I’ve always loved doll’s houses. As a little girl I created my own from cardboard and had a lot of fun furnishing them. I remember making a little TV set complete with a programme of cartoons and commercials and even a grand piano with black and white keys, although I doubt they were all in the right order.
Some of my dolls also lived under my parents’ dining table, where they slept in converted chocolate boxes which conveniently already came with mattrasses (the slightly bouncy layered paper which used to cover the chocolates). They had shops and beauty parlors and even a stable for their horse. Given that my parents were not the kind of people to waste their money on plastic toys, most of the furniture was home-made from wood scraps, cardboard and pieces of cloth. Some of it was imaginary.
Some forty years later, I can still not pass a doll’s house without peaking in and imagining the possibilities. There is something magical about this world in miniature where everything is just as you want it, predictable and safe – an escape from the real world.
So this year’s Kensington Dollshouse Festival over the weekend was a real treat with some amazing houses, complete with wallpaper, parquet floors and even electrical lighting. My two favourites were both Georgian-style houses, one in red brick, the other painted yellow with a little conservatory attached. Each would set you back a couple of hundred pounds.
Most items on sale, however, where not actual houses but their contents and accessories. There was some amazing miniature antique furniture to match fireplaces, rugs and paintings. There were miniature lamps and miniature vases with miniature flowers.
Some of the stalls looked like little DIY shops, selling doors and frames, picture rails and skirting boards to measure.
Other stalls had tiny cups and saucers, plates and bowls, pots and pans, baking trays and rolling pins alongside delicious looking tiny cakes. The amount of detail was quite impressive with kitchen and household items alongside food packages which looked just like the real thing and tiny replicas of board games and Rubix cubes.
With prices ranging from pence for some of the smaller items up to hundreds of pounds for an unfurnished house, there was really something for everyone, although some of the more intricate furniture items might cost as much as the real life-size thing. Needless to say that the audience was more likely collectors rather than children. With real houses getting increasingly inaffordable in this country, a doll’s house might be as close as some of us will ever get to their dream home.
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