I have had a life-long love affair with dollhouse miniatures, and careers in art education and interior design. I hope to combine these life experiences to help other miniature enthusiasts get more out of this wonderful hobby we enjoy, a hobby that often reaches the level of an art form. Susan Downing
Thorne Rooms Tennessee Entrance Hall, 1835, c. 1940, on permanent exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago
Narcissa Niblack Thorne, the wife of James Ward Thorne, son of one of the founders of Montgomery Ward, commissioned this group of exquisite room boxes. Her interest in miniatures began early and was encouraged by trinkets sent to her by her uncle, a Rear Admiral in the US Navy. This passion continued into her adult life.
Categories: Edwardian, Elizabethan, French, Jacobean, room boxes
Eugene Kupjack – Washington’s Headquarters
A jeweler’s son, Eugene Kupjack began his career in miniatures in the 1930s while working on “The Thorne Rooms,” a series of 68 room boxes on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago. He created many works besides the Thorne Rooms. These four Presidential Room Boxes are examples.
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Categories: room boxes
“Offline Hideaway” by Dominic Wilcox, one of nineteen fantasy room boxes by London designers.
Tiny Fantasy Room Boxes are featured at The Victoria &Albert Museum of Childhood in east London. Twenty designers were commissioned to create their “dream room” inside a 30-centimetre (11-13/16 inches) wooden box.
Combined in one installation, the room boxes is form the finale for the exhibition “Small Stories: At Home in a Dolls’ House,” which showcases dolls’ houses dating from 1712 to 2001.
“It could be fantastical, whimsical, aspirational or technological, it just had to be small,” curator Alice Sage told Dezeen Magazine.
Categories: room boxes
Marc Mead’s Art Deco Home Theater
I have always been excited at the prospects of what technology could bring to the dollhouse universe. Marc Mead nailed it with his art deco home theater! What ideas do you have for lights, camera OR action in a dollhouse miniature?
Categories: amazing miniatures, art deco, room boxes
