What to Look for When Choosing a Dollhouse?

What was your favourite plaything when you were a little girl? I bet you that one of your favourites was your dolls house. I know that I played with mine all the time when I was little. Being the 1960’s mine was a futuristic affair made of painted tin. The roof folded back so that you could put the miniature inhabitants and the their furniture in the rooms on the upper storey and it even had a painted tin garden with a plastic white picket fence! They come in every size, shape and colour imaginable and can be made from everything from cardboard, to plastic, to fantastically hand-carved wood. Some of the most satisfying doll houses to play with can be the ones that you make yourself from a large cardboard box. You can slide in sheets of cardboard to create the upper floors, cut out the windows where you want them to be, paint the walls any colour that you want and make the furniture from bits of card and scraps of material. Of course, one of the best things about one made from cardboard is that when you want a new residence for your dolls, the old one can just go straight into the recycling bin or pulled apart to use the pieces again.

So when did children first start playing with them? From prehistoric times humans have moulded human figurines and small objects from clay, and the Ancient Egyptians used to make intricate wooden models of ordinary people at work for their tombs. There are models of a bakery with people baking bread, of a ship and all the sailors and farmers with their cattle. Of course, these are not toys, but it is from these early models that the toys developed. One of the earliest known replicas of a miniature house comes from the sixteenth century when Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, created a small replica of his main residence which became known as his ‘baby house’. Other members of the nobility followed suit and it became fashionable to commission a craftsman to build a miniature house and furnish it. These were still not toys; they were ornaments and used as a sign of wealth.

Gradually they began to be made as toys for rich children, initially as an educational tool to learn about running a household, but latterly purely as a plaything. The Victorian Era brought with it the introduction of mass production of goods, so for the first time they could be manufactured in large quantities and become available to children lower down on the social scale. The centre for their manufacture was Germany and from there they were exported all over the world. There were some famous adults who had doll houses built for them. Queen Mary, the wife of King George V of England, had the famous architect Sir Edward Lutyens design and build one for her to the precise scale of one inch to one foot in the early 1920s. Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is still on display today and can be viewed at Windsor Castle. In the United States, Mrs James W Thorne from Chicago started collecting miniatures from all around the world. She started grouping her miniatures in boxes that were decorated in a variety of styles and time periods. By 1940 she had over forty of these individual room settings that depicted interior design themes from both America and Europe. If you want to see some of these beautiful old doll houses, the Museum of Childhood in London has a very fine collection, including The Nuremberg House dating from 1673.

There has been huge growth in the production of both doll houses and miniature furniture and decorations since then, with the market being for both children and adult collectors. There is also now a huge market for antique dolls houses and antique furniture, some of which can fetch huge amounts of money at auction. So if you wanted to buy one of the favourite children in your life (or yourself!) a doll house, what do you need to consider before you make your purchase? Well one of the most important things to consider is budget. If you are fabulously wealthy, you could still have a master craftsmen make you one to your very own design and also have them make all the furniture and fittings. Or if you have a handy carpenter in the family you could ask them to create one for you. These personalised creations will have the added benefit of being able to be passed down in your family as treasured heirlooms and may even eventually become valuable collector’s items. You can also buy kits now to make doll houses and furniture, which are a good choice if you want to build one yourself, but do not have the skills or time to build one from scratch.

If you are, however, looking to purchase a doll house from a toy shop there are many to choose from. An ideal gift from a parent or grandparent is a large, well made doll house that is empty of furniture and fittings. This means that as well as your initial present, you can add to the furniture and accessories as gifts on subsequent birthdays and Christmases. There are many different styles to choose from and there are Victorian, Georgian,Town House and Cottage styles to make your selection from, In fact you can find one in almost every style of architecture. With branding being so important these days, there are also dolls houses on the market for all the famous brands of doll. They are usually made of plastic and have a range of furniture and accessories that you can buy to go with them. Barbie has her own range, as do the Bratz dolls and there is even a Hello Kitty Victorian Dolls House. Even the toy animals are not left out as the Sylvanian Family has their Babblebrook Grange Doll’s House and My Little Pony has a Crystal Rainbow Castle!

Obviously these branded dolls houses will probably not have the durability of a well-made wooden one and children’s attention will be pulled away from them when the next trend or fad in toys comes along. But they make reasonably priced gifts and your little girl will be delighted to receive somewhere for her favourite doll to live. Doll houses and furniture can be bought in most of the major toy retailers and there are also specialist shops that do not sell anything else. There are also a growing number of online stores dedicated to them and furniture. So whatever your budget, you will be able to get one with some furniture for just a few dollars if you want to or maybe spend hundreds of dollars if you feel like splashing out. Maybe getting a doll house for a young relative will pique your interest and you will become one of the many adult collectors. So happy shopping and I hope that you find the perfect home for your dolls!

Copyright 2009 CMHypno on HubPages

Antique English Dolls House Image from Paul Keleher on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0