Examples of Early European Dollshouses


Several magnificent antique dollhouses are on exhibit in museums around the world. Although these houses were not constructed to capture an era, activities of daily living are shown in such great detail in some of them that the viewer can gain some insight into domestic life of the times.


Holland- The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (www.rijksmuseum.nl) estimates that The Doll's House of Petronella Oortman c. 1686-1705. cost twenty to thirty thousand guilders to build, the price of a real house along one of Amsterdam’s canals at that time. This doll’s house shows the linen room (laundry room), kitchen, and bedrooms in great detail, it is a fine illustration of the workings of the household of that era.


Engand - The Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood in London, England http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/ Exhibits the magnificent The Tate House (1760)


Germany - A German doll house from the 1700s is on display at the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys. This house is on loan from the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, USA. It also exhibits two European miniature shops from the 1800s.


Most Famous Dollshouses



  • One of the most famous and well planned dollshouses is Queen Mary’s Dolls’ which was designed in 1924 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Queen Mary. It is now on display to the public at Windsor Castle, England.
  • One of the most opulent dollshouses in North America Is Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. This has been on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinoise, USA since the 1950s.
  • Also in Chicago, USA are the famous Thorne Rooms. These are 68 miniature period rooms designed by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, who commissioned master craftsmen to create the furnishings for the rooms during the 1930s and '40s. The rooms are housed in the Art Institute of Chicago.
  • A lesser-known masterpiece is, housed in Malahide Castle, Dublin, Ireland. Started by Ron and Doreen McDonnell in 1980, it is based on a house by Sir Neville Wilkinson's, which he created in 1908 (and is now located at Legoland in Denmark). The house itself is built in 1/12th scale and is influenced by Castletown House, Leinster House and Carton, the three prominent 18th century mansions in Ireland. The house has 25 rooms and was built to raise money for children's charities.
  • The Moonmin Museum n Tampere, Finland displays the Moomin House, a dollshouse created around the Moomin characters of Tove Jansson. The house was built by Jansson and some of her close friends and later donated to the town of Tampere.
  • The Puppenhausmuseum of Dollhouse Museum in Basel, Switzerland, is the largest museum of its kind in Europe.

Scales



The baby houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the toy dollshouses of the nineteenth and early twentieth century rarely had uniform scales, even for the features or contents of any one individual house. Although a number of manufacturers made lines of miniature toy furniture in the Nineteenth Century, these products were not to a strict scale.


There have been several standard scales in dollhouses over the years. Children's toy houses during most of the 20th century were two third scale (where 1 foot is represented by 2/3 of an inch), also known as 1:18 (1" equals 18"). Popular brands included Lundby (Sweden) (established in 1947)


Here is a typical example of a Lundby House:

Lundby Dollhouse

Lundby Gothenburg (1960s model) from the Baird private collection


Renwal, Plasco, Marx, Petite Princess, and T. Cohn (all American) and Caroline's Home, Barton, Dol-Toi and Triang (English). A few brands use 3/4-scale or 1:16 scale, which is also used for scale III model trains. With the exception of Lundby, 2/3-scale furniture was most often made from plastic. Houses were made from a variety of materials, including metal (tin litho), fibreboard, plastic, and wood.


In Germany during the middle part of the 20th century 1/10th scale became popular based on the metric system. Toy-like houses coming out of Germany today remain closer in scale to 1:10 than to 1:12.


In the 1970s, the standard for adult collectors became 1/12 scale (also called 1" or one inch scale, in the United States it is written as 1:12). 1/12 scale is measured in 12 units (such as inches or centimeters) on the original by one unit on the model. Depending on application, the scale is also called one-inch scale (since 1 inch equals 1 scale foot), or six-inch scale (since six inches equals scale human height).


There is also half inch scale or 1/24th (1 foot is represented by 1/2 an inch), quarter inch scale or 1/48 (1 foot is represented by 1/4 of an inch), and "dollshouse for a dollhouse" (1:144). Half-inch scale was popular in Marx dollhouses in the 1950s but only became widely available in "collector" houses after 2002, about the same time that even smaller scales became more popular. These smaller scales are much more common in the United States than in Britain.


The largest common size for dollshouses is Playscale or 1/6 which is proportionate for Barbie, Ken, Blythe and other dolls 11 - 12 inches tall.


Contemporary kit and fully built houses are typically made of plywood or MDF (medium density fibreboard). Tab-and-slot kits use a thinner plywood and are held together by a system of tabs and slots (plus glue). These houses are usually light-weight and lower cost but often require siding, shingles, cladding or other exterior treatments to look their best. Kits made from heavier plywood or MDF are held together with nails and glue. In the United States, most houses have an open back and a fancy front facade, while British houses are more likely to have a hinged front that opens to reveal the rooms. The great majority of contemporary dollshouses are built in one inch scale.


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