PLAYHOUSE

Here’s my latest “dollhouse,” almost ready for departure to a local school raffle, an annual project for me.

Technically, this house is a PLAYHOUSE, not an official DOLLHOUSE, the difference being that one couldn’t really live in a house with a partial roof and rooms not fully enclosed by walls. Not that you could live in a dollhouse, but it looks like you could!

1/12 scale DOLLHOUSE (1 INCH TO 1 FOOT)

The rooms in a playhouse are easily accessible to young hands, to toddlers who might want to move things around. A dollhouse is more of a showpiece, meant to draw you in so that you feel you have entered a different world. You can imagine yourself sitting at the miniature table, taking a nap on the bed.

The play house pictured came ready-to-assemble, and accompanied by dolls. Ugh, dolls. Here’s why dolls are ugh-ly – they ruin the fantasy. You can tell by looking at these dolls that they’re not real. They can’t comfortably sit in the tub (middle right of the playhouse); their stiff hands can’t pick up the can of soda on the table (lower right of the playhouse). They don’t bend for the rocker or the couch. Never mind that they are simply painted wood.

So here’s what I do with the dolls – I steal their clothing, which does happen to be “real” – real fabric. Yes, I strip them and fling their clothing around the houses, as real people might do. You can see a sample in the bunk-bed bedroom of the playhouse, where a pink jacket from a girl doll has been thrown on the floor. Now the house looks lived in, but more important it looks like you live there.