I have several “dollhouses,” but this one is by far my largest and most ambitious. I had an old wooden bookcase that I had bought unfinished many years ago. After I stained it, it wound up being moved from room to room and house to house over the years, only to wind up in the basement. I thought, why not turn it into a multistory dollhouse, and there it began. I had a few Victorian style dollhouse pieces, and decided that’s what I wanted here. This house represents what a New York City brownstone house may have looked like in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. The front door would have been at the second level from the bottom, leading into a hall, parlor and dining room. The lowest level houses the two-part kitchen, with a butler’s pantry/sewing/ironing room in one section and the cooking/washing area in the other. On the other side of the basement level is the office of the homeowner, who is a physician, and he would see his patients right there. The two uppermost floors have a large bedroom with attached morning/sitting room, the nursery and a grand music room. It is currently in the afternoon, and there is a lot of activity going on in the house.
There are many artisan, handmade pieces, as well as quite a bit of commercially made furniture. The dolls range from antique German china head dolls to recently made porcelain ones.
I started furnishing this dollhouse in 2020, but it has had numerous updates since then, as I came across other neat finds that I wanted to include. A few of the latest additions are several items that the family would have obtained on some of their recent trips – to Egypt and India (a replica of a pharoah’s sarcophagus and a brass elephant, both in the dining room).
