Introducing Fine Art and Fancy Things!
Photographs by Sarah Ainslie.
Arabella Duffy is a 13-year-old polymath who’ll be bringing her miniature creations to our new weekly market starting on 1st November, with 6 stalls outside Pellicci Cafe every Saturday from 10 – 4 until 20th December. She is supported by her doting artist parents, Sophy Smith and Carey Duffy, to make creative magic using her artistic talents, insatiable curiosity, and passion for history. Read her story in her own words.
“Fine Art and Fancy Things is a shop at Alfie’s Antiques. It all started outside our house, and now it’s a shop and a website.
We’ll be selling my miniatures, which are all my food and my peg dolls, which are all historical characters or things we just find funny. I’ll be making a little Pellicci’s fried breakfast in a saucepan!
There will also be matchboxes that my mum and dad have made, cameras, and also dioramas, which will be like miniature rooms of anything we find interesting — from Frida Kahlo’s studio to a little Chanel shop.
A whole load of things! We upcycle — so it could be a little children’s till that is turned into a 1960s Lido, or a toy truck turned into a Coca-Cola van with little Coca-Cola bottles in it. Things I have reimagined.
So, in lockdown, because we were bored, we made history videos for kids because I love history, and I was a bit down, and they went viral all over the world, and they got bigger and bigger!
We did about sixty, and I did them all in one take. I did a three-parter on Queen Victoria and one on Napoleon, Dolly Parton, so many— and kids really loved them.
I dressed up and got really into the character. At the end of the Queen Victoria video, I was actually crying, saying, ‘My Albert!’
CBS and the BBC did a story on me — lots of news channels — and then from there I made the peg dolls of the historical characters I did, because one day I found this cord and I untied it, and it looked like hair.
I said, ‘Oh, that looks like Marie Antoinette’s hair.’
And so I made a miniature Marie Antoinette, then I made more and more and more. The next thing you know, we’ve got a shop!
I’ve made Frida Kahlo, Elton John, Van Gogh, the King and Queen, Shakespeare, and Pablo Picasso.
It was just a few tables outside our house, and it got so big, and we had a lot of recognition. A lot of people loved what we did. Everyone said, ‘Why don’t you get a shop!’
And more tables kept getting outside our house, and we had no more space. So then we thought, well, let’s get a shop.
It’s in Alfie’s Antiques Emporium in Marylebone — one of the biggest in London.
When I was little, I had an obsession with Shakespeare, and I love the history of Egypt. I follow an Egyptologist who is a professor at Yale.
I love King Narmer and Tutankhamun. The Egyptians could count time and had medicine that we have today.
I love King Tutankhamun because, in his reign, even though it was very short, he made a lot of changes for people.
I think a lot of pharaohs didn’t always interact with their people, but Tutankhamun did.
The Pelliccis are like my family now. Every birthday, they always make me feel really special, and that means a lot to me because I don’t have a lot of family.
I miss my Nona in Italy. I love Mama Maria. When people treat me like family, it means a lot to me.
They are always so jolly and happy, and they work really hard! To keep that joy up with people is amazing. I do love the Milanese and chips.
And I love Mama Maria’s Nutella roly-poly — they made me a massive one for my birthday, which was lovely.
Yeah, so I really love the Pelliccis.”
Come meet Arabella and her family at the Bethnal Green Market on 1st November outside Pellicci’s 10 to 4, and see her astonishing miniature worlds for yourself!
