Houses for fairies

Anne Martineau has long believed in the Tooth Fairy.

“I didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, but I didn’t understand that the Tooth Fairy was also a character… I couldn’t believe it when my mother told me that! ”

Anne laughs as she tells me the anecdote. She had forgotten her. That’s my question – “Where does this love for fairies come from?” »- which brought back the memory. We are seated in his studio, on the second floor of a pretty house in the Plateau Mont-Royal. Placed near my interlocutor, felt dolls, wooden houses and what will soon be a metro station for miniature creatures …

A little magic

I don’t like November very much. It’s dark all the time, my battery is on the ground and my feet are cold. You have to be strong to cheer me up these days. Yet Anne Martineau managed to do it.

I was walking on Laval Avenue when I saw a small white house nestled in the hollow of a tree. It was surrounded by flowers and adorned with an impressive balcony. I mentally thanked the person who had put it there, like a pitfall in the banality. I took a photo and then posted it on Instagram.

The next day, the person behind the @maisons_de_fees account wrote me a message. She taught me that not only was she the creator of the house but also several other miniature houses were hiding in Montreal …

Which brings us to the studio of Anne Martineau, fashion design teacher at CEGEP Marie-Victorin, retired since last summer.

Retirement had to rhyme with travel. Obviously, the pandemic has changed plans. To pass the time, Anne started to tinker. She shows me a frame, placed on the wall, inside which hides a tiny sewing workshop. She tells me about the dolls she learned to make with her sister, from a distance.

But her great passion, she discovered it last July.

She noticed a tree near her home on Laval Avenue. There was a hole in its base – perfect for putting up a small door and a letterbox. In its trunk, an orifice – enough to install a beautiful balcony! Anne went home, then she built her first fairy house.

“I had already seen miniature houses on the web,” she recalls. So this idea was hidden somewhere in my memory… I think people usually talk about elf houses, but for me it was clearly a fairy house.

– And what do these fairies look like?

– They are benevolent beings who spread magic and help others. I imagine them as little ladies sitting by the fireside having tea! ”

Anne has a shining eye when she talks about her muses. I feel like she’s been keeping them close for a while. I am wrong ? She concedes to me that as a child, she loved to make miniature worlds.

The game was lost with the arrival of adulthood, but retirement allowed Anne to dive back into it.

Fairies that make babies

A few days after the construction of her first house, Anne Martineau found a message in her miniature mailbox: “Thank you, fairies! Have a great summer. »Then, walking a little further, she saw a new home in a tree …

“I was flipping! she confides to me. I couldn’t believe that people noticed the house and even picked up on the idea! ”

Knowing that she was useful, Anne continued her momentum. Its real estate portfolio now has nine creations, each of which required between a few hours and a few days of work. Sometimes there are fireplaces that ignite, lights that go on and bookcases filled with books behind the wooden facades designed by the craftswoman.

In fact, the more things go, the more Anne creates environments in which we would like to take refuge.

In fact, his creations attract so much attention that one of them was stolen last week. One of his favorites. Anne finds it sad, of course. At the same time, what can she do about it?

Personally, what saddens me is that the person who committed the theft has thereby attacked the artisan’s mission head-on …

During the pandemic, Anne wandered a lot in the alleys of the metropolis. She was charmed by their beauty, by the way the residents managed to inhabit them. She said to herself that if small local initiatives managed to make her happy, she might also be able to cheer up passers-by.

Her fairy houses are the tool that Anne found to inhabit the city. They belong to everyone. To steal them is to deprive children of dreams and old people of smiles.

A world to build

What’s next, Anne?

She immediately gets carried away: “I would like to find fairy houses everywhere!” I know there are several already in Toronto and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In Stockholm, there is also a visual artist named Anonymouse who creates small shop windows for mice. I would love to make some for the fairies! ”

In the meantime, the Montreal fairies have just obtained their first two metro stations. The “Féetropolitain” network is deployed in La Fontaine park. For now, at least …

“I don’t know yet what I’ll do with all this next winter,” Anne confides in me. Do I remove stations and houses and put them back in the spring? Do I let them live despite the snow? Will have to see. ”

It is the start of a great experience.

An experience capable of illuminating November.

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