“It’s the story of my life”: How a retired teacher turned his memories into a microcosm | Art and design

A A miniature world can be found hidden inside a one-bedroom flat in Birmingham. For decades, Ken Bonham, a retired teacher, has made memory boxes of places he visited with his seamstress wife of 54 years, Maggie, each composed of items they collected during their travels or made by Bonham.

Models of barns, castles and churches are also crammed into the property – made from cork, balsa wood and Styrofoam – or 3D card elevations from Bonham’s photographs. Every Christmas, Bonham delights his neighbors by making nativity scenes from items he has collected and made.

Celebrating architecture, geography and art history with a touch of irony, Bonham’s creations are inspired in part by his years teaching integrated studies to schoolchildren.

“It’s the story of my life,” Bonham said, of the diorama collection that fills the couple’s home. “There are card models I make from my photographs, which I wrote a book about, and then there are my barn models, life boxes and memory boxes I make during our travels.”

Explaining how he started making memory boxes, Bonham said: “When it was my wife’s 60th birthday, I asked her if she wanted a diamond ring, and she said she was going to Italy soon. So we went to Italy and fell in love with Rome and everything about Italy. So when I came back I showed her off.”

“Now, we’ll go on holiday, collect postcards, museum tickets, miniatures of different things, shapes and things that I don’t like, but that are iconic. And then, when I get home, I’ll put them all in an arrangement of sorts and then make a box. Some will hang on the wall, some will stand alone on a shelf.”

“I made one of our visits to Paris and another on our train trip through the south of France when we went to Avignon.

“The Irish Trip has got me Celtic crosses, card models I made from my photographs of some Celtic monasteries, some stone models of Celtic stonework, a little souvenir of Georgian doorways in Dublin, a model of Trinity College Dublin and a little bottle of Guinness.

“The British box contains model soldiers from my toys when I was a child, some of my own toy cars, sand from various beaches, British Glory matchboxes, a telephone box, a London Transport bus, a lighthouse, a Royal Lifeboat man, various animals – everything hangs on the wall and is 4ft high and 3ft wide.

“Then on another Italian trip, we went to Naples, where the nativity scenes started.”

A lifelong model, Ken’s interest goes back to childhood, when his grandfather “would come and have Friday tea – and he would always buy me a bag of lumber and a half-pound of mixed nails”. He adds that his father was “a metal polisher at Daimler…so I kind of inherited the gene.”

Now 79, Bonham’s creativity and outlook on life have built a loyal following on Facebook. “I am not interested in discussing politics,” he said. “I’m not interested in criticizing other people’s photos. I get a lot of likes.”