In a troubled world, grown-ups find joy in doll’s houses

LONDON – A log burns in the hearth in the artfully lit drawing room. The armchairs look plush and inviting. Glasses and a bottle of wine stand ready as a grandfather clock keeps time.

It is all straight out of a glossy magazine and yet every carefully crafted item in the room can fit into the palm of one hand.

“I love Victorian houses and always wanted to live in one,” says doll’s house enthusiast Michele Simmons, 57, admiring the cosy miniature scene by historical specialists Mulvany & Rogers.

The corporate recruiter revived her childhood passion for doll’s houses during the Covid-19 pandemic and has since “flipped” about 10 – buying them, doing them up, then selling them.

She and her daughter thought nothing of flying all night from Boston in the United States to hunt for tiny curtains and a child’s crib at the leading Kensington doll’s house festival in London earlier in May.

“I love it. You don’t think about anything else when you are doing this,” she says.

The annual festival has been gathering some of the world’s finest miniature craftspeople since 1985, celebrating a hobby that has seen rising interest recently and a mushrooming of online activity.

It showcases tiny versions of anything needed to furnish a house, from chandeliers to paintings to mahogany dining tables to kitchen items, all with steep price tags.

Doll’s houses may be associated with children, but this high-end miniature collecting is very much an adult hobby.

“This is craftspeople working on just exquisite things,” says the “tiny-obsessed” Rachel Collings, who bought toys from renowned miniaturists Laurence & Angela St Leger.

Every purchase, which cost at least £40 (S$70), fits easily into a small plastic container.

“I’ve got half a cut lemon. Just imagine the size of that. A lemon squeezer and a pastry brush and a hand whisk that actually works,” says the 47-year-old editor. “It’s an inner-child thing.”

Doll’s houses originated from Europe in the 1500s, when they displayed the miniature possessions of the wealthy.

Retired midwife Susan Evans, 67, on her annual pilgrimage from Wales, does not have just one doll’s house. “I have a whole village,” she says.

“It’s got 18 Victorian shops, a school, a manor house, a pub and now a church,” she said, adding that the church cost over £4,000.

Initially, the hobby was just a stress-buster to help her unwind, but she has now raised thousands of pounds hosting groups to visit the display in her home.

“It’s my passion. It’s escapism and it’s about using your imagination, which I think is very good for your mental health,” she says.

Kensington Dollshouse organiser Charlotte Stokoe says there is a huge interest in doll’s houses and miniatures, compared with before the pandemic.

“When the world itself is going a bit crazy with so much stress in everyone’s lives, it’s quite relaxing. You are in control,” she adds, saying that many people had delighted in pulling out old doll’s houses during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

And at a time of rising costs, she says, people had “discovered they can do interior design that maybe they can’t do with their own homes – in small scale, it’s so much more doable”.

Medical anthropologist Dalia Iskander of University College London has spent three years researching the subject for her forthcoming book Miniature Antidotes.

“For many people, it’s a way of exploring their own experiences, memories and imagination, and incorporating those into these miniature worlds,” she says. A range of medical issues such as depression or anxiety could can be explored through miniatures in a “beneficial” way, she adds.

Ms Collings says the hobby has become such a source of happiness that her 12-year-old daughter also gets involved. She urges anyone to give it a try.

“When everything is difficult, there are these tiny things,” she says. “Sometimes, I just go and sit and look at them, and it just makes me happy.” AFP