If you thought doll’s houses were just for the under-tens, think again. From fairy castles to palaces, for centuries these miniature mansions have delighted adults and children alike — and perhaps the most extravagant example of all is now celebrating its 100th birthday in a brand-new display.
A crisp white linen tablecloth embroidered with the royal cypher and emblems of the British orders of chivalry is set for 18 people. The silver dinner service is by Garrard and the glasses are crystal. Portraits and landscape paintings hang on the walls and an opulent silk screen conceals the entrance to the butler’s pantry. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the scene is Buckingham Palace before a gala dinner, except the table is only 50.8cm long, the sugar bowls are less than a centimetre wide and the screen by Cartier is made from cut-up playing cards. Complete with electricity, working plumbing and lifts, and a tiny replica set of the Crown Jewels (set with real diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls), Queen Mary’s doll’s house at Windsor Castle is a triumph of precision craftsmanship. Despite its regal setting, the model was intended as a house, not a palace. From the king’s bedroom to the housemaid’s closet, visitors can journey through an ideal version of an upper-class home in the interwar years.
The doll’s house wasn’t actually designed to be a child’s plaything — rather it was built to showcase the best of British design and manufacturing after the First World War. Taking nearly three years and 1,500 craftsmen and women to create, it was the brainchild of Princess Marie Louise, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin of King George V and childhood friend of the Queen Mary. Following the war, which had underlined the transience not only of life but also of a certain way of life, Princess Marie Louise was inspired to keep a record of an ideal kind of British upper-class home in the early 20th century.
The project began in 1921, when Princess Marie Louise, then aged 49, decided to make a gift for Queen Mary, 54. Marie Louise was passionate about the arts, literature and culture, and had many connections in the leading artistic circles of the day. This enabled her to approach the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens with the idea to build the miniature house, and to form a committee of influential figures to direct its design and construction. Lutyens was responsible for, among other buildings and monuments, the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the Midland Bank in Poultry, London (now a luxury hotel, The Ned, so called after his nickname), and also worked internationally. Getting him to work on the doll’s house project was something of a coup but indicative of its importance.
Lutyens came on board and the idea evolved to create what was essentially a highly finished, fully furnished architectural model for display at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley — highly anticipated as it would be the first following the war — that was to be later donated to the royal couple. As such, all of the goods used to furnish and stock the doll’s house were by household names. Many are still recognisable today: cases of Veuve Clicquot, boxes of McVitie’s digestive biscuits (then McVitie & Price), cans of Shell oil and a Hoover. Lying on a leather sofa in the library is even a miniature copy of The Times. Spanning the whole width of the west side of the house, the library is panelled with Italian walnut and anchored by a chimneypiece made from white marble and lapis lazuli. The room is furnished exactly like the most comfortable and luxurious of private libraries, with red leather sofas and armchairs, desk and folio cabinets, silver chandeliers and Persian rugs.
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It also contains perhaps one of the greatest achievements of this miniature masterpiece — the books. Cases lining the back wall house 600 leather-bound, gold-tooled volumes. These are no mere props: each is a real miniature book. Some are printed versions of key texts that would have been found in any library, such as the Bible, the Koran and the complete works of Shakespeare. Others are reference works such as Who’s Who. The two librarians, Princess Marie Louise and the essayist and author E V Lucas, also persuaded nearly 200 of the most renowned writers of the day, among them J M Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy and A A Milne, to produce handwritten books to be placed on the shelves. E H Shepard, best known for illustrating Milne’s classic tales of Winnie the Pooh, designed the bespoke bookplate found in all of the library’s books. The project did not, however, meet universal approval, with Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw being two notable names that declined.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the completion of the project, a selection of modern-day miniature books has been commissioned. These have all been specially bound — some by the Royal Bindery in Windsor Castle, others by independent artisans. Hannah Brown, a specialist bookbinder, worked on the miniature version of Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. “The binding of miniature books provides a different series of challenges to working on larger books: not only do you have to scale down on all your materials but the structure of the binding needs to be appropriate for the book to function properly,” she said. To counteract these challenges Brown opted for brass inside the cover boards and sewed the pages onto additional, narrow folded paper stubs to allow the pages to open better. “I also managed to source some much finer embroidery thread than I normally use to keep the clarity of the lines on this smaller scale of book.” The modern miniatures are currently on display alongside the doll’s house but will eventually be entered into the Royal Library.
A transatlantic counterpart to Queen Mary’s doll’s house, the Stettheimer Dollhouse, now in the Museum of the City of New York, was the passion project of Carrie Stettheimer. Completed between 1916 and 1935, the doll’s house is itself a work of art, filled with other, small-scale artworks by leading artists of the day, including Marcel Duchamp, who contributed a mini version of his iconic work Nude Descending a Staircase. This was made possible because Stettheimer and her two sisters ran one of the leading artistic salons in early 20th-century New York. Half a century later, while working on some sculptures in Florida, the great American artist Cy Twombly would be inspired to produce miniature artworks for a doll’s house being made by his friend’s mother. Twombly invited artist friends, including Julian Schnabel and Donald Baechler, to contribute to the project, Miss Lucy’s 3-Day Dollhouse Party, in 1993.
In truth, doll’s houses have often been about much more than just play. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they served a didactic purpose, teaching young upper-class girls to hone the domestic skills they would need when they married. They were sometimes called baby houses, the “baby” denoting the reduced scale. The Uppark doll’s house, a Palladian mini-mansion, was made in the 1730s for ten-year-old Sarah Lethieullier, the daughter of a director of the Bank of England and future chatelaine of Uppark House in West Sussex, to practise on. She took it with her as a young bride when she moved into her new home. It’s now on display at the Huguenot Museum in Rochester until spring 2025. Such houses had already been popular in continental Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands. A group of doll’s houses survives from 17th-century Nuremberg, one of which, from 1673, can be seen at the Young V&A. Others were created for adults as displays of their owner’s status, taste and style, and as objects of great delight. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Standing at two metres high, with a tortoiseshell cabinet inlaid with pewter, it was lovingly assembled by the Amsterdam silk merchant’s wife at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. The process included commissioning furniture and furnishings and employing a local artist, Jacob Appel, to paint it.
The tradition continues today. The mother-and-daughter team Rebecca and Lucy Clayton at the Kensington Dolls House Company produce a small number of bespoke doll’s houses each year, as well as rescuing older ones that have fallen into disrepair (each project is priced individually). “We approach them just as you would if interior-designing a real house,” Lucy says. Featuring everything from vintage fabrics to tiny lemons, the Kensington Dolls House Company houses are a love letter to a bygone era. Meanwhile, the East Sussex-based painter and designer Amy Balfour specialises in bespoke commissions to paint furniture and interior accessories in her characteristic folk art-infused style. She also works on hand-painted, furnished doll’s houses, with prices starting from £4,500.
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It all began when Balfour wanted to give her then two-year-old daughter a doll’s house for her birthday. Unable to find what she was looking for, she purchased a small, chalet-style house in alderwood and started to add her own painted furniture. Sharing her project on Instagram led to her first commission. It has taken off from there and Balfour now makes a selection of bespoke doll’s houses for customers. “Clients are looking to create a magical and beautiful world, full of tiny curiosities and miniature pieces of art that bring joy and spark their imagination,” she says. Her process is based on a thorough consultation with the client which leads to a design plan. Balfour has created doll’s houses using both antique and new ones, commissioning craftsmen to build houses to specifications. “I love sourcing one-off antique pieces to complement my painted work — hand-stitched rugs, the occasional chintz chair, an antique brown side table,” she adds. “I also work with other artists and craftsmen to commission personalised bedding, monogrammed pillowcases and tufted mattresses.”
Now, as in past centuries, a doll’s house is a way for an owner to express and channel their creativity. As Balfour notes: “The beauty of these miniature houses is that they are a collaboration of skill and a collection of artworks completely unique to the owner.”
