Dollhouses: Extravagance in a Falling
Economic Forecast

By Mary Beth Karoll

History shows that as the Wall Street market crashes, the Main Street market for miniatures rises. With a bearish economy, we're bullish on dollhouses, although quite frankly, little toy bears are far better tenants than bulls. Foreclosures may loom large in the public consciousness, but don't let your dolls live on the edge in a toy car. Cut back on your household expenses, but put your interest in a dollhouse, as it's an asset you're bound to appreciate!

During the Great Depression, dollhouses were a popular pastime. Enthralled crowds lined up to gaze at silent-film star Colleen Moore's fabulous and frivolous Fairy Castle which toured the country with displays at department stores and other venues. Like a lavish silver screen set, the dollhouse was an expensive, extravagant, escapist castle in the sky. Decades later, in another economic downturn, dollhouses were once again in demand. Miniatures were all the rage in the Carter "fireside chat" era of cardigan sweaters, high unemployment, soaring stagflation, and long gas lines. This time, the fad was much more hands-on, with children to retirees on the scene as avid crafters and collectors.

Throughout the mid-1970s, there were shops devoted to all manner of things for the Lilliputian lifestyle, mail-order companies specializing in miniatures, and shows for enthusiasts also sprang up in response to the emergent trend. While new home building was at a low, devoted daddies across the nation were sacrificing untold hours of leisure time to sweat and struggle valiantly with complex balsawood kits for model mini homes. Enchanted and demanding girls of all ages and men of all persuasions, both fathers and the foppish, entered into the frenzy! People turned inward and furnished their fantasy lives with resourcefulness, whimsy, and love.

Now, I don't mean to be Miss Gloom-and-Doom, semi-facetiously forecasting a horrific downward spiral of worldwide financial, ecological and social disasters leading to a fiery apocalyptic end. However, given the present rickety state of world affairs, it would seem that a doll's domicile is a safe haven for the hearts of contemporary career women, schoolgirls, and whole families alike. Given that interest in dollhouses is an indicator of a plunging economy, the zeitgeist demands such a delightful distraction!

In this period of low consumer confidence, tighten your belt, but spend your time and a bit of money on tiny pastimes. Construct a historically accurate miniature room in the deliciously decadent rococo or art deco style you adore but could never afford in your home. Sweetly torment and tease your husband into building the elegant and elaborate miniature Gold Coast mansion you inhabit in your dreams. Have some precious moments with your daughter assembling a cozy cottage for toy mice. If starting from scratch makes you nervous because you think you're not crafty enough, then customize a Barbie Dream House together with fabrics and trims. All of these depression-dodging activities are a respite and refuge from stress and strain. Yes, you may be scaling down your lifestyle, but why not have some small, cost-cutting measure of domestic bliss!

You can get all jittery reading news reports, or you can indulgently revert to a more innocent age. Sure, stock up on rice and flour or go whole-hog and construct an underground bunker with provisions to last your family for a year. But you will find that planning your dollhouse kitchen, pantry, and dining room is a far more palatable task.

The value of silver may rise and fall, and paper money may well be a worthless illusion, but silver tea sets, teaspoons, and tankards for your dolls' dining room are always engrossing. Surely the acquisition of minute silver place settings and candelabra is so much more delightful than speculating in Silver Eagle dollars, a manipulated market bound to crash. Forget the Federal Reserve - put your money into a stately American Federal style dollhouse.

Worried about the rising cost of fuel? Decorating a minutely carved mantelpiece with delicate porcelain vases, candlesticks and fireplace accessories or finding a cute pot-bellied stove for your doll-sized log cabin are far more heartwarming activities than wondering just how you're going to afford to heat your"real" home this winter.

In 1941, the prestigious Knoedler Galleries in Manhattan held an exhibition of miniature antique furnishings for the benefit of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Fund. At present, due to burgeoning layoffs, lawmakers are looking into extending unemployment benefits for another 13 weeks. What a perfect time for the charitable connoisseur to hold such a fun fundraising event! However, a timely toy display might also demonstrate just how easy it is to be "green" when you construct dollhouses and nifty furnishings from old packaging, paper, boxes, bottles, buttons, cardboard, cans, snips and scraps.

In December, 1970, a bit late in the game if Poppa wanted to play Santa without breaking into a cold sweat, Better Homes and Gardens magazine published photographs of two very different dollhouses accompanied by vague instructions. One home is a sleek mod transparent plastic party pad featuring a "far out" (their hip lingo) circular fire pit. Brightly painted modular sofas and other trendy furnishings are fashioned from children's toy blocks. Simple and streamlined, it is not the type of dollhouse that invites infinite elaboration of tiny details. On the facing page is a Victorian mansion graced with two turrets, stained-glass windows and awrap-around porch. Industrious fathers could add a little gingerbread trim for the perfect finishing touch. In this nostalgic domicile, dolls can perch on a frilly faux-wicker turn of the century settee or chairs painstakingly made from "cans that contained processed meat and orange juice". Spam and Vienna Sausage may be recession-type rations, but their pliable metal containers can be recycled into dollhouse furnishings galore. Feed your family prudently and make holiday gifts at the same time by salvaging tin cans and other ephemera.

Although the hokey cardboard strawberry carton chairs or the pathetic juice carton toilet found on the Disney website Familyfun.com need some serious tweaking to become design classics of the miniaturized universe, there is plenty of inspiration out there in Cyberspace. But take a hint from Carrie Stettheimer's divinely inspired artistic jazz-age dollhouse on display at the Museum of the City of New York, and realize that your creation should look handmade without the chill of too much precision. Fairy folk and dolls are forgiving!

Another fabulous resource is designer Melanie Kahane's There's a Decorator in Your Dollhouse, published in 1968. Styled with the colorful verve of her interior designs, this book is a classic, with the refreshing boost of a professional's viewpoint on small space-planning. Perhaps you are a thrifty sort who saves old thread spools, bottle caps, and wine corks. Ms. Kahane approves. Here is your chance to make some lasting memories for yourself and your children with a little ingenuity. Or maybe you're a working girl with a bigger budget. In any case, a few hundred dollars is better spent on a fine Chinoiserie bedroom set for your antique bisque dolly than at Bob's Discount Furniture or some other cut-rate outlet! a

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