Bedroom | Messie Jessie

Dollshouses and Book Scuplture

by Sue

In the 1920′s, a dolls house was made for Queen Mary of England. It was built by craftsmen, on a scale of 1:12, and everything in it was built to perfection, including minature lights and running water. The house includes paintings commissioned from well-known artists, readable miniature books from writers of the day, state rooms, servant’s quaters, a garage and hidden underneath is a retractable garden.

: Queen Mary’s Doll House

A piece of work that intrigues me is Dollshouse, by the then Saskatchewan based artist Heather Benning. In 2007 she opened an abandoned farmhouse as a dolls house. I’ve not been there but, CBC News reported it as “From Highway 2 , near the Saskatchewan border, it doesn’t look like much; only a painted sign of a family holding hands suggestes anything unusual about this particular abandoned farmhouse, one of many. Around the back, the north-facing wall of the house has been replaced witj Plexiglass, showcasing its interior, fully restored with candy coloured walls and furniture from the 1906′s, when the home was abandoned.

Heather Benning - Dollhouse - Front

Heather Benning - Dollhouse - Rear

When Iwas young, I was fascinated by a terrace of derelict houses near my home. They weren’t boarded up so, you could see into them and catch glimpses of wall paper and old fire places. From these snippets of detail I used to imagine what they were like when they were occupied. Sometimes I would make my wau in and play there for hours at a time.

I recently completed a couple of pieces of work, brought about by those childhood memories. They depict bedroom scenes, purposely left almost bare, so that the observer can interact with the piece and project onto it their own memoires.