My Collection

Tynietown.com

My Collection

My collection currently numbers about sixteen houses and a few roomboxes. I used to have over forty houses but have been steadily streamlining the collection and in just the last two years or so, I have sold off my large Gottschalk villa, three Hackers, two Mystery houses and two English box-back houses along with boxes of antique furniture. I basically divested myself of the commerical houses, but I did keep the large English box-back house I bought at Christies' a few years ago and am still restoring it.

Most of my American houses are displayed in one room where I painted a Rufus Porter-style mural around three sides of the room. One wall is copied from the mural that appears in the Tynietoy mansion while the other walls feature scenes from the Delaware Valley landscape, where I live with my husband and two cats on the north side of the Musconetcong Mountain.

Other houses are located throughout my house with the largest ones restricted to the ground floor because big houses do not fit up the narrow stairways of a 200 year old farmhouse!

Older material from this page may be retrieved by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.

Philadelphia Miniaturia 2009 - I've been attending this show going back to the early 1980's when it was held at the George Washington Lodge in Willow Grove. Until a few years ago, it featured an almost overwhelming number of fine artisans and minimal commercial merchandise but it's hard to deny that the quality of the show has been declining. This year there were only a small handful of international artists and more and more retail shops taking a table to sell the typical merchandise you can find in any reasonably well-stocked store. The primary reason I continue to go is the availability of vintage artisan pieces. They seem to be turning up more frequently these days as collectors who originally purchased them in the 1970's and '80's are down-sizing, or their heirs are liquidating their estates. Last year I bought several pieces of Betty Valentine furniture from the 1980's, a recent Denis Jenvey breakfast table and a stunning Lou Murter tester bed. This time I was pleased to find an even broader selection and am sharing photos of some of my acquisitions.

I still have an original Hoffman Collection catalogue from the early 1980's and I always admired the pieces George Hoffman made by exclusive license from Old Sturbridge Village. This country Chippendale chair was formerly owned by the late Pat Bauder.

My first stop at Philadelphia Miniaturia is always Annelle Ferguson's booth because she always tries to have some vintage pieces by other artists with her own upholstery on the seats, etc. ;ast year I was able to buy a Betty Valentine chair and footstool from Annelle and this year I bought a pair of exquisite Queen Anne chairs with Annelle's pretty seats. I think I may have paid more for this pair of chairs than I spent in total at last year's show! The blue background color of the seats was my grandmother's favorite color and so the chairs proved irresistable.

Annelle Ferguson added the sampler to this embroidery stand by Don Cnossen from 2002. I've added it to the master bedroom of the Robertson Lynnfield house, along with the Hoffman chair. The Martha Washington sewing stand in that room is also Don's work.

Another item from Annelle's booth was this camel-back loveseat that she was selling from the estate of Pam Throop. I love the raspberry pink color of the upholstery.

It's safe to say that I have a "thing" for embroidery stands and I bought this one from Lucy Iducovich - I don't know who made the frame so if anyone recognizes it, please let me know!

This may have been my most satisfying purchase at the show: a vintage settee by Betty Valentine with a delicious small pattern embroidered on a coral pink satin. When I worked for Molly Brody in the 1970's, she had a shelf in one of the cases in her shop where she displayed items from her personal collection. She had an example of this same settee with a black on white print upholstery and I really coveted it. Some time after she died, I saw the settee for sale in her shop in its later location in South Norwalk, CT for $600 and it was just too steep for me. I didn't pay nearly that much for this example and I like this upholstery fabric even more!

Coming up: I will be constructing a series of roomboxes for a museum exhibit this spring - watch for progress photos!

Dollhouses

A Vintage English Suburban Villa

(This house appears in my auction article in the Feb 2010 issue of Miniature Collector Magazine)

The first time I saw this homemade English dollhouse was in the finished attic of a friend of mine in suburban Philadelphia. I had come over to help her identify and lot a good-sized assortment of antique and vintage dollhouse furniture she was sending to auction and she had not yet made up her mind about this house. I did not give her an estimate, but I did feel there would be interest in it, even though it had a section of the back wall missing where I believe there had once been an attached conservatory. After I returned home that day, I kept thinking about the little house and how it would be a nice setting for my few, treasured pieces of Westacre furniture, and some other smaller-scale furnishings for which I had no suitable house. I thought about calling her and asking her to sell it to me before the auction, but I didn't want to take advantage of her friendship by possibly denying her the opportunity to get the best price for it. As it turned out, I won it at the sale for much less than what I was prepared to offer privately. The house is in the popular Stockbroker Tudor style that was popular between the wars and retains its original wallpapers, floorpapers and interesting architectural moldings inside and out. My friend had never furnished it and it took a while to remove the spider eggs and accumulated grime from the inside and out, but the effort was rewarded as I was able to appreciate the original chintz curtains in the dining room and the distinctive period papers throughout the house. Restoration involved building a pair of French doors where the conservatory had been, and installing a window and lower wall where the kitchen once had an exterior door that was missing. Otherwise, it was a short time before I had curtains on the rest of the windows and moved in enough funriture to fully furnish the house.

The house opens in an unusual way: The gabled roof lifts off and frees the front facade to lift away from the garden. The center hallway features a very steep angled stairway. A tiny kitchen is accessed under the stairs, with a doorway leading to the dining room. Upstairs, an equally tiny bathroom provides access to the master bedroom, while the other rooms have doors leading directly to the hallway. Each room has a window or French doors to the rear of the house, and I have the house situated in front of a window in my guest room, so I have nice natural sunlight illuminating the otherwise small and dark interiors in the mornings.

The parlor features a pleasant apple green patterned wallpaper and an interesting cast molding used for a picture rail. In front of the French doors, I hung a net curtain and used some vinatge fabric to make floral draperies and also re-upholstered a Petite Princess armchair that had stains on its original gold satin fabric - it has a nice 1930's feeling and was surprising easy to recover using the original fabric as a template. The sofa is an antique German settee I bought in London about ten years ago - this dollhouse family likes to mix antiques and more modern pieces for a sort of Bloomsbury look. I also used the same fabric to cushion the German chair by the desk, and for some pillows for the sofa. An old felt tobaccor rug repeats the blue and faded red flowers in the fabric. This room also displays the lovely Westacre Village standing lamp and Chinese lacquered table I wrote about in Miniature Collector in 2008. The floorpaper in all the rooms is an imitation parquet pattern which appears to have been coated with shellac or varnish and has a mellow patina I quite like. The hallway features an antique bone or ivory curio cabinet with tiny turned cups and plates.

Although quite dark, I've very fond of the dining room in this house. It still has its original floral chintz curtains - I know the pattern looks out of scale but I like that quirkiness. An old German table and three side chairs are placed just under the window and a vintage German sideboard is on the left, displaying a collection of molded pitchers and a plaster loaf of Hovis bread. The tea cart is not old and came in a box lot at an auction. The little pink cake was sent to me by an English friend. The pine dresser is new, purchased in an unfinished state at my local dollhouse shop for $5. I brought it home, stained and antiqued it a bit and filled it with an assormtent of vintage and more recent pottery. The orange and red patterned wallpaper is very period and I don't find it that attractive on its own, but mixed with other patterns and colors it seems to be okay. It's too dark to make out the details, but the narrow fireplace mantel displays a cast metal clock and an assortment of vintage beer steins.

The master bedroom is furnished almost exclusively with vintage German furniture, including the four-poster bed, chest on the right and a hanging cupboard in the back corner. I have a Triang four-poster bed, but it is to wide to fit in the dollhouse and is currently stored in the attic. I like the sprigged wallpaper in this room. All the fireplaces in this house have wooden fenders nailed to the floors and it does make it a little awkward to place much furniture in the rooms. There is a tiny print of the Scottish poet Robert Burns on top of the chest and a Gottschalk potted plant on the floor beside it.

The nursery has a colorful wallpaper and in this room you can appreciate the unusual design of the picture molding. The furniture consists of an assortment of vintage furniture from various sources, some of which I have painted to coordinate. The bed is actually a Schoenhut bed, the corner cupboard is Kage and the chest of drawers is new - the vintage German dresser I wanted to put here was just a little too big. The small-scale chairs are all old, like the Erzgebirge sailboat in the foreground and the toys on top of the chest. The German composition doll in the background is an older girl in an original dress.

Although it is a bit small and cramped, I found this little vintage house quite satisfying to fix up and furnish. I keep meaning too cull my collection to focus more specifically on top quality vintage and contemporary artisan pieces, but something keeps tugging at me when I see these older playthings, even though they may be a bit rough and shabby,,, and I know I'm not alone in that attraction! (2.10.09)

The 1976 Robertson - Lynnfield House (A Work in Progress)

I first encountered this dollhouse in its original state when it was offered at a household auction in my town. It was a rainy spring Saturday morning when we previewed the sale and the house interested me because it had many exterior details such as individually applied clapboard siding and roof shingles. The overall quality was a little crude, access to the interior was very awkward and I didn't feel like waiting around in the rain for several hours to bid on it, so I passed it by. Some months later, my friends at the Dollhouse Factory told me they had been contacted by someone who had bought a homemade dollhouse and then decided it was too big for their 5-year old daughter to play with it, and they had contacted the Dollhouse Factory about selling it. Chuck and Bill weren't interested in it and gave me the owner's contact information. I called and arranged to see it and when the owner told me he'd bought it at an auction in my town, I suspected it was the same house - and it was. I call it the Robertson-Lynnfield House because it was originally built in the mid-1970's by a couple named Robertson who signed it under the base, and because I use it primarily to display my Lynnfield collection.

Originally constructed more as an architectural model than a dollhouse, the structure was considerably larger than it is now. It was attached to a large base measuring close to 5' x 5' and there was a long ell stretching out the back. I believe the dollhouse was built as a replica of a real colonial era house that had been expanded over time into a restaurant called the Normandy Inn (it was labelled that under the base). I searched the internet for information about a Normandy Inn, but found nothing that resembled this structure, so I suppose that it represents a restaurant that is no longer in business. Anyway, when we got it home, my husband pried it off its bulky base and at my request, he sliced off about a foot from the rear ell. I tore off the enclosed porch that obscured the front of the house and with some difficulty, removed off the front of the house to access the interior, which was basically an empty shell.

Then the fun really started. Just like remodeling a real house, I imagined different ways to lay out the rooms and provide access to the second floor - the inconsistent roof angles were a real challenge. Because the house was signed and dated in 1976, I decided to design the interior to accomodate my collection of vintage Lynnfield and Block House dollhouse furniture, with some other vintage artisan pieces added. I wanted the house to have a mid-20th century feeling so I could incorporate my Lynnfield kitchen furniture and creating a breakfast room for the painted dinette set was a priority.

The house appears to have been built entirely from scratch-built components, and that gives it a rather naive charm. The original facade featured a doorway located way off to one side of the front and I wanted a center hallway and entry, so I built a new front facade incorporating the window units original to the front facade. It's still a work in progress, as is the removable facade for the rear of the house. The house had several dormers and when I removed a section from the rear of the house, I had to remove the dormers to reduce their size as well (also in progress).

I always rush to play with the interiors, but I also wanted to place the furniture before finalizing the floor plan - this allowed me to position the walls and doorways in a way that allowed me to use the pieces I wanted to include in this house. I'm really pleased with the results. Most of the walls downstairs are painted but I used some vintage wallpapers upstairs, including some that were sent to me by someone who visits this website, and some leftover scraps I found in a closet in my church's parsonage when I was part of a team preparing the house for a new minister. I also used some scrapbooking paper, and some Laura Ashley paper left over from a real-size decorating project. In many ways, I wanted this house to be an example of recycled materials - I saved all the parts I removed from the larger house and re-used plywood, shingles and flooring, as well as window units. I didn't go out and buy any of the papers, I just used what I already had and most of the light fixtures were also salvaged from another project, but I did buy the chandelier and sconces in the dining room specifically for this house.

Like many of my projects, this one has experienced periods of intense activity and other times I just let it sit while I thought about what I wanted to do, or worked on other things. Now that I've pretty much figured out what furniture is going in the house, I'll be finishing up the window treatments and the exterior details.

After I first posted this house, several viewers asked to see overall photos of the house to get a better idea of the layout. So with the understanding that this is UNFINISHED I'm adding photos of the exterior.

This is the front of the house showing the original roof with gable, and the new facade which I am building for it, re-using the double windows but unstalling a new doorway with sidelights. My daughter is holding the roof on because I haven't attached the hinges yet. The reason there are so many shingles missing on the roof is because there was an enclosed porch stretching across most of the front of the house. The base of the house had rough plaster smeared all over it and much of it had cracked and fallen off so I plan to apply a fieldstone veneer to the base all around the house.

This side shows the rather crude French doors leading from the dining room where I plan to build a raised patio. When I got the house, there were crude over-sized shutters glued along these door and the windows, all painted a bright Kelly green over an earlier blue. I plan to make raised panel shutters for the windows.

The open front of the house shows the relation of the most complete rooms to one another. The staircase leads to an enclosed hallway upstairs that provides access to all the rooms above. The bathroom set is painted wood and I got it on ebay. The person who sold me the toilet put a little note inside the bowl for me! Most of the electrical wiring for the ground floor ceiling and wall fixtures and the floor lamps on the upper floor has been run in grooves I carved into the plywood and then covered with the pine floorboards. My very least favorite part of the job, but another reason that I played around with furniture layouts before completing the construction of the interior walls and floors.

From this angle, one can appreciate the way the doorway locations allow the rooms to flow together quite naturally. The cornice moldings used throughout the ground floor are made from stock trim I purchased at Lowe's - it's a bit heavier than using the expected Houseworks cornice seen in so many dollhouses. I made the simple chair rails from scrap wood and patterned them after the ones in my own house. I did break down and use commercial baseboard moldings because they are so easy to cut with a miter grip.

The rear ell of the house was much longer than what you see here. I sometimes regret that I removed so much, but had I not, I don't think I could have maneuvered it through the door of my studio! As you can see, this is the area that requires the most work.

This photo shows just how rough the exterior of the house really is and also retains a piece of molding with the garish green paint that was used for all the shutters... I might add that when I first got the house, the front was fixed in place and access to the interior was achieved by unscrewing the gabled wall of the parlor, which is now fixed in place. It really wasn't a house made for playing. I imagine that perhaps it simply sat empty in a corner of the restaurant it replicated.

The front entry way showcases some favorite pieces of rare Carl Forslund furniture. Their diminutive scale is perfect for this small entrance hall. The raised panels that line the lower portion of the walls had been stored away for years and I had just enough to use it here. I believe the floral carpet was cut from a small tapestry purse. The mahogany newel post was given to me by the fellows at the Dollhouse Factory and may be a one-of-a-kind example turned by the former shop owner, Robert Dankenics. The staircase is steep and narrow but helps create a cozy first impression.

The formal parlor is furnished mostly with easily recognised Lynnfield furniture but there is a small Forslund chest beside the fireplace and the butler's tray table is a vintage unsigned artisan piece that I prefer to the more modern lines of a Lynnfield coffee table. The secretary's chair was upholstered with old petitpoint when I found it at a flea market. Most of the sterling silver accessories in this room are by Peter Acquisto. When I acquired this house, the ground floor was sheathed in planks made of a soft pinkish wood that I think might be redwood. Before I could finish the walls, I sanded and varnished the floors and ended up with fine pink dust all over my studio - I still find it in some places. I didn't need to stain the fllors - this rich color is the result of simply varnishing the sanded floor.

This view shows the small Forslund chest beside the Lynnfield fireplace (now glued in place). I boxed in the area behind the front entry to indicate the interior chimney for the fireplace, and also to provide access for the electrical wiring to get from the upper floor to the base where everything is soldered together.

The dining room has been very satisfying to decorate. I enjoyed painting the Rufus Porter style mural on the walls and look forward to the day when I make the window treatments to cover the crude French doors. The blue and white porcelain includes pieces by Chestnut Hill, Stokesayware, and Debbie McKnight, with silver by Acquisto and Harry Smith. I was so pleased when I found the Chinese needlepoint rug in Annelle Ferguson's booth at Philadelphia Miniaturia, formerly in the collection of her friend, Betty Valentine. The warm formality of this room reminds me so much of my grandmother's house and her treasured mahogany dining room furniture.

This cozy bedroom features a set of mahogany furniture I bought on ebay a few years ago. It has stickers from Marshall Field on the bottoms and I thought it resembled Lynnfield furniture, but it is noticeably heavier, it is very well constructed and it has a real 1950's feeling. Since I bought this furniture I have encountered a couple other pieces probably from the same manufacturer, but there are never any identifying marks. The pale pink linens came with the beds so I chose this vintage wallpaper (from the parsonage closet) to coordinate. There were no walls or flooring on the second floor when the house came to me and it took me a while to position the walls to accomodate the furniture in this room and the others. In the evening, I like to turn on the lights of this house in my derkened studio and appreciate the warm glow of the lamps shining in the window of this room. The girl in the knitted dress and hat was purchased at the London Dolls' House Festival in 2001 and I'm glad she finally has a home.

This other front bedroom has been furnished as a guest room and features wallpaper that was sent to me by a visitor to this website. I put it in this room because it went so well with the early upholstered Lynnfield wing chair. A good friend gave me the rare Queen Anne Lynnfield bed that I have covered with a swatch of overshot woven fabric I made myself in the 1980's. The mahogany chest on the right is not actually Lynnfield - it should have a small pull-out shelf just under the top - but is strikingly similar and just fits the space. The carpet is a section from a worn needlepoint bag I found at a flea market. I love the way the colors blend together to give this room a warm, vintage New England feeling.

I planned to put the bathroom over the front entryway from the very start and it was tricky getting the walls placed to fit under the spacious dormer window that I kept in the original roof section. Because it is in front of the upstairs hallway, I decided to make the wall removable in case I need to get in there sometime. I had to trim the wainscot so I could just squeeze in the bathtub. The floor boards upstairs were cut by my husband from some old pinewood panels that had been used as doors for the walk-in fireplace in my 230-year-old dining room. They were not original to the house but were probably from the early 20th century and I save them for the wood when we renovated that room. Sanded and stained, they have a lovely warm patina, and are another example of recycling materials for this house. They are a little irregular, but after the mess that resulted from power sanding the floorboards downstairs, I opted to sand these by hand and retain some irregularity. I made the hanging shelf and painted the Strombecker table beside the tub. The wallpaper is scrapbooking paper in a very small fern-like pattern.

I envisioned this small room behind the parlor as a private oasis - a study or music room. I found the Lynnfield piano in a pawn shop when I went to sell my husband's wedding band from his previous marriage - he told me to sell it and spend the money any way I chose and I was surprised to discover this Lynnfield piano and matching bench in a pawn shop of all places! The upholstered furniture is by Robert Bernhard and there is a Chestnut Hill banjo clock on the right wall. The globe is also from Chestnut Hill and the needlepoint rug used to belong to Betty Valentine.

The kitchen looks a little old-fashioned and outdated even for a mid-20th century house. I've had the appliances for some years but it was a real hunt to find the table and assemble a set of four chairs (two is more common). I also had the cheerful red and white wallpaper for a long time and was glad to finally have a house where I could use it.

To the right of the kitchen, I created a little breakfast room to display the Lynnfield breakfast nook set. The table and benches were purchased on ebay and I traded a Tynietoy Welsh dresser with a friend whose had this one in her Tynietoy South County farmhouse - a good trade for both of us. This set is sometimes mistaken for Tynietoy but the table and chairs have very different profiles and should not be confused. The breadbox on the dresser is a Lynnfield accessory and I'm still looking for the matching canister set! The cookie jar was purchased in the 1970's at a yard sale in Westport, CT from the home of Pop-eye artist Bud Sagendorf. I've used that cookie jar in so mnay different houses over the years that seeing it brings back pleasant memories of houses I no longer own.

The unusual angles on the upper floor of the rear ell provided many challenges and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to place the walls and doorways to maximize the space. This master bedroom feels a little bigger than it looks because of the large dormer window on the left. I was able to create just enough space for the rare Lynnfield highboy and the canopy on Roger Gutheil's bed just fits in the dormer space. I really like the old chintz fabric on the Lynnfield club chair and I created a little area for doing needlework just inside the dormer, shown below.

The nursery is tucked into a cozy and serene space with another dormer window on the right. The painted nursery furniture was purchased from a friend of mine in Missouri and the tiny doll bed on the right was a Christmas present from Molly Brody's shop in 1976. The Beatrix Potter painted shelves were made by Mary Grady O'Brien and the wallpaper is scrapbook paper - I had just enough!

Quite a lot of work remains to be done on this house and I expect I will be changing the furnishings a bit, but I wanted to share this with some friends who have been asking about this project, and I welcome any comments or suggestions for finishing it. Thanks for looking! (1/29/09)

The Red Colonial House

I took a general design class during my sophomore year ay NYU as a prerequisite for some other art classes I wanted to take. The class was held in a basement workshop a block from my first New York apartment and there was a nice assortment of power tools in the wood-working shop area. I obtained permission from my professor to come in during another class period to use these tools to build this dollhouse. At the time, he was constructing a Shaker step stool for a grand-daughter and he gave me some rough-sawn walnut scraps to use for beams in the dollhouse - I was thrilled. The plywood for the shell was scavenged from a building site near my parents' home in Connecticut (with the owner's permission, of course) and my youngest brother helped me electrify it, re-purposing one of my Dad's old model train transformers (this was before I had any access to Illinois Hobbycraft's transformers), which we hid behind the bathroom wall. I began the house in 1975 and finished it the following year and have often referred to it as my Bicentennial house.

I designed the house as a colonial townhouse with a front entrance featuring a six-panel door and a Dutch door in the back, leaving the side open. The design was influenced to a degree by some dollhouses I admired in the toy collection at the Fairfield (CT) Historical Society. I did not have access to milled siding and did not have the patience to apply individual clapboards - my interest has always focused primarily on the interiors and I find the exterior details an exercise in drudgery, although the results are worth the effort. The roof shingles are made of posterboard that I cut into strips on an old paper cutter, and then individually cut - aaargh! Each one was individually glued in place and then painted with black enamel paint. There are a lot of things I would do differently now, but when I built this at the age of 19, I was pretty happy with the results.

Much of the woodwork in the house was made from the walnut given to me by my art professor, but I also used redwood for the long floorboards upstairs, and tongue depressors that I coaxed out of a med student at the NYU student infirmary were cut and glued down for the first floor. The fact that some are a little warped and imperfect suited my aesthetic. There are fireplaces in all the rooms and I used the flues for electrical wiring, which consists of fluorettes tucked behind beams or inside the fireplaces. When I went to work for Molly Brody in Westport, I was asked to exhibit the house for the Christmas Holiday Dollhouse Exhibit at the Westport Historical Society. For security, I had a sheet of acrylic cut to fit the front, and it fell off the house in the parking lot, breaking in half. We had to tape it all up for the exhibit, but that was the last time I had it enclosed. Yes, dust is a real problem and the reason I am now loathe to buy or build any other dollhouses if they don't close up nice and tight!

I redecorated this house about five years ago, updating the papers and painted surfaces, but retaining all the furniture and window curtains. The original wallpapers were Italian book lining papers, and examples can still be seen in the stairway on the left in this picture, and in the upstairs bathroom. This room had a dark green paper that made the room look even smaller, so I replaced it with a lighter pattern. The fireplace wall is sheathed in stained and varnished panels (I will try to get a better photo of that area). My aunt made the needlepoint carpet for me as a Christmas gift while I was still in college and I was so thrilled to receive it. I made a number of pieces of furniture in this room including the Duncan Phyfe settee, the mahogany grandfather clock, the harpsichord and music stand in the foreground, and a Queen Anne tea table mostly obscured in this photo. The marine painting on the back wall is by Ned Allen and small tables by Betty Valentine and Robert Carlisle accessorize this room.

I made the harpsichord primarily with mahogany, but the curved section was built up from layers of veneer strips and the legs are pine. There was matching bench once upon a time...hmm. The keys are made from flat toothpicks and the candlestick is actually silver-plated - I really need to do some polishing!

This Queen Anne tea table was my first attempt at carving cabriole legs, and my one and only attempt at inlay! Without access to appropriate tools, I had to gauge out the table top by hand to make space for small strips of satinwood inlay, but I did have a Dremel Moto-Saw to cut out the legs. I was working for Molly when I made this table and she asked me to make a few more to sell in the shop - I did (minus the inlay), but when a customer asked me to make enough cabriole legs for a dozen chairs, I felt the job was too big for me and declined - oh, she was mad at me for the longest time! I made a few other things to sell in the shop: blanket chests, printer's trays filled with a variety of tiny seeds, and sleigh beds and Empire mirrors very similar to those made by Tynietoy, only I hadn't heard of Tynietoy yet!

There are several painted cupboards in this house. I enjoyed making them, especially applying the painted finishes. Case pieces like this are a lot easier than making chairs, so I like to buy artisan chairs. I made this cupboard to fit this space, and I bought the tole document box and wall sconces from Mary Grady O'Brien at Molly's shows so many years ago. The butter churn is by Jean Yingling, I framed the print of a theorem, and my first husband gave me the keys while we were in college.

The kitchen has ladderback chairs by George Hoffman and I made the table and most of the furniture. I love the roughsawn walnut beam on the right.Most of the stoneware pottery in the kitchen is by Jane Graber. The loaf of braided bread on the table was a wedding gift from my youngest brother's best friend - I was so surprised, and he gave me a lovely carved Tudor table, too (now in the English cottage). I guess all those free haircuts I used to give my brothers' high school buddies on our front porch paid off!

The built-in kitchen cupboards are so 1970's! I made them from redwood with Bristol Board countertops edged with Letraset tape. The drawers have dividers for cutlery, but the handles are crudely fashioned from leather. No Houseworks hardware for me in 1975... More Jane Graber stoneware and redware on the wall shelf and the yellowware mixing bowl is filled with miniature cookie cutters.

The upstairs landing provides a convenient spot to place a blue stepback cupboard filled with - you guessed it - Jane Graber stoneware and some pieces by Jean Yingling as well. Another needlpoint rug made by my Auntie picks up the blue color of the cupboard. Auntie also gave me the Jane Conneen numbered print on the wall. Through the double doors you can glimpse the bathroom with its Shackman porcelain bath fixtures, but I don't know what has happened to the mirrored front of the medicine cabinet - a little TLC needed up here. The newel post was hand-carved from a scrap of pinewood. I was so proud of the steep, winding stairs I built in this house.

Francis Whittemore made all the colored glass seen here, Jim Ison made the ladderback chair and footstool, while I made the little pine desk. I have actually use the feather duster from time to time. The basket on the cupboard is from Seneca Baskets and has darning eggs inside. The rolls of Scott tissue on the bathroom shelf were made by Helen Norman, who built lovely, one-of-a-kind dollhouses in the 1970's under the trade name of Hudson River Dollhouses. A friendly and extremely artistic woman, I loved her unique dollhouses and wonder where they are today...

This bedroom was originally papered with a thin wrapping paper decorated with yellow flowers, but I love this Joe Hermes Bittersweet pattern. I purchased the Robert Gray spool bed on my first business trip in the autumn of 1978, to Allentown PA, where I stumbled upon Noel's House of Miniatures. It was $38, as was the matching bureau and washstand, but I could only afford one of the pieces at that time. Still searching for those other pieces... A collection of tiny dolls rests upon my home-made painted blanket chest.

The gauze curtains look pretty naive now, but I'm sentimental about them and so they remain. I love the cozy look of this corner of the room, where the tiny pattern of the wallpaper is very satisfying. I made the painted hatboxes and there is a story behind the pair of ruby slippers: my oldest nephew, Michael, was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz when he was a little boy and one Christmas he asked his parents for a pair of ruby slippers. My brother bought a pair of sneakers and stayed up late one December night gluing red glitter to them - and Michael loved them. When I saw these cast resin slippers, made as a mini Christmas ornament by Hallmark, I had to have them to remind me of Michael - I hope he doesn't visit this website or I am in BIG trouble!

One more look at the bedroom where you can see the fireplace and the washstand I blatantly copied from the one I coveted in the Chestnut Hill catalogue. The stoneware crock on the floor was ordered from the Enchanted Dollhouse, with the early spelling of my mother's maiden name. For some years, this was my favorite house in my collection, where my nicest furnishings were placed, and I still love the atmosphere within its walls. I have finer examples of artisan furniture now, much of it stowed away waiting for another house to be built. I got detoured by focusing on English houses for a while, but am beginning to plan another American house down the road.

On the left is the mahogany washstand I made (and signed) inspired by the Chestnut Hill example, which was made in pine. I guessed on all the measurements and when I borrowed an original one to photograph for my Miniature Collector article about Chestnut Hill, I was shocked that it was almost identical in scale. The framed photo shows my paternal grandfather, taken on my parents' wedding day.

The very first examples of Betty Valentine's work that I purchased at Molly's shows have resided in this dollhouse for over 30 years now. She made the tables shown on the right. I paid $18 for the small Victorian table on the left, and $20 for the table on the right. These were investment pieces for me in 1976, as was the Wallace Auger Windsor chair I purchased at my first Guild show in the early 1980's. But if you are visiting this website, you already know it was never about "investing" in miniatures....

I hope you enjoyed your visit to my Bicentennial House. What fun I had building and furnishing it at 19 and 20 years of age! (11/10/08)

A 1930's Dutch Colonial Cottage

This small dollhouse came to me through pure serendipity. During a visit to The Dollhouse Factory, the owners asked me to come into the back workshop area to identify an old dollhouse they had recently bought from someone who simply walked into their shop and wanted to sell it. They bought it from him for a mere $20, thinking it might be a Schoenhut house and they planned to redecorate it for resale in the shop. I informed them it was not a commercial house at all, just a little homemade house, possibly built from plans published in a hobby magazine. I urged them to do nothing to it as it was collectible just as it was, even though it was very dirty and someone had scribbled with crayons on several of the walls. They said they might put it up on ebay in a few weeks. I went home and just a few days later, they called me to ask if I could come in and help in the shop one day while they went to a trade show. I agreed, but said I'd rather have the house in lieu of salary, and we were all happy with the arrangement. At the end of the day, I simply plopped the little house in the back seat of my car and drove home with great satisfaction.

I haven't done anything to the exterior of the house. The original color was a creamy yellow with green trim and the white repaint was done some time ago as it has alligatored on almost all the surfaces. I could scrape it down one day but I'm okay with the way it looks now. The brick paper that covers the foundation and chimneys was painted over with red translucent paint at some point. Fortunately, the interior escaped these well intentioned cosmetic spruce-ups. The front door opens into a hallway with a door to the parlor.

One of the reasons I was attracted to this house was the original wallpapers that remained in all the rooms but the master bedroom, and the architectural details such as heavy cornices, built-in fireplace, and baseboard, door and window trims. The house is constructed of 1/4" plywood and the second floor dormers are artfully constructed - I love those little corners, even though they make the small rooms a little more difficult to decorate. The interior doors are actually false, made from plywood simply stained and varnished, and they remind me of the chestnut doors in the 1920's Sears kit house in which my first husband grew up. The original wallpapers had waxy crayon marks on several walls, which I sealed and painted over with good effect. The ceilings are papered, too. The floors are stained and varnished with checkered paper on the floors of the kitchen and bathroom. This is one of the few houses I still own with an open back - and the dust gets pretty bad! I will probably make a facade for the back of this house one day. The scale of this house is a bit smaller than the standard 1/12, with ceilings measuring only 7" high.

The front hallway opens into this parlor that has been decorated with a German upholstered parlor suite, a German red-stained console table I bought while I was in college, an early and rare Lynnfield console radio and three Strombecker walnut tables. I painted the Strombecker wooden lamps. The wallpaper in this room is a full-size scenic paper, with small images of the Alamo (one is behind the armchair). I have furnished this house with a combination of vintage German and American commercial furniture and several pieces of vintage home-made furniture. A few modern accessories are scattered about, including the patterned carpet shown here which is actually a mousepad. The curtains throughout the house are made from antique lace and I used plastic upholstery buttons as tie-backs - they look like antique pressed glass in miniature.

In the background (sorry for the fuzzy focus) there is a Governor Carver replica chair, a vintage souvenir from Plymouth Plantation. Many of the pictures hanging throughout the house have been fitted with small jewelry loops so they can be hung from nails on the walls. I try to avoid using wax adhesive when hanging pictures because of the staining problem. I think it is a lot easier to fill in a tiny nail hole than try to cover up an ugly wax stain. I do use wax to keep things fixed on table tops.

I found these German upholstered pieces at an antiques show for only $15. They caught my eye because the sofa is so similar to one that was in my grandmother's house. I have seen this set in blue velvet as well. The dolls are earlier Caco dolls with composition heads and painted metal hands and feet. I redressed the woman with pieces of fabrics I handwove in the 1980's. Her sweater is made from a sample of Swedish point weaving which has a texture that reminds me of classic Aran fisherman sweaters.

I like the realistic room arrangement in this house. Although there is no staircase, one can easily imagine there is one in the hallway behind the dining room wall. The dining room is small and I could have fit four smaller chairs around the table, but I really like these cottage-y German red-stain chairs and the little drawers in the ends of the drop-leaf dining table. The sideboard and grandfather clock are also German, while the white painted corner cupboard is a vintage homemade piece constructed of cigar-box wood that fits perfectly in this homey room.

Another view of the dining room showing the doorway to the kitchen. The ladderback armchair is sometimes mistaken for Tynietoy. From this angle, you can see the fronts of the vintage tin kitchen appliances, and the appropriately placed kitchen window - I'm pleased that the builder pitched this window higher in the wall to accomodate the sink.

The wallpaper in the kitchen is remarkably similar to the painted effects I remember from a Brooklyn apartment where I lived in the 1980's. I had the bottom floor of a two family house built in the early 1930's, and the similarity helped me date this house to the 1930's. It could just as well be from the 20's or 40's as this Colonial Revival style was popular for several decades in the first half of the last century. The painted tin furnishings are Linemar pieces I bought in a Williamsburg antiques mall in the early 1980's for $15. There is a stove, a sink and a cabinet. I also had the washing machine but its handle that churned the agitator made it difficult to place in any dollhouse. I've never had the refrigerator so I tucked a Strombecker icebox in the back corner. The electric stove is very similar to the one in my grandmother's suburban Connecticut home built in 1938.

Another view of the kitchen, revealing the Linemar cupboard and a 1930's wooden Gottschalk chair.

The master bedroom was the only room where the original wallpaper was so damaged that I replaced it. Someone had already removed about 80% of the original sprigged paper, so I removed the rest and used remnants of a pretty wallpaper I hung in my bedroom in my first full-size house some twenty years ago. I wish I had another roll of it! The mahogany canopy bed was made in the 1950's by a man in New York City, who also made the Empire chest of drawers on the right. The hand-carved Scotty dog in the foreground is from my mother's childhood.

In this view of the bedroom, you can see the framed pictures of my parents taken on their wedding day.

Both the bed and Empire chest were made by the same New York man in the 1950's. I bought them at an antiques show in Allentown, PA a few years ago and regret I did not write his name down. The finials are hand-carved and I love the way the sheer canopy fabric is gently gathered along the curved tester. The patchwork quilt was made from fragments of antique fabrics.

The cozy bathroom has the same softly marbled wallpaper as the kitchen, and has been furnished with wooden bathroom fixtures from Germany. I painted the Wanner console table and there are some vintage accessories scattered around the room.

I really like the original wallpaper in this small bedroom, which is furnished with a home-made four-poster bed with hand-carved posts and original stringing, and a charming mahogany chest of drawers with hand-carved drawer pulls and applied trim. It is made from old cigar box mahogany and I found it at an antiques show for $20 some twenty years ago. The chest at the foot of the bed is really an old trinket box with a decal of a clipper ship applied to the domed top. The little girl is a vintage Caco doll in very good condition. I just noticed the cornice molding is loose! A vintage upholstered George le Clerc chair is on the right.

A variety of vintage rush-seat chairs furnish this house. The chair in the center is made of walnut and features crisply turned posts. I don't think it is German because just a few years ago, I came across another one of these chairs in a pretty large group of walnut furniture stored in the basement of Flora Gill Jacobs' house. None of the matching cabinet pieces were marked Germany as one might expect, which makes me think it is probably of American origin. The painted chairs on either side are shown in the Ciesliks' Gottschalk book and date to the 1930's.

A pair of George LeClerc side chairs with calico-covered seats flank the hand-carved mahogany chest from the nursery. I love the folky quality of this home-made piece of furniture crafted from old cigar boxes. The LeClerc chairs go nicely in this house because they are a little smaller scale than comparable Tynietoy chairs.

My First (and Second) Doll House

I was eight and it was under the Christmas tree: a large Rich colonial mansion, supposedly the last house they manufactured. I don't remember asking for a dollhouse, but I did have a few pieces of furniture that has been my mother's as a girl, and I often played with them inside the shelves of a bookcase, so I think it was an inspired gift on my mother's part.

I don't remember anything else I got that Christmas except for the plastic furniture sets in bubble packs: a purple dining room, a pink kitchen and bath, and a white bedroom. I already had some wooden living room furniture that had been my mother's and while I preferred it to the plastic furniture (even then, its obvious cheapness offended my budding taste), I longed for something better. I stuck small pieces of red flocked Con-Tac paper to the dining room seats, and my mother let me cut up an old terry washcloth to make bedspreads for the matchbox beds I contrived for the nursery. The following summer, I was given the Petite Princess Fantasy Family for my birthday, along with a small chair and footstool upholstered in fawn velvet, and the rolling teacart.

I loved these dolls with their detailed clothing and bendable limbs and I still have them along with the few pieces of Petite Princess furniture I accumulated in the next two years. It was very expensive and whenever my mother took us shopping at the local department store, I always headed straight to the toy department and the cardboard display case filled with Petite Princess furniture, pleading for one more little box of furniture, but seldom getting anything. The planter came my way eventually, and a table and lamp, but by the time I was old enough to get paid for babysitting (I never got paid for watching my own brothers), production had ended and the display went away. Around this time, I went to a girlfriend's house for an overnight visit and was absolutely enchanted by her enormous dollhouse (it was easily twice the size of mine) filled with Lynnfield furniture and occupied by a family of German Caco dolls. She wasn't nearly as interested in the house as I was and even got annoyed with me for being so enthralled with it. I actually snuck into the playroom in the dark of night to play with it, and went home the next day very tired and envious of this dollhouse that did not seem to be appreciated.

I continued to play with my dollhouse and its inferior furnishings for about four years until a visiting girlfriend questioned why I was still playing with dolls at my age (12). Embarassed, I put the furniture into boxes and tucked them away in my closet, and my younger brothers commandeered the dollhouse to use as a fortress for their GI Joes. When they left it outside in the rain, the Masonite walls virtually melted and that was the end of my first dollhouse. But I didn't really feel that bad about it because it always bothered me that the floor plan was uninspired and lacking a staircase.

Within a year or so, I rescued the Petite Princess family and furniture from my closet, gave all the plastic furniture to a younger neighbor and started collecting small cardboard boxes from a local liquor store. I had fun cutting doors and windows into the boxes and arranging them into rooms papered with floral Con-Tac paper and felt carpets. With babysitting money in my pocket, I started to buy wooden dollhouse furniture.

The summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, I was privileged to see a delightful antique dollhouse that belonged to the mother of one of my brother's band-mates. She ran a nursery school in her home (before it was called "day care") and she allowed her young charges to play with her childhood dollhouse, an elaborate two-story Victorian farmhouse with cream-colored clapboards and green painted trim, and a wonderful wrap-around covered porch with perfect Doric columns. I loved this house at first sight, pitied its worn condition and asked if I might "rent" it for the summer to clean it up. Mrs. O'Connell let me have it on loan for those two months while I committed all kinds of ignorant sins "restoring" this poor house: I painted the original clapboards with fresh white paint and turquoise trim - ugh! Inside, I removed most of the original wallpapers (they WERE heavily damaged) and replaced them with new papers taken from a discarded wallpaper sample book and I cleaned the dark interior woodwork with ...nail polish remover!

It was terrible what I did to that house, yet its owner was pleased to see it "refreshed" when I returned it to her at the end of August. The guilt I feel about what I did to that house weighs very heavily on me to this day. The house probably dated to about 1900 and had been given to Mrs. O'Connell by her doctor when she was a little girl. The kitchen, which was difficult to access, had its original built-in tin sink, and the bathroom had built-in wooden fixtures including a tub recessed in wood paneling. It was wonderful and I'd dearly love to have it now to do the job properly!

My "summer rental" inspired me to build my first dollhouse the next year as an art class project. I was sixteen. I went to a lumberyard and bought 3/4" pine boards 8" wide for the walls and used some leftover plywood in the basement for the floors. A very obliging boyfriend helped me cut out the doors and windows in his basement workshop and I cut up some of my mother's old velvet party dresses to carpet the floors. I was especially proud of the staircase painstakingly made from balsa wood cut with an X-acto knife. This house I filled with Shackman furniture and some treasured pieces of Lynnfield, and I cut paper mats for Kate Greenaway stickers to hang as pictures. I made ruffled curtains with the Featherlight sewing machine my grandmother had given me, and sewed patchwork quilts by hand. I felt very clever when I made a European-style tin stove using a metal switch-plate cover for the top, learning how to solder from this same boyfriend, and I went on to make a "brass" bed out of wire coat-hangers painted with gold Testor's enamel. I really had a wonderful time making things for this house and I got an "A" in art that semester!

So how many people do you know who actually take their dollhouse to college with them? Hello! My roommate kept a small portable stereo on top of her dresser, I put my dollhouse on top of mine, and kept on collecting...

It's just possible that I have owned maybe 100 dollhouses since then - they have come and most have gone, but I still have this first dollhouse I ever built. A few years after my college graduation, I decided to renovate the house: I replaced the wallpapers, re-built the balsa wood staircase that was too fragile from the get-go, and replaced the velvet carpets with individually laid floorboards. I kept almost all of the original furniture with a few additions over the years. But until the summer of 2008, it never had a front! I kept moving the house around from one room to another and even thought of packing it up and putting it away for a while, but while I was working on the new facade of my Tynietoy mansion, I decided to make a front for this house, too, similar to the other New England style dollhouses in the dollhouse mural room. So please excuse the amateur craftsmanship of this high-school dollhouse and enjoy a visual trip down my memory lane...

The facade is somewhat reminiscent of some Tynietoy houses with its symmetrical formal design, hand-painted window mullions, applied green shutters and green door with faux recessed panels. The massive pediment over the door is actually an off-cut from a fence post cap that had to be trimmed when we attached a new picket fence to one side of our garage this spring. As soon as my husband trimmed it off, I grabbed it and told him I had a use for it. The somewhat battered fish-scale roof shingles were purchased from Molly Brody Miniatures, glued in place and the green painted finish was antiqued.

The room arrangement is actually somewhat similar to the six rooms of my first dollhouse, the Rich Colonial Mansion, but I was keen to have a staircase this time and I positioned it along the back wall of the small dining room. I also reinterpreted an idea from the "summer rental" dollhouse in the way I constructed the house to lift off one floor at a time. Built of pine boards and plywood, the house would be very heavy to move in its assembled state. Its modular construction makes it easy to transport and to clean as well! The wood trim, the balsa wood doors, and the floors made from popsicle sticks were stained with Olde English Scratch Cover, because that's what I found under my mother's kitchen sink.

The parlor is decorated with a Shackman settee upholstered in red velvet, a rare Shackman breakfront bookcase, a pair of console tables I made in the 1970's, and a pair of Block House chairs. The smaller chair was a birthday gift from my first college boyfriend. I think at some point, every one of my boyfriends donated something to my dollhouses! My brother painted the bust of Napoleon on top of the bookcase, and in the back corner is a grandfather clock made from an X-acto kit way back when they first came out. I recovered the lampshade on the Petite Princess lamp in the foreground.

The dining room has one of my earliest purchases, the Shackman china cabinet tucked under the stairs. The settee was purchased in upstate New York in an unfinished state and I enjoyed painting it in a Hitchcock style. I was an admirer of Hillhouse furniture in the 1970's, but it was beyond my finances then, so this was the closest I got. I made the dining room chairs, copying an antique chair I had bought at a Westport antiques fair, and the three-tier cake is by Debbie McKnight.

This is the first piece of wooden dollhouse furniture I ever made, cut out of balsa wood by hand using an X-acto knife and painted with Testor's black enamel paint. I was probably 14 or 15, and I upholstered the seat with a scrap of cotton calico left over from a favorite dress I'd made in junior high school.

The kitchen wasn't this cluttered originally! The Jackie Dieber sink was a Christmas gift from Molly Brody when I worked for her, from the first year of production (1976). The other lady working for Molly at that time was Deirdre Humphrey and she got one, too. She was an interesting and creative woman who persuaded me to get my first power saw, a Dremel jigsaw, and she also told me where I could buy a carton of redwood scraps that was easy to use for making furniture. I remember the box was about three feet high and lasted me several years. I made the settle and the hutch from that wood, as well as most of the other pieces I made in this house.

This settle is the first piece I made after I got my Dremel saw and the box of redwood scrap lumber. The seat is hinged for storage, and the design is based on a real settle that was in my parents' home. The mirror was one of a number that I made when I worked for Molly and I sold them in her shop on consignment.

I was inspired to make this continental style stove from photos of antique dollhouse stoves. The top is made from a metal switchplate cover and the scalloped sections on the bottom were cut from gears, I guess, donated by my high school boyfriend, who did a lot of metal sculpture in those days and he taught me to solder. The stovepipe is a piece of copper plumbing pipe, and everything was painted with Testor's enamel paint. I thought this was awfully clever when I made it and even though it looks pretty crude now, I still remember the excitement of completing it and putting it in my dollhouse.

The master bedroom contains several of the first pieces I made after learning to use the Dremel saw. The sleigh bed was copied from one I admired in Susan Hendrix's dollhouse as shown in Marian Maeve O'Brien's first book. The little wicker crib in the background was another gift from my first college boyfriend who bought it in Mexico. The hatbox with little hat came from MiniMundus, where I worked during my senior year in college.

The little dresser was inspired by an antique one I saw in a small booklet from the V & A, and I carved the knobs from a dowel. I always enjoy making patchwork quilts for beds.

The upstairs hallway functions as a small study and contains several pieces of Shackman furniture: the Winthrop desk, grandfather clock, the coatrack, magazine stand and the armchair and footstool, which I bought at F.A.O. Schwarz when my high school science class had a class trip to the Hayden Planetarium. We attended a program in the morning and then were allowed to go off on our own to find lunch and wend our way back to Grand Central Station by the end of the afternoon. I dragged a group of five other teenagers to the toy store that day and I suppose that's the day when I "came out " to my class-mates about my hobby. And to my surprise and relief, they were cool!

The other bedroom contains the Petite Princess chair and footstool I treasured as a child, along with the Shackman highboy purchased with my very first check. I was a regular visitor to the Shackman retail storefront in my college days and usually stopped there on my way to buy used textbooks at Barnes & Noble. So the first day I was in college, I bought dollhouse furniture before I bought a textbook! All the other furniture in this room is by Shackman. My aunt Priscilla made the carpet next to the bed. All the little kitties in this house have had their tails broken off at some point, and reglued.

This is a real house of memories for me as I can recall pretty much every purchase I made for this house, and all the little gifts that found their way here. Even the green velvet carpets in a couple of the rooms bring back memories of my grandfather's house, where I found an entire roll of this fabric that he had used for a photographic backdrop.

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