Rosemary Chen answers the door of her studio — a converted garden shed in Portland — wearing a magnifying visor pushed up onto her forehead like a headband. She is holding a tiny porcelain teacup approximately the size of a thumbnail.

"Just the handle," she says, by way of greeting. "It broke. Again."

How long have you been making miniatures?

Thirty-one years in October. I started the October my daughter was born, which is either poetic or embarrassing depending on how you look at it.

What was your first piece?

A very bad kitchen. I was trying to replicate my grandmother's kitchen in Taiwan, and I had no idea what I was doing, and it was completely wrong in every detail, and I loved it fiercely.

What draws you to Victorian interiors specifically?

I think of every room as a small autobiography. Victorian rooms had so many things — collections, souvenirs, layers of fabric and pattern. They were rooms that admitted obsession openly. That appeals to me.

What do you want people to feel when they look at your work?

Recognition. Even if they have never been in a Victorian parlor, I want them to feel like they have. Like they almost remember it.