On doll's houses and the stories in tiny things

Or, how I got very lucky with a forgotten treasure

When I was a young teenager, I had a doll’s house I loved. I bought all sorts of tiny little things for it; a fireplace with a glittering fire in the grate, a Japanese-inspired art deco screen, a shiny brass bed and even a thumb-sized ceramic doll’s house for the doll children to play with. 

Most of these miniatures came via mail order from a company called the Doll’s House Emporium. When the catalogue arrived every quarter or so, I’d pour over every inch of it. It was a thing of beauty all of it’s own, with carefully arranged tableaus of the various dolls and houses on offer, styled with all manner of delicate accessories. Each tableau would be accompanied by a caption, phrased as if the dolls and their houses were real. As someone who’s always had a head full of stories, I used to get completely swept away with these captions, imagining the rest of the scene.

In the back of the catalogue, past the dolls and the furniture and the impossibly detailed home decor, were the doll’s houses. Though I already had a doll’s house and absolutely did not need another, I spent a lot of time looking at them all the same. My favourite was the Classical Doll’s House; a beautiful Georgian townhouse with a triangular pediment, a little garden at the front and steps up to the front door. And yes, I’m well aware that pouring over doll’s house catalogues and arranging miniature furniture is not the most, well, teenagerish of hobbies I might’ve had. But I wasn’t an especially teenagerish teenager, and, besides, there was something about the stories implied by the many tiny things that pulled me in and fascinated me. 

Years past and I went off to university, leaving the doll’s house behind. Some time after graduation it made it’s way back to me, albeit with all the beautiful replica Victorian furniture packed away in tissue paper. For a long while, we didn’t have much space and Mr A-M and I stored the doll’s house in out-of-the-way places, first on top of a wardrobe, then in an alcove behind the sofa. When our older daughter was a toddler, I repainted the doll’s house in various shades of purple (her favourite) and moved it into her room, furnishing it with chunky wooden furniture and a set of peg dolls painted to look like our family. I left my fancy miniatures safely packed away in their box.

That might’ve been the end of it, but then, a year or so ago, my parents-in-law started the process of clearing my husband’s grandparents’ house. It was a big job, as these things often are, and they found all sorts of forgotten treasures. Among these was an unlabelled box that seemed to contain a kit to build a doll’s house. A message pinged in via the family What’s App group; might anyone want it? Clearly I hadn’t completely shaken off my fascination… because I said yes.

Well. When the box arrived and we got a proper look at it, I recognised the logo of the Doll’s House Emporium. Carefully, we investigated the contents and, what do you know? It was an unbuilt Classical Doll’s House, with the original invoice and delivery note from 1998. We don’t know why my husband’s grandparents never built it, and we don’t know why it got forgotten about for more than two decades. Still,  I’m very taken by the idea that all the time I was pouring over those catalogues as a teenager, the doll’s house in the photos was already waiting for me in a box at the back of a cupboard, four hundred miles north. 

My dad very kindly agreed to take on the task of building a second doll’s house, and it now sits in my writing room, awaiting decoration. It may not have roof tiles yet, and we may not have finished attaching the pediment or all the fancy front matter, but please be assured that the fireplace and the art deco screen and the brass bed and the thumb-sized ceramic doll’s house are all in place inside. As I sit here writing, I can see little glances of the miniatures through the windows, and, just like when I was a teenager, I can sense the myriad of stories that surrounds them. 

So perhaps all of this is to say; if I start writing a novel set in a Georgian townhouse with a triangular pediment and steps up to the front door… you’ll know why. 

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