This is my first vintage dolls house, I saw it at my local junk shop and I loved it on site, it needed so much work done to restore it and I had no idea how to start! my first instinct was to find out more about it. I searched online and found a lovely shop called KT Miniatures that had an image of a similar house on their site. Celia was brilliant, I asked if I could send some pictures and I sent them and a brief description and she answered right back with a long email about the house and similar houses, My house is similar to the triang houses and is known as a "Dolly Mixture" House from the 1930s the white metal windows with rods holding them, and no hinges, suggest it is pre-war" I was amazed! then begins the dilemma...can I restore it to its original glory or should I refurbish it and using the basic structure make my own individual styled house...hmmmm! well i 'm still thinking...
I love this house, especially the paper in the hall and on the stairs! Have you decided what to do with it yet? The paper in the other rooms doesn't look in such good condition - if the design is nice, perhaps you could reproduce them, or find vintage papers or vintage designs to repaper them with. Are you on Dolls Houses Past & Present? Some members were swapping paper there, or posting scans or photos of vintage papers in their houses. For myself, I always like to find remnants of the original papers, so maybe you could paper over the existing papers, if they're not mouldy or anything. Then a future owner could rediscover what's underneath the new papers - but that's up to you!
ReplyDeleteIs there anything written underneath this house, I wonder? Marion Osborne, who called these houses 'Dolly Mixture' in her book A-Z 1914-1941 Dollshouses, does not know what firm produced them, and just has some numbers that appear beside them in catalogues, or written on the base.
Thank you so much Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteI never even though about reproducing the paper! that would have been great:)
I haven't heard of Dolls Houses Past & Present, I'll check them out!
:-( Sadly, I had to sell the house as I tried to take off the wallpaper in one of the bedrooms and it looked like I was going to damage the original wallpaper so I left it. I also searched for the replacement romside windows with the metal rod, but could only find ones with hinges and wasn't ever able to win an auction as the prces kept going higher :)
I also bought dol-toi funiture for it but sadly I wasn't brave enough to tackle the restoration. I must say your blog gave me some inspiration :) and was part of the reason why I held unto to it for a while, I also enjoyed researching the house, in the end I decided it was best to leave an expert to do the restoration.
I can't remenber if there was anything written on the base, and I really hope the new owner gets to restore it, shame I wouldn't get to see pictures :)