A dollhouse is more than just a girl’s toy. It is also a delightful hobby that many adults love to participate in. Dollhouses have gone through many changes in history. Yes, they have been here for a long period of time, since the golden age of Egyptian rulers and kings.
3,000 BC: Ancient religious origins
Historians have not yet pinpointed a specific time when the first miniature house was built. However, history lessons tell us that it was around 5000 years ago when the ancient Egyptians carved miniature wooden replicas of their dead pharaoh’s favorite things and placed them inside the ruler’s tomb. These included servants, livestock, pets, furniture, boats, and the like. They were supposedly made to accompany the king in his afterlife.
1500-1600: luxurious toys for the greats
Members of high society learned to collect small-scale replicas of different things as souvenirs from their trips abroad. Some of them were miniature rugs and tapestries, wooden furniture, and blown glass statues. They displayed these miniature memorabilia in display cases built with details of the house on the outside by expert craftsmen who were commissioned exclusively. Children were greatly restricted from accessing these small-scale houses and prohibited from playing with them. It was in the middle of the century that Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, appointed a German craftsman to create a miniature model of his house, complete with miniature accessories and decorations. This was called the baby house.
1600-1900: Teaching home economics
Victorian-era women saw the potential of using a dollhouse to teach young girls the proper way to run a home. However, only the daughters of the elite could approach dollhouses, because they were still very expensive to manufacture at the time.
twentyhe Century and beyond: the era of mass production
When Germany, the only player in the field, found itself in the middle of World War II, it had to reduce its production and save its resources for the war. Other countries saw this as a new gateway into the dollhouse business. Companies in the US, notably Bliss, Roger Williams Toys, and Tootsietoy, and others in Japan, began making dollhouses, usually made of plastic and sheet metal. It was only in the 1970s that the cry for purpose-built wooden dollhouses with elaborate architectural details and furniture arose.
Prominent Dollhouses Throughout History
Many prominent miniature houses, such as the Queen Mary dollhouse ordered by King George V of England for his wife, feature real, working accessories. It has real-life electricity powering the lights, plumbing for the bathrooms and kitchen, a chiming grandfather clock, miniature books and paintings by world-renowned writers and artists, and rugs and draperies that are exact replicas of the ones you see. They are found in Windsor Castle, only smaller. Other dollhouses to consider are the 68 miniature Thorne Rooms on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, Titania’s Palace at Egeskov Castle, Denmark, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
