Making a Victorian Dolls' House

London: Batsford Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1978. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 0713408707 Dust jacket completein clear protective sleeve, creasing and wear to edges. Maroon cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Numerous illustrations some in colour. 96 pages clean and tight. This delightful book shows how to make an elegant three-storey dolls' house in the Victorian style complete with period furniture and fittings and a whole family of miniature dolls. Victorian dolls' houses and their furnishings have become much sought-after collector's items in recent years, and for those would-be dolls' house owners who cannot afford the luxury of a genuine antique house, this book gives step-by-step instructions for constructing a most attractive reproduction from an ordinary cardboard box and other household items. The house is designed to be either free-standing or hung on a wall as a display piece in the same way as the original nineteenth-century Victorian dolls' houses. Instructions and diagrams are given for making each floor and for adding suitable decor for the kitchen, parlour, master bedroom and nursery. Once the techniques have been mastered, the basic construction can be adapted to make houses with any number of rooms. Making the furnishings themselves is perhaps the most exciting and absorbing part, and Jean Greenhowe shows how the most ordinary odds and ends can be transformed into delightful miniature ornaments and furniture: from the `bamboo' pedestal ingeniously devised from a hair roller to the traditional `whatnot' constructed from cocktail sticks and beads. To complete the scene, a charming `Upstairs Downstairs' family, including mother, father and baby, the cook, the maid and the butler, can be easily made from wooden clothes pegs or pipe cleaners, and clothed with oddments of fabric and trimming. Finally there are suggestions for making a simple open room fitted out as a milliner's shop of the 1890s, complete with a colourful array of pretty hats, together with market stalls and a street vendor. .