I first became enchanted with the work of Ralph Van Horn on a visit to the Epsom library, where three "rooms" furnished with his reproduction miniature furniture were on display. His work illustrates many periods of our furniture history. On a recent visit to the Van Horns', I was treated to his story.

Van Horn studied color and design at the Art Institute of Boston and went to work in New York City designing wallpapers for Thomas Strahan. Through a Swiss friend, he met and then married Maureen, an English lady, in this country to teach the children of delegates to the United Nations at the United Nations International School.

Van Horn's parents came to an age for tapering off the working years, and announced that they planned to retire to Pittsfield, where they would run a soda shop called The New Hampshire Village Spa for many years.

"Anxious to see exactly what they were up to," Van Horn said, "we decided we'd better see the mysterious Pittsfield and paid them a visit."

The younger Van Horns fell in love with Pittsfield, moved to New Hampshire, bought a big house and raised three daughters here. Van Horn taught art and later became head of the art department at Merrimack Valley High School and arts supervisor for the Merrimack Valley School District.

For several years, Van Horn made model cars. He displays a collection of miniature cars in an electrified case that used to house Timex watches. When turned on, the cars go around, as watches do on display in stores.

In the early 1990s, Van Horn began to build miniature furniture. His artistic talents would serve him well. He invented ways to fit upholstery onto small chairs and secure it with crazy glue. A fires creen needed to be faced with needlepoint, which he imitated with a tiny, but detailed, flower print. He's also done Shaker-style chairs. (He's been a Shaker Village volunteer, in many capacities, for many years.)

You would swear that his hope chest's decoration is inlaid wood, but it's just a delicate design superimposed onto the chest, then heavily lacquered.

A greeting card from Gibson's book store and some tricky embellishments resulted in a lovely Japanese screen. Grandfather clocks sit on a shelf. A glass-front breakfront seemed empty to Van Horn.

"In anybody's home it would be filled with books," he said, "so I made books."

Now, the breakfront is filled with inch-high books. Some stand individually; some are replicas of sets of books; some lean, lopsided as they would be apt to. Chests of drawers have intricately fashioned brass handles. Van Horn uses a complexion brush to dust the furniture.

Pieces that Van Horn had sent to a daughter in California inspired her to have a three-story doll house, furnished, of course, by her father.

When she called to say she needed a Heppelwhite bed for her guest room, her Dad made her one.

Van Horn is not too happy to be required, in his mid-eighties, to have a heart that needs supplemental oxygen, but he did invite me up two flights of stairs, with oxygen tubes trailing along behind him, so I could view the display of furniture on the third floor of the Victorian-era house where he and Maureen live.

The furniture sits on several oriental rugs, about six by eight inches in size, made by a friend at the Pittsfield Weaving Company. Van Horn made more than 300 pieces of furniture in about 20 years.

When he turned 85, Van Horn decided it was time to stop making furniture. He still spends Mondays as host in the infirmary at Shaker Village, reads a lot, and enjoys family and friends. As to the future of the furniture, although the pieces were never intended to be sold, he'd like to find a market for them, now, and know that others would enjoy them.