper’s Magazine