The world has gone Lilliputian: The 21st-century renaissance of the dolls' house

We are currently experiencing a dolls’-house revival — and it’s not only for children. In fact, it’s not even for children. From highly skilled designers generating the most intricate interiors to devoted dilettantes rediscovering a childhood staple, the world has gone Lilliputian.

As did many recent crazes, it stemmed from the Pandemic, when a renewed focus on domestic crafts afforded an escape from home schooling and throat swabbing. Yet the obsession has a far longer history, with the earliest modern dolls’ houses dating to the Renaissance. Spurs to imagination rather than toys, they included Petronella Oortman’s cabinet house (1686–1710), now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The work of more than 700 international craftsmen, it was a perfect snapshot of the world of the Dutch Golden Age, duly inspiring Jessie Burton’s hit 2014 novel The Miniaturist. Oortman’s cabinet house, those of her compatriots and their even grander 1700s English equivalent at Nostell Priory in West Yorkshire, complete with itsy-bitsy silverware, chintz and porcelain, were exactly the kind of miniatures Queen Mary came to adore in the early 1900s.

Recognised for her love of ‘elephants of agate with jewelled howdahs, small tea sets in gold or silver, papier-mâché workboxes, tiny watercolours of flower-gardens, glass paintings,’ according to her biographer James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary’s mania led to the construction of her own enormous dolls’ house, now at Windsor Castle. Created between 1921 and 1924 as a gift from the nation, it is the largest and most opulent scaled home in the world.

Inspired by Queen Mary’s infamously ‘predatory’ love of artefacts, which often provoked claims of kleptomania, the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens built a dolls’ house fit for miniature royals. Working with the Queen’s childhood friend Princess Marie Louise, he ensured all its contents were of the highest possible quality, even providing a record of life in Edwardian England, before the memories faded.

Lutyens’s imagination ran riot, but some miniaturists prefer to replicate the world even more exactly, as husband and wife Kevin Mulvany and Susie Rogers do. Originally art historians, they employ a breadth of knowledge, site visits and detailed research into old plans to ensure their 1:12 houses are historically correct. Undaunted by even the most lavish architectural feats, they have, to date, miniaturised Hampton Court, Versailles and Buckingham Palace, among others. Their most recent project, Ham House, as found on the Thames at Richmond, is so deft in its imitation that you’ll find yourself reaching for your National Trust membership card.

Regardless of your chosen approach to life in the miniscule — think of Monica and Phoebe’s distinct dolls’ houses in Friends, one a temple of perfectionism, the other to spontaneity — there is space for all at the London Dollshouse Showcase. Founded in 1985 by the much lauded, recently departed Caroline Hamilton, it has been a hub for enthusiasts and collectors for the past 40 years. Some of the world’s most talented artisans, creating minute Georgian silverware or Chesterfields clad in Morris fabrics, come to Kensington Town Hall for others to gaze in wonder. It is now so popular that, alongside its packed Christmas gathering, there is a second fair in May and a late summer online showcase.

It was winter 2022 when the writer and self-confessed interiors nerd Lucy Clayton saw the queue outside. Strolling with her daughter, Bunny, in a pram, Lucy was glad of a moment’s respite and joined the throng. Inside, her imagination was fired, but she also found solace, as her late father was critically ill at the time. She had no idea how much she needed a dolls’ house in her adult life, but it gave her the space to perfect something when everything else was imperfect, as well as allowing her to forge a closer collaborative bond with her mother, Rebecca.

Initially, they planned to make a house for Bunny, for which Lucy knew she needed to get away from characteristically cluttered Victoriana. Instead, she wanted timeless, fashionable rooms with a touch of whimsy. It soon became clear, however, that this was no longer something for Bunny — although she remains Lucy’s poster girl — but a creation in and of itself, inspired by, but never limited by reality. It gave birth to the Kensington Dollshouse Company, a tribute, in part, to the Dutch houses of the 17th century.

I couldn’t help but ask if they ever got nervous about children playing with their houses. ‘I’d love to say not at all,’ Lucy replied cautiously, before answering more clearly: ‘OK, very!’ Peering into one of the rooms they have conjured, with a four-poster Chinoiserie bed upholstered in vintage silk, I can easily see why. ‘Nobody needs what we are making,’ she adds, ‘but I’m entirely comfortable with that.’

In truth, many people want what they offer, which combines her mother’s instinctive touch for embroidery and upholstery with Lucy’s magpie collecting fads. For a Christmas-themed townhouse, she found an old Sotheby’s catalogue with period ski posters, all perfectly sized for tiny picture frames, and another project featured a miniature hand-painted fire screen, made in the 1940s. Such details are endless, although the sense of virtuosity stems from the pair’s ability to be builder, decorator and designer combined.

Like those hallucinatory moments in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lucy admits the constant shift between scales can be confusing. Her go-to architect, Will Creech, with whom she’s worked both on her own home and the miniature projects, has often had to ask, ‘is this dolls’ house or real house?’ Although amusing, such immediacy means that when you see a Clayton house, it is like looking at the property pages in Country Life, complete with Edward Bulmer paints, vintage fabrics and classic wallpapers. As a result, the mother-and-daughter team has been able to make a big impact in a small world.

Following collaborations with House & Garden, Cece Jewellery and Harrods, as well as private clients, they are currently working on two completely new houses and a major renovation. At a little under 5ft long, it is an antique house that has become the springboard for even wilder flights of fancy, with each room set to represent a children’s story, pushing what the team has fashioned so far and moving towards a manifest artwork. Yet their goal always remains that moment ‘when people first see what we do; their sense of wonder and surprise’. That’s true whether you’re examining an actual dolls’ house or the book of their work.

‘To do anything that generates such a response is something to treasure,’ Lucy smiles, before turning back to the project in the palm of her hand.

This article first appeared in the April 1 edition of Country Life magazine. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.