A Very Tiny Dollhouse with Very Big Treasures

I hate dolls. They just creep me out. But, as I’ve mentioned before on the _floss, I have a bizarre fascination with dollhouses.

I’m in good company, though. Included amongst the millions of people interested in miniatures was Colleen Moore, a silent film star whose career fizzled a bit when the talkies came out. But movies weren’t her only passion: a love of miniatures was passed down to her from her father, and in 1928, she enlisted the help of a set designer friend to make a remarkably detailed eight-foot miniature “fairy castle.”

Deanna Dahlsad‘s insight:

Absolutely stunning!

See on mentalfloss.com

Vintage Standard Doll Co. Catalog Pages

I don’t only dig through stacks of old magazines and papers; I go through them, page by page. How else would I find this page listing Virginia Lakin publications? (More scans from that booklet here.)

Found inside this 1977 Standard Doll Co. catalog, along with this page of Kate Greenaway postcards, miniature patterns, dollhouse items, etc..

Vintage catalogs are great ways to help date and identify what you have — and identify other items you need for your collection. *wink*

Antique Dutch Dollhouses Fit For A Czar?

Below is a scan from the December 1923 issue of The Mentor; the page is an article by Vincent Starrett entitled A Doll’s House Built For The Czar Of Russia:

As usual, the discovery of this article about an exquisite eight-foot tall, six feet wide dollhouse leads to something even more fascinating than supposed!

The article tells the story of Peter The Great who “was living in Holland as a young man of twenty-four, working at various jobs to acquaint himself with the arts, commerce, and industry of the Dutch” and “chanced to see one day a tiny model of a seventeenth-century dwelling, and promptly fell in love with it.”

“No matter what the cost,” he declared, “I must have one like it.” But the miniature house and its lovely furnishings were not for sale, and the creator would make none for pay. The artisan’s name was Brandt. He was a successful merchant of Utrecht, who, having amassed a fortune, had retired from business and in his leisure made diminutive houses, furniture, toys, and ornaments for his amusement.

The article continues to say that Brandt’s creations “became the rage.” His hobby of making “exquisite toys” and “houses of Lilliputian dimensions” quickly provided him with a market, and possessing one of his creations “became a passion, and fashion, with collectors.”

The Antiquarium Museum at Utrecht, the old Dutch university town, still treasures one of Brandt’s sumptuously furnished little dwellings, with thumb-nail paintings on the wall by Dutch celebrities. It was probably this very model that so enchanted Czar Peter and stirred his desire to own one like it.

So, the article goes, Brandt graciously offers to make one of the dollhouses for Peter, “a little palace excelling all others in delicacy an ingenuity of workmanship, furnish it appropriately, and equip it with all the necessaries of life in a patrician Dutch household of the times.”

With his own hands he constructed a three-story house of about six feet wide. All of the furniture it contained was made by him. He made the molds, which afterward he destroyed, for the articles of plate and for silver and copper utensils. Regardless of expense, he had suitable carpets manufactured, and ordered chests of table and house linen woven in Flanders. The books that filled the miniature library shelves came from Mayence; each volume had golden clasps and was of a size to be enclosed in a walnut. The hanging chandeliers and services of glass were of Dutch manufacture; in the picture gallery paintings two inches square adorned the walls.

For twenty-five years Brandt labored to create this royal gift. At last he sent word to the Czar that the task was completed. His townsmen protested against such a masterpiece being lost to the country, but the model had been promised to the monarch, and Brandt had expended effort, time, and a small fortune to redeem that promise.

When Peter received Brandt’s message he had just concluded an advantageous peace with Sweden and was turning his attention to conquests in the East. But he had not forgotten the desire he had expressed a quarter of a century before, and he directed that a reply be sent asking what he would have to pay for the possession of the masterpiece. Deeply offended at Peter’s gross tactlessness and disposition to bargain, Brandt replied that even a czar had not money enough to pay for twenty-five years of a man’s life. Forthwith he presented the house to the nation. It is now in Amsterdam in the Royal Museum, none of whose treasures better exemplifies Dutch patience, industry, and love of decoration than the little house that Brandt build for Peter the Great.

That’s where the article ends — but my work begins.

If I thought I could just post this scan from a vintage magazine and, should I be so lucky as to find it, include a link to the czar’s dollhouse at the Royal Museum, I was to discover differently.

Yes, there’s an antique dollhouse at the Rijksmuseum — and it looks to be the same one shown in this articles photo (minus the glass doors on the cabinet — but the furnishings are too specific to be another dollhouse, and the dimensions are about the same), but from there it gets weird…

The museum doesn’t credit the maker of the dollhouse, but it does specify the owner as Petronella Oortman. Oorman was married to a silk merchant named Johannes Brandt — is that were the name Brandt comes from? If so, that might be explained away easily enough, I suppose… But given the strong relationship between Holland and Peter the Great, certainly if this dollhouse — or any dollhouse — had any connections to the czar, the museum would mention it.  …At least I think so.

There’s another fabulous antique dollhouse, this one was owned Petronella de la Court, that sits on display at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum.

I don’t know if this is the other “Brandt” Dutch dollhouse from the “Antiquarium Museum” at Utrecht that Starrett, in The Mentor article, suggests “enchanted Czar Peter” or not, but it certainly is enchanting.

In The Speaker (Volume 11, 1905, Mather & Crowther), Edward Verrall Lucas writes of an antique dollhouse from the same Dutch craft period.  I feel compelled to share a snippet not only because it might just be the de la Court dollhouse and the “Antiquarium,” but for the author’s descriptions.

At the north end of the Maliebaan is the Hoogeland Park, with a fringe of spacious villas that might be in Kensington ; and here is the Antiquarian Museum, notable among its very miscellaneous riches, which resemble the bankrupt stock of a curiosity dealer, for a very elaborate dolls’ house. Its date is 1680, and it represents accurately the home of a wealthy aristocratic doll of that day. Nothing was forgotten by the designer of this miniature palace ; special paintings, very nude, were made for its salon, and the humblest kitchen utensils are not missing. I thought the most interesting rooms the office where the Major Domo sits at his intricate labours, and the store closet The museum has many very valuable treasures, but so many poor pictures and articles—all presents or legacies—that one feels that it must be the rule to accept whatever is offered, without any scrutiny of the horse’s teeth.

(This piece by Lucas, with a stated copyright of 1904, appears to be what he published as a book in 1906, A Wanderer in Holland (Macmillan) — just in case you’d like to read more.)

Starrett never mentioned nudes paintings in the old Dutch dollhouse — but maybe he was less flappable in the Roaring Twenties than Lucas was at the turn of the century. And the commentary on the museum itself is rich — Lucas could be describing a lot of my collection and collection practices! *wink*

But still, the whole point of Starrett’s little story was right there in the article’s title, that the dollhouse shown had been made in Holland for Peter The Great; yet I could find no connection between Peter and Dutch dollhouses whatsoever.

So, I continued to research, like any obsessive would do.

I then found this bit in Dutch And Flemish Furniture, by Esther Singleton (The McClure Company, 1907):

In the Rijks Museum are several models in miniature of old Amsterdam houses. The finest one is of tortoise-shell ornamented with white metal inlay. According to tradition, Christoffel Brandt, Peter the Great’s agent in Amsterdam, had this house made by order of the Czar, and it is said to have cost 20,000 guilders (£2,500), and to have required five years to produce.

There’s that name, “Brandt,” again.

Or maybe not.

Seems the name of the czar’s Netherlands associate was actually Christoffel Brants, aka Christoffel van Brants after Brants was knighted by the czar. And while it seems Peter received actual houses from Brants, there’s still, no mention of houses specifically for dolls.

So, without further documentation, I’m left to conclude that Starrett’s story is just that, a story. (The man did love his stories! Among other things, Starrett collected books and was a Sherlock Holmes scholar.)

Or maybe you’d prefer the terms Singleton uses, “tradition.”

Either way, that would explain a number of things, such as the name Brandt being recalled, even if inaccurately, and the number of years it took to create the dollhouse changing by five-fold.

However, by the 1950s this traditional story of Peter The Great’s Dutch dollhouse has changed a bit with the telling… As most legends do.

In 1958, many American newspapers ran what appears to be a wire story; the uncredited story is exactly the same in each vintage publication. Here’s a copy from Kansas’ Great Bend Daily Tribune (June 22, 1958) — which reads pretty much like copyright infringement case for dear old Starrett (unless he was the one paid by the wire service), except for the first two lines:

Once there was a dollhouse so lovely that the czar of Russia, Peter the Great, wanted it very much. He hadn’t money enough to buy it however, believe it or not!

Cold war press copy conveying the anti-Russian sentiments, perhaps?

Then, in South Dakota’s The Daily Republic, February 19, 1977, the legend of Peter the Great’s Dollhouse gets tweaked again:

Those dollhouses were so expensive that only a few people could afford them. Peter the Great of Russia once ordered a dollhouse but when it was delivered, he refused it. The price was just too much.

The czar may have ordered and owned at least one fine Dutch dollhouse; but I can’t find any proof.

(See, I’m not just obsessive with my research as some sort of personality quirk; it’s necessitated!)

Antique Milton Bradley Dollhouse Ad

This antique Milton Bradley ad was posted in the LiveJournal Vintage Ads Community with simply the date of December 1891; no publication was cited.  I’m fascinated by the concept of another cardboard dollhouse — this one to be played with pictures of furnishings and people cut from catalog pages, not with miniatures and dolls.

Vintage Paper Dollhouses

My parents will correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t have a doll house when I was little.

At my grandma’s house, there was my aunt’s old metal dollhouse… And I had Barbie houses and the like. But I never had a real dollhouse, a real miniature world of my own… Until now.

At an recent auction, there were a number of vintage and antique toys, including two vintage paper dollhouses. I was fascinated because, frankly, I’d never seen a paper doll house.

But I figured both old dollhouses would go for more than I had to spend in total that day, and so the auction viewing was as close as I would get.

However, when the first vintage dollhouse (the one made of pressed paper board, shown on the left in the photo) went cheap, I was hopeful — and managed to win the other!

While I don’t have any dolls or furnishings for my new-to-me old toy, I now had the opportunity to learn more about the history of paper dollhouses.

As you can see, my vintage dollhouse is made of paper — a thick paper, thicker than the usual business card, but thinner than the standard cardboard; as opposed to the thicker pressed paper or fiberboard of the larger house at the auction.

Neither dollhouse had any obvious marking for maker, etc., and as I’m reluctant to handle such fragile things (especially when I can’t imagine I’ll be able to bid on them), I didn’t dare hoist them in the air for a closer inspection.  (And so I know nothing about the larger house.)  But when I got mine home…

Well, closer inspection brought no further help in terms of maker; so it was research time.

Grasping at straws, I searched for paper dollhouses, Tudor paper dollhouses, etc., and eventually got lucky, finding this 1947 advertisement from the December issue of Children’s Activities for a fiberboard house by Built-Rite of Indiana.

Now that I knew the name of the manufacturer of the vintage chromolithographed cardboard dollhouse, I could really find out more.

The Built-Rite name belongs to Warren Paper Products Company, a company founded in 1921 by Donald M. Warren as a manufacturer of paper boxes for makers of candy, apparel, jewelry, and other items.

By the 1930s, The Great Depression meant the need for cheap toys in the United States and Canada. Not only did paper mean a less expensive toy, but toys made by North American companies would be cheaper than toys shipped from Germany. This created a demand for toys that Warren Paper Products and other companies were happy to fill.

The advances made in color printing in the late 19th century, meant that elaborate architectural details could be depicted on flat surfaces. According to Gunn Historical Musem, “This offered an ideal medium for toy villages. Individual buildings were printed on heavy paper or cardboard that could then be compactly folded for shipping, then assembled by a child.”

As you can see from my vintage paper dollhouse, and the following photos of another vintage Built-Rite dollhouse (sold as a “toy house play set”), assembly was a simply a matter of unfolding the structure, popping out pieces along their perforated edges (mine even has several types of bushes, a cat and a dog!), placing the tabs into the slots, and setting the house up on the bottom of the box it came in.

Warren Paper Products was the leader in this market, presumably, at least in part, due to its patented in 1932. But there were competitors, such as Andrews, Durrel Co., Gables House & Carton Co., Grimm & Leeds Co., Jayline Toys Inc., Marx Toys, McLoughlin Brothers, Sutherland Paper Company, Transogram, and Wayne Paper Products.

By the time World War II began, disrupting the flow of toys from Germany, plastics was becoming the word — but toys made of paper, and toys made of wood, cloth, etc., jazzed-up with colorful printed papers, were still very popular too.

Not only did the demand for paper dollhouses increase, but during the 1940s and 1950s Warren Paper Products began manufacturing paper towns, forts, farms, airports, bridges, trees for toy trains as well as forts, railroads stations, farms and airports

Many of these paper dollhouses by Warren Paper were built as replicas of actual homes and they were marketed though Life Magazine and Time/Life, Inc. as a selling tool for the magazine’s house plans after the war (to house the baby boom). Which rather inspires a whole other bit of investigation.

And here I thought I’d just have to invest in some vintage dolls and dollhouse furniture, etc.; turns out, I’m right back to my vintage magazines again!

Image credits:

All images are my own (and may be used if properly credited), except for the vintage ad, which was via Jennifer McKendry’s antique dollhouse site, and the Vintage Built-Rite Toy House Play Set No 34 photos are via Nine Caroline Antiques.