Dollhouse - Notable Dollhouses

Notable Dollhouses

• The Amsterdam 18th century dollhouses of Sara Rothé; one is in the Frans Hals Museum, and one is in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; while the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman is in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum estimates that P. Oortman spent twenty to thirty thousand guilders on her miniature house, which was nearly the price of a real house along one of Amsterdam’s canals at that time. All three dollhouses shows the linen room (laundry room), kitchen, and bedrooms in great detail.
• The Tate House (1760), on exhibit in the Museum of Childhood in London, England.
• In Egeskov Castle in Denmark, Titania's Palace is on display, a miniature castle that was hand-built by James Hicks & Sons, Irish Cabinet Makers who were commissioned by Sir Neville Wilkinson from 1907 to 1922. The palace consists of 18 rooms and salons.
• Queen Mary's Dolls' House was designed for Queen Mary in 1924 by Sir Edwin Lutyens, a leading architect of the time, and is on display at Windsor Castle. The house has working plumbing and lights and is filled with miniature items of the finest and most modern goods of the period. Writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling contributed special books which were written and bound in scale size.
• Colleen Moore's Fairy castle has been on display since 1950s at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.
• The 68 miniature Thorne Rooms, each with a different theme, were designed by Narcissa Niblack Thorne and furniture for them was created by craftsmen in the 1930s and 40s. They are now at the Art Institute of Chicago, Phoenix Art Museum and the Knoxville Museum of Art.
• 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, Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola and later donated to the town of Tampere. The museum contains also dozens of roomboxes with Moomin characters, all made by Tuulikki Pietilä.
• The Dollhouse Museum (German: Puppenhausmuseum) in Basel is the largest museum of its kind in Europe.
• Tara's Palace is located in the Tara's Palace Museum of Childhood in the grounds of Powerscourt Estate near Enniskerry, Ireland. It is a 22 roomed dolls palace, built by Ron McDonnell in 1978 after he failed to secure the return of Titania's Palace to Ireland. It is furnished with miniature antiques.