Small Stories, V&A Museum of Childhood
Yasmin Khan enjoys an exhibition that explores themes of home, family and work through the history of dolls’ houses
“I dream of a big house with lots of windows,” says Antonia longingly. She is the young inhabitant of a dolls’ house that has been frozen in time for the Small Stories exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in east London.
In all, we get to meet 107 other miniature residents stationed across a selection of 12 dolls’ houses spread across the museum’s mezzanine gallery. Why just a dozen? In this case, less really is more since there is plenty to savour inside.
There are a total of 1,900 miniature objects, including armchairs, four-poster beds, knives and forks, pets and pianos. These have been lovingly restored by the V&A’s conservation department over the past two years.
Dolls’ houses were originally made as luxuries for wealthy adults, with skilled craftsmen producing them from the 17th century onwards as miniature replicas of their owners' homes and wealth. Later they became acceptable playthings for children, especially as they conveniently fed into a social agenda for conditioning girls into domesticity.
These beautifully ornate treasures were in fact effective toolkits that formed part of a psychological strategy used to prime young girls for a predetermined future.
At the exhibition entrance we are immediately presented with a contract from the archives, signed by the 12-year-old Margaret Alsager, promising to look after the dolls’ house and pay a monthly rent of one shilling to her father who bestowed it on her as a “gift”. There are many contract clauses, including one forbidding her to play with fire or light candles inside it.
This form of play would help prepare Margaret to become a “domestic angel” during married life, which demanded a skill set for managing accounts, hiring servants, shopping for food and acting as a hostess.
For the adult women running middle-class Victorian homes, the pressure to choose the correct decor to keep up with fads and fashions could be overwhelming, especially as they were seen as manifestations of class, social standing and even morality.
Dolls’ houses would traditionally be passed down the generations to the eldest daughter of the same family, each time gaining new furnishings and ornaments.
Domestic dangers
Visitors to the exhibition are invited to explore the numerous rooms of each dolls’ house through touch-button lighting and corresponding audio. Different mini-inhabitants are cleverly brought to life through an assorted cast of actors’ voices to reveal the imaginary mindset and circumstances of the characters that live or work within.
There is a menu of tales to select from, with themes ranging from birth, illness and death to politics and crime. They include a courtroom-style recount of a master accusing his manservant of stealing his candlesticks – a crime that used to be punishable by death.
The exhibition charts some of the chronological developments in architecture and design including a country mansion, a Victorian town house, a suburban semi and even a
high-rise apartment.
Although the designs have changed dramatically over the past 300 years, these dolls’ houses reflect back the ideals that have been consistent throughout: security, privacy and comfort.
The physical journey through the history of the home allows visitors to follow the behavioural evolution of everyday lives and changing family relationships, as well as to explore the class divide.
Wider developments in society that affected domestic service are intertwined into the narrative. In the early 20th-century domestic service was the largest form of employment in Britain.
But during the first world war many women opted for the higher wages and greater freedoms of industrial employment, which presented a challenge for middle-class homeowners wanting to attract people back into domestic work. And the rush to build new homes, including high-rise flats, after the second world war meant that dolls’ houses would never be the same again.
Mass production of dolls’ houses began in the 1930s and the emphasis began to shift away from quality, individuality and original craftsmanship to an appeal to more universal tastes and affordability. In some senses, collectable dolls’ houses have become timeless memory boxes – repositories of nostalgia and idealism.
‘Shrink’ yourself
Many of the dolls’ houses on display were intended to represent ideal spaces for their time, but what would the dream house of 2015 look like? This question is tackled as an art installation, where 20 contemporary designers from different backgrounds have been commissioned to create aspirational miniature rooms.
The results range from the fantastical and whimsical to the technological and practical. For enthusiasts, there is a chance to see another 20 examples from the Museum of Childhood’s 100-strong collection in the adjacent permanent galleries.
Visitors seeking adventure will enjoy the prospect to “shrink” to doll size and experience daily life as depicted in a dolls’ house by immersing themselves into a life-size 1830s kitchen diorama, based on the Killer Cabinet House, complete with authentic cooking ware and washing line (mind the over-hanging iron pans). Elsewhere, a scaled-up 1960s playroom is a great chill zone.
The exhibition is designed with sophistication and flair. The attention to detail creatively reflects the different time periods, with idiosyncratic colour schemes used for the different sections. Striking wallpaper prints feature on panel backdrops, there are opulently hung curtains, evocative illustration graphics, and text and signage are set in pastel picture frames.
Small Stories is not only a fun family exhibition but also a cerebral experience that is loaded with eye-opening messages and darker undertones. Some of the dolls’ houses had a dual purpose, such as the Joy Wardrobe made in 1712 by Edmund Joy, which was designed as a cupboard for hanging clothes.
From deep inside its cavity, accompanied by music of a harpsichord, we hear from Antonia, our earlier mentioned mini-inhabitant, depicted as a songbird in a cage.
Her mother is arranging her marriage while her brother is away at school “having his intellect sharpened”. She shares with us her dreams of being free. Her final words echo in ghost-like fashion: “In here, I can hide from my fate just a little longer. Just play a little bit longer.”
Yasmin Khan is an independent cultural adviser who has worked at the British Library and the Science Museum
What could the inhabitants of a dolls’ house tell us about life in the past? We started to imagine characters and write scripts for each house. By foregrounding the quirky, funny little dolls, we could introduce conflict, comedy and character into the exhibition. We could include many voices in the interpretation and highlight the complexity of past experiences.
Using historical fictions may seem strange in a museum exhibition, but it is entirely appropriate when working with dolls’ houses. Many of the houses already had richly imagined interior lives, which we just needed to give voice to.
Artist Moray Thomas made the modernist Whiteladies House in 1935, including a cast of “young people who are unhampered by choice possessions of old furniture or by old conventions”. When Roma Hopkinson made her dolls’ house in the 1980s, she was reconstructing a childhood memory from 1942.
Other stories emerged from the real histories of the houses. New research into the 19th-century Killer Cabinet House discovered that John Egerton Killer’s middle-class family stayed in the centre of Stockport when other wealthy households had moved out of town. In Small Stories, Henry the footman and Mrs Ann Killer give their own views on this decision.
Letters, novels and advice literature inspired the tone and vocabulary for each character, and the rooms around them have provided the domestic and social content. Six actors voiced all the parts, and sound effects created a distinctive ambience for each story.
Exhibition visitors have embraced the idea of imagined narratives. The little dolls have thrown open the doors to their houses and drawn us all in. Alice Sage is the co-curator of Small Stories
In all, we get to meet 107 other miniature residents stationed across a selection of 12 dolls’ houses spread across the museum’s mezzanine gallery. Why just a dozen? In this case, less really is more since there is plenty to savour inside.
There are a total of 1,900 miniature objects, including armchairs, four-poster beds, knives and forks, pets and pianos. These have been lovingly restored by the V&A’s conservation department over the past two years.
Dolls’ houses were originally made as luxuries for wealthy adults, with skilled craftsmen producing them from the 17th century onwards as miniature replicas of their owners' homes and wealth. Later they became acceptable playthings for children, especially as they conveniently fed into a social agenda for conditioning girls into domesticity.
These beautifully ornate treasures were in fact effective toolkits that formed part of a psychological strategy used to prime young girls for a predetermined future.
At the exhibition entrance we are immediately presented with a contract from the archives, signed by the 12-year-old Margaret Alsager, promising to look after the dolls’ house and pay a monthly rent of one shilling to her father who bestowed it on her as a “gift”. There are many contract clauses, including one forbidding her to play with fire or light candles inside it.
This form of play would help prepare Margaret to become a “domestic angel” during married life, which demanded a skill set for managing accounts, hiring servants, shopping for food and acting as a hostess.
For the adult women running middle-class Victorian homes, the pressure to choose the correct decor to keep up with fads and fashions could be overwhelming, especially as they were seen as manifestations of class, social standing and even morality.
Dolls’ houses would traditionally be passed down the generations to the eldest daughter of the same family, each time gaining new furnishings and ornaments.
Domestic dangers
Visitors to the exhibition are invited to explore the numerous rooms of each dolls’ house through touch-button lighting and corresponding audio. Different mini-inhabitants are cleverly brought to life through an assorted cast of actors’ voices to reveal the imaginary mindset and circumstances of the characters that live or work within.
There is a menu of tales to select from, with themes ranging from birth, illness and death to politics and crime. They include a courtroom-style recount of a master accusing his manservant of stealing his candlesticks – a crime that used to be punishable by death.
The exhibition charts some of the chronological developments in architecture and design including a country mansion, a Victorian town house, a suburban semi and even a
high-rise apartment.
Although the designs have changed dramatically over the past 300 years, these dolls’ houses reflect back the ideals that have been consistent throughout: security, privacy and comfort.
The physical journey through the history of the home allows visitors to follow the behavioural evolution of everyday lives and changing family relationships, as well as to explore the class divide.
Wider developments in society that affected domestic service are intertwined into the narrative. In the early 20th-century domestic service was the largest form of employment in Britain.
But during the first world war many women opted for the higher wages and greater freedoms of industrial employment, which presented a challenge for middle-class homeowners wanting to attract people back into domestic work. And the rush to build new homes, including high-rise flats, after the second world war meant that dolls’ houses would never be the same again.
Mass production of dolls’ houses began in the 1930s and the emphasis began to shift away from quality, individuality and original craftsmanship to an appeal to more universal tastes and affordability. In some senses, collectable dolls’ houses have become timeless memory boxes – repositories of nostalgia and idealism.
‘Shrink’ yourself
Many of the dolls’ houses on display were intended to represent ideal spaces for their time, but what would the dream house of 2015 look like? This question is tackled as an art installation, where 20 contemporary designers from different backgrounds have been commissioned to create aspirational miniature rooms.
The results range from the fantastical and whimsical to the technological and practical. For enthusiasts, there is a chance to see another 20 examples from the Museum of Childhood’s 100-strong collection in the adjacent permanent galleries.
Visitors seeking adventure will enjoy the prospect to “shrink” to doll size and experience daily life as depicted in a dolls’ house by immersing themselves into a life-size 1830s kitchen diorama, based on the Killer Cabinet House, complete with authentic cooking ware and washing line (mind the over-hanging iron pans). Elsewhere, a scaled-up 1960s playroom is a great chill zone.
The exhibition is designed with sophistication and flair. The attention to detail creatively reflects the different time periods, with idiosyncratic colour schemes used for the different sections. Striking wallpaper prints feature on panel backdrops, there are opulently hung curtains, evocative illustration graphics, and text and signage are set in pastel picture frames.
Small Stories is not only a fun family exhibition but also a cerebral experience that is loaded with eye-opening messages and darker undertones. Some of the dolls’ houses had a dual purpose, such as the Joy Wardrobe made in 1712 by Edmund Joy, which was designed as a cupboard for hanging clothes.
From deep inside its cavity, accompanied by music of a harpsichord, we hear from Antonia, our earlier mentioned mini-inhabitant, depicted as a songbird in a cage.
Her mother is arranging her marriage while her brother is away at school “having his intellect sharpened”. She shares with us her dreams of being free. Her final words echo in ghost-like fashion: “In here, I can hide from my fate just a little longer. Just play a little bit longer.”
Yasmin Khan is an independent cultural adviser who has worked at the British Library and the Science Museum
Focus on new ways to tell a story
Dolls’ houses have been on display at the Museum of Childhood for a century, so the challenge with Small Stories was to bring these objects to life in a new way.What could the inhabitants of a dolls’ house tell us about life in the past? We started to imagine characters and write scripts for each house. By foregrounding the quirky, funny little dolls, we could introduce conflict, comedy and character into the exhibition. We could include many voices in the interpretation and highlight the complexity of past experiences.
Using historical fictions may seem strange in a museum exhibition, but it is entirely appropriate when working with dolls’ houses. Many of the houses already had richly imagined interior lives, which we just needed to give voice to.
Artist Moray Thomas made the modernist Whiteladies House in 1935, including a cast of “young people who are unhampered by choice possessions of old furniture or by old conventions”. When Roma Hopkinson made her dolls’ house in the 1980s, she was reconstructing a childhood memory from 1942.
Other stories emerged from the real histories of the houses. New research into the 19th-century Killer Cabinet House discovered that John Egerton Killer’s middle-class family stayed in the centre of Stockport when other wealthy households had moved out of town. In Small Stories, Henry the footman and Mrs Ann Killer give their own views on this decision.
Letters, novels and advice literature inspired the tone and vocabulary for each character, and the rooms around them have provided the domestic and social content. Six actors voiced all the parts, and sound effects created a distinctive ambience for each story.
Exhibition visitors have embraced the idea of imagined narratives. The little dolls have thrown open the doors to their houses and drawn us all in. Alice Sage is the co-curator of Small Stories