As a child and a teenager, I was a huge dollhouse fan and obsessed with little things. I once had three pieces of furniture, all (albeit chaotically) decorated with expensive faux oak furniture from expensive toy stores in my city's most exclusive shopping malls, knockoffs from catalogs, and things I assembled myself. My dad and I built an entire house facade out of cardboard; I decorated the walls with wallpaper samples and taped carpet scraps to the floors. Nothing guarantees a girl will stay out of trouble and years of lack of dates than encouraging her to spend her weekends making dollhouse drawings out of magazine pictures and gold foil "picture frames." I do not care.
Even though I'm an adult now and married to a man who collected miniature art as a teenager, I still feel a twinge of greed every time I pass a shop window that has one in it. A wardrobe in the palm of my hand, or a houseplant with leaves so small they’re almost invisible. I'm not alone; while many parts of the U.S. toy industry are shrinking, dolls and their accessories are becoming increasingly popular , According to the American Toy Association. Which begs the question: Why are we so obsessed with small things that can easily be lost, damaged, or swallowed by confused pets?
Society's love affair with dollhouses and miniatures is an interesting psychology that goes back centuries. Dollhouses were not originally designed as toys. When they appeared across Germany and the Netherlands in the 17th century, they weren't even designed for children. I've seen many of these luxury baby houses in museums, just like their namesake. They were items used by wealthy adult women to fill with precious, expensive items, but not necessarily to be touched. The first "play" dollhouse is the kitchen, complete with a thumb-sized saucepan and copper kettle, intended as an instructional tool to show little girls how to run a home. It's only when the girls start to rebel and start having fun that the tiny house idea really becomes something to play with.
So where does the appeal come from? According to psychological research, when we are four to six years old, we begin to attribute sounds and thoughts to miniature people and objects. (Before this, we were more likely to throw them away or shove them up our noses.) Since then, miniatures can fill many of us with a passion that, in some cases, has developed into an adult obsession. . From miniature artists creating wondrous new worlds on a tiny scale to grandmas scouring tables at local miniature fairs, this is an industry that attracts many different types and approaches. There are considerable behavioral nuances behind our love of small things.
Miniature objects evoke respect for their craftsmanship and delicate construction, but this is only a small part of their appeal. Part of the fantasy of tiny houses and their accessories—tiny cribs, teapots the size of fingernails, filigree Fabergé eggs that fit on the head of a pin—is that they offer another life. Like The Sims, which offers users the chance to build and decorate their virtual dream homes with unimaginable levels of opulence (something I was also fascinated by as a little girl), experts believe Dollhouses offer people To build a place of life they can never experience it in full size. This is entirely achievable when a Rembrandt the size of a postage stamp is on display in your living room.
People are willing to spend seemingly huge amounts of money on hand-carved or highly ornate miniature furniture that they would never be able to afford on a human scale. In a 1995 Los Angeles Times article about dollhouse enthusiasts, Margo Kaufman marveled: “Those who are constrained by unreal L.A. real estate prices to live in one-bedroom apartments Apartment lovers can own a street of Georgian, Victorian, French Regency and pre-Civil War properties, with a prim housewife overseeing a small connoisseur, perhaps a little inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank , in her toys. A secret annex was built to hide a Jewish family home, complete with a miniature rabbi and a Passover seder table "People's ideals for real estate come in all shapes and sizes: By a wealthy New York socialite. Created as a modernist dream, the 1920s Stettheimer dollhouse features bespoke artwork by Marcel Duchamp, and it is becoming increasingly popular to look like a modern house complete with trash cans.
Even extremely wealthy people can use a dollhouse as a place of dreams. In the 1930s, silent film star Colleen Moore built a literal castle that was one of the most gorgeous dollhouses ever created. The real challenge is only Queen Mary's Dolls' House, a five-story wonder displayed in Windsor Castle and filled with stunning miniatures from the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Kipling. Custom-made books by Sir Conan Doyle, all of which were gifts to the Queen in 1924. Those who have it all can still achieve something unimaginable on a microscopic level in the world of Dollhouse. Dreams can also span time and space. Dollhouse miniature makers are interested in vintage and outdated items (butter churns, sewing machines, inch-tall replicas of Mrs. Beeton's Household Management ). If you can't look back on the past, you can create it in your living room.
Dollhouses and miniatures also provide a safe environment for dark exploration. Forensic investigation in the early 20th century was heavily influenced by a woman named Frances Glessner Lee, an expert in forensic science who meticulously recreated crime scenes as doll-sized dioramas Come teach crime scene investigation skills. When the New York Times reported on the 2016 "miniatures" craze, it reported that some collectors specialize in collecting miniature pistols that actually shoot, miniature skulls, and working electric chairs.
The reason for this interest may have to do with the fact that from a psychological perspective, dollhouses and miniature play are safe spaces that encourage total control. In 1994, antiques expert Eve Kahn wrote in the New York Times : "To children, dollhouses can make the universe seem docile." If your own environment is chaotic, Impoverished, miserable, filled with family troubles or trauma, Dollhouse offers just the opposite: a universe entirely within your control. Famous psychologist Dr. Ruth has a therapeutic dollhouse that she uses to help children solve serious problems. In 2016, she told NPR it also represented the control she lacked as a child refugee fleeing the Nazis. “I had no control over my life. I didn’t want to leave Germany; I didn’t want to leave Germany. I didn’t want to go to Switzerland. With the dollhouse, I had control. I put my parents there and they stayed there. I put Where kids are placed, that’s where they stay.”
I'm old enough now to decorate my own rented house with full-sized bits and pieces, but I admit to being a bit disappointed every once in a while because things are always dusty, scattered, or covered in council letters - in other words , far away from the dollhouse of my childhood, where everything was arranged to perfection and the butler was always in the hallway with a plate of cakes. In a world where most millennials can't even think about getting on the property ladder, it's no surprise that dollhouses remain a mild wish-fulfillment for many of us.
