Minature Doll House Shop

One of the most famous and well planned dollhouses is Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House which was designed in 1924 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Queen Mary; it is displayed at Windsor Castle.

One of the most opulent dollhouses in North America is Colleen Moore’s Fairy castle [2]which has been housed as an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois since the early 1950s.

Also located in Chicago are the famous Thorne Rooms, 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. Started by Ron and Doreen McDonnell in 1980, it is based on Sir Neville Wilkinson’s celebrated, which he created in 1908 (and which 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.

In Tampere in Finland, the Moomin Museum displays the Moomin house, a dollhouse 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.

Miniature homes, furnished with domestic articles and resident inhabitants (both people and animals), have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known examples were found in the Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes. The earliest known European dollhouses are from the Sixteenth Century. These baby or cabinet houses showed idealized interiors complete with extremely detailed furnishings and accessories (mostly hand made).

The early European dollhouses were each unique, constructed on a custom basis by individual craftsmen. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass producing toys, including dollhouses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dollhouses included Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk, Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Siber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and Lines Brothers (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the Nineteenth Century American dollhouses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company.

Germany was the producer of the most prized dollhouses and doll house miniatures up until The Great War. Notable German miniature companies included Marklin, Rock and Garner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany’s involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers in other countries arose.

The TynieToy Company of Providence, Rhode Island, made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917. Other American companies of the early Twentieth Century were Roger Williams Toys, Tootsietoy, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dollhouse dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs.

After World War II, dollshouses became mass produced in factories on a much larger scale with less detailed craftsmanship than ever before. By the 1950s, the typical dollhouse sold commercially was painted sheet metal filled with plastic furniture. The cost of these houses was low enough to allow the great majority of girls from the developed western countries that were not struggling with rebuilding after World War II to own a dollhouse.

WOW Antique Set DOLLHOUSE FURNITURE, Horseshoe Design US $184.99 End Date: Friday Mar-12-2010 14:10:10 PST Add to watch list

vintage lot of mixed dollhouse furniture plus dolls US $135.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Saturday Mar-13-2010 6:14:11 PST Add to watch list

Antique Cast Iron Boone Doll House Kitchen Cabinet Toy US $375.00 End Date: Saturday Mar-13-2010 7:24:44 PST Add to watch list

French antique dollhouse furniture circa1890 rare US $499.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Saturday Mar-13-2010 16:21:16 PST Add to watch list

1800s old wooden doll house furniture set w/paper label US $199.95 (0 Bid) End Date: Sunday Mar-14-2010 18:53:06 PDT Add to watch list