We returned from Europe with a new vice: vintage modern plastic HO-scale houses. The model railroaders who hang out on the Greenleaf forum will have a good laugh at me this time... although I had trains when I was a mid-sized child, I know nothing about this scale.
Earlier in the spring, I'd impulsively bought the Plasticville contemporary house and a swimming pool at Bruce's Train Shop so that my plastic wedding party from Half Moon Bay could have somewhere to get married. This wa
On our last trip to Italy in 1998, we had accumulated a number of sort-of-dollhouse-sized tchotchkes at rest stops along the Autostrade, so I was looking forward to exciting finds on our visit to Florence and Milan. No such luck. These are better cities for visuals than for loot.
Important vocabulary
--Case della bambolini: dollhouses
--Modellisti ferroviari: model railroads
--Giocattoli: toys
Shopping
Though we wandered all of central Florence,
To plan our next trip, I'm thinking of designing my own color-coded map. There would be a color for countries known to have great art, a color for countries known to have great food, and a color for countries known to have great access to dollhouse miniatures or compatible items. By that logic, we might never get further than France, but... for people determined to frustrate themselves by trying to find dollhouses in, say, Vienna, here is my first installment of our European adventure.
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Dollhouse kits as we know them proliferated from the mid-1970s onward. Before that, there were... well, there were a lot of things. This posting is an effort to document what some of those things were, but it won't pretend to be complete for quite a while. In many cases, the only examples I can find are on auction and antique sites, so I've used eBay searches as the links.
Wood with Lithographs: way back when
I'll need to visit a library to figure out where to start... other t
My shameful secret is that I have a weakness for obscure houses, which is why I happily spend so much time looking up out-of-production Greenleaf models. I regard construction as a necessary evil, so when I say a house shell is easy to construct, you can rest assured that a child of eight could manage it. If I stumbled over some of the smaller GL or Artply houses already assembled and going begging for an owner, my concerns about finding room for another house would vanish in the proverbial puff
Step 1 in identifying mystery houses from the 1960s or later is to look at the material used to construct the house.
How thick are the walls?
First, take a ruler and measure the thickness of a floor or an unsided wall. If it's about 1/8", you probably have a house constructed from a tab-and-slot kit. If it's about 3/8", your house could be a kit house or a handmade construction.
Is it plywood?
Now, look at the edge of a floor or wall -- one that shows the ac
This entry is the rough beginning of notes, as there are a few houses I've been asked to help identify and I just haven't been able to manage it. Ironically, one of them belongs to my mother!
So I'm going to start a list of known-but-defunct manufacturers of wooden houses or house kits from the 1970s forward. This list includes only makers that did NOT use tab-and-slot construction. Tab-and-slot history can be found here.
Hofco House
Based in Woodsboro, Maryland,
It's a common question. (Indeed, it's one I haven't yet answered for Miles and Theo's cottage, where I may change my mind yet again about the body color of the house.) So I decided it was time to gather in one place all of my favorite resources for fantasizing about colors.Color visualizersThese applications let you see how various color schemes look on a sample room or exterior.--Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer (look for the LAUNCH link on this page)--Benjamin Moore Personal Color Viewer--Col
First, a confession: our tour of Ontario dollhouse shops is far from complete, due to dicey maps, Boxing Week closures, and general confusion. So what's here is an example to tempt you into visiting Toronto, not anything near a complete catalog of what you might find.TorontoThe major, must-do stop is The Little Dollhouse Company, located in the sort of cute neighborhood where you may as well just pay for maximum parking time and wander around. This is not so much a shop as an event. They carry t
Greenleaf and Corona Concepts dollhouses show styles that are based on real American house styles. Though I've talked about specific houses before, I thought I'd pull together, in a single posting, a list of the styles for the houses that are currently in production (and a few out-of-production houses where I can find examples).Colonial and Federal: 1740s-1815, then revived in first half of 20th centuryHouses: Edison, LaurelCharacteristics: Often a center hall and hipped roof, but later examples
Snowflakes flutter (well, not here in California), and it's the season for a mug of hot cocoa, a few new bottles of paint, and a dollhouse kit. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas -- and therefore are a bit skeptical about the necessity of building Santa's Cottage -- you can decorate for a cozy winter by turning one of the smaller Greenleaf cottages into a gingerbread house. It's just as adorable as one made of cookies, with the added charm that you can display it for years (and have someone
It occurs to me that I haven't recorded our trip to the Los Angeles basin about a year ago. Let's see if memory serves me, or if it runs screaming into the night, leaving me completely confused.First off, there are a lot of shops down there. They're spread all over. Many close at 5 p.m., and quite a few are closed Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. So if you intend to do anything other than go to dollhouse shops, you probably won't be able to hit all of them. I'm sure we skipped Angels Attic, despite t
Twin CitiesOver dinner at Tejas in Edina, a ritzy suburb of Minneapolis, my husband had asked jokingly what it would take to open a dollhouse store in the Twin Cities. "Well," I said, "you'd have to put it in a neighborhood like this one. And to make the rent, you'd need to hold a lot of classes, and you'd need to represent the local artisans at the Tom Bishop Show in Chicago. It'd mean a lot of work and creativity at a low profit margin, so I sure don't want to do it."Fortunately, Karen Fernhol
With the exception of Dollhouses, Trains & More, the maximum miniature mega-destination up north in Novato, the miniature shops in the Bay Area are strung along the Peninsula between San Francisco and the suburbs of San Jose. So let's get going! This is a driving trip.Stop 1: San Carlos, Shellie's Miniature ManiaFrom San Francisco or the airport, take US-101 south to the Holly exit. Get in the middle lane, cross Old County Rd. and El Camino Real, then turn left on Laurel. Go three blocks and
If you come down with the overwhelming urge to move to New Mexico -- as I predictably do, midway through a dish of enchiladas with green chiles at El Patio -- you will be spending a lot of time at Hobby Lobby. There is not a single dollhouse shop in Albuquerque (the lone phonebook listing is a misplacement of a seller of collectible dolls), and we saw no sign of one in Santa Fe. My one truly outstanding stop-the-presses, whip-out-the-checkbook find was perfectly 1:12 versions of traditional Acom
Dollhouse miniatures boomed as a hobby in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Greenleaf as largest manufacturer of die-cut dollhouses in the United States. The industry had a major shake-out in the late 1980s, with brand names merging, disappearing, or briefly appearing before becoming something else -- all of which is confusing for the collector who craves a vintage house.
This is my current best attempt to untangle the genealogy of die-cut dollhouse kit makers. I'm sticking to th
I've been meaning for some time to reveal my secret and not-so-secret sources for cheap and weird miniatures within the city and county of San Francisco. Having exhausted myself by cleaning out the craft closet, I think the time has come. We're going to make a vast loop around the hipper parts of the city. (My husband is questioning whether it's possible to do the whole loop in one day without collapsing or running out of time. It would certainly require a solid six to seven hours, without serio
Having found a Brookwood kit under my parents' bed, I'm thinking (vaguely) ahead to helping my mother with a blitzkrieg build of this modern house. Here are a few existing examples.*Look at the sheen on those floors in the Brookwood constructed by Grammapux!*Here's another from a regional show.*Stelmogn documents the entire building process... and sides it with logs!*Madigan House shows photos of multiple Brookwoods with stucco and timber siding treatments.Unfortunately, the canonical list of mo
Stumbling over an article on a remarkably Glencroft-like house in the Seattle Times leads me to declare it the day to discuss Tudor Revival style, which characterizes the Glencroft and the Harrison.Tudor Revival was one of the popular "romantic revival" styles of the first two decades of the 20th century. Key features include half-timbering, arched windows with leaded glass, and elaborate brickwork. Tudor Revival in Buffalo, NY offers a detailed list of key exterior features, with photo examples
Over the years, the variety of kits offered by Greenleaf in its various incarnations has changed, leading to some attractive kits being discontinued (though they sometimes show up on eBay or at yard sales, and a few shops still have some in stock). This week, I want to take a look at Brimble's Mercantile, a two-story, two-room shop with an 1870s-style mansard roof.*Nursemini shows construction photos, followed by a little accident after Mr. Brimble moved in and got settled.*Karin's general store
In honor of the Buttercup contest, today's topic is Buttercups to admire. These are, of course, pre-existing Buttercups rather than the incredibly admirable Buttercups that will be produced by contest winners.Residential Buttercups*Our own Linda's pink Buttercup is, of course, splendid. Here's one of the interior views.*Meowy's Buttercup is unfurnished but has interesting stencils.*A purple Buttercup created by someone named Danielle. If you squint at the right side of the lower floor, you'll se
"Dollhouse scale" today is conventionally 1:12, which means that 1" in miniature means 12 inches in real life. This scale is also called 1:1 for "one inch to one foot." However, not all houses are 1:12. How do you determine the scale of your house?If the house is 1:12:--A cottage or modern house will have 8" ceilings.--A Victorian mansion will have main-floor ceilings of 10" or so.--Doorways will be at least 6-1/2" high.--An adult doll who fits will typically be 5-1/2" to 6" tall, though 5" acti
Being a great fan of scrapbook paper as dollhouse wallpaper, I'm making a list of scrapbook paper lines that feature funky, modern, or masculine designs.
KI Memories: Funky and mod designs in coordinating colorways, with a new set of lines released each month. Keepsake Rectangled appears in Nico & Fuzz's kitchen.
Kopp Design: Mix-and-match mod papers, plus color-coordinating lines of striped, plaid, and plain papers.
Mustard Moon: Plaids and tone-on-to
Metro Phoenix
The must-stop spot in Scottsdale is Kris Kringle's on Fifth, where the chair is king, queen, and most of the court. Let's talk resin. Heck, let's drool on it. Looking for something to round out a smaller cottage? There's resin in approximately 1:16. Thinking of half-scale in Arts and Crafts? That'll be $1.99. Resin horn table or horn chair? Both are available -- and since these are Christmas ornaments, the prices are quite moderate, often under $10. There are also 1:8 chairs
The hot news in the Sacramento Valley is the arrival of a Bombay Outlet at the Vacaville Premium Outlets off Nut Tree Road. Why is a Bombay Company outlet good news for dollhouse fans, you ask? Because the outlets carry the Bombay dollhouse, a solid Georgian mansion with remarkably few rooms, and the Bombay furniture, at $5 a pop. We bought a truly bizarre sideboard and a fairly normal tea cart.If you keep heading east, there are some worthwhile miniature-picking destinations along the I-80 corr
