When Karen Steely’s father, Leonard Steely, asked her to paint some miniature pictures for the new dolls’ house he was making, she had little idea how her life was about to change. She had been teaching art in a school for fifteen years and, indeed, continued to do so as her primary career even after establishing herself as a miniature artisan. But those Whistler pictures that she recreated in miniature, for her father’s San Francisco ‘Painted Lady’ dolls’ house, set her onto a new path, developing a fascination with small-scale work that she carried out in the evenings, after her long days at work, while her two small boys were in bed. Such dedication and determination!
She has become a renowned creator of miniatures that draw on the American folk art tradition, producing fire boards, wreaths, painted furniture and Christmas decorations in the picturesque ‘Williamsburg’ style. Among her larger works, she painted some drop-leaf tables carved by her father, of which I’ve seen two examples recently online. A sign of her standing is that, in 1985, she went to study the holdings of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Collection of Folk Art in Williamsburg, afterwards creating miniature reproductions of several pieces of their furniture. Incidentally, for another artist connected with the same Collection, see Susan H. Rountree.
Literature: Anne Day Smith, ‘Folk Designs For Every Setting: Karen Steely’s “brush works” never stop creating new designs’, in Nutshell News, January 1986, pp. 50-53.
Here are the works by Karen in the Quartermaine Hall collection so far:
Sunflower Dummy Board or Firescreen
A shaped dummy board or fire screen painted with sunflowers by Karen Steely (2021.060)
Quartermaine Hall 