Queen Mary's Dolls' House
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Queen Mary's Dolls' House was a doll house built in the early 1920s at the suggestion of Queen Mary, the wife of King George V of the United Kingdom. Queen Mary's Dolls' House was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, for Queen Mary (Consort of George V). It was created to be used for public exhibition to raise funds for charity. It was originally exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition, 1924/5, and is now on display in Windsor Castle, at Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom as a tourist attraction, especially to people with an interest in miniature houses and furniture.
It was made to a scale of 1:12 (one inch to the foot), is over three feet tall, and contains models of products of well known companies of the time. It is remarkable for its detail and the detail of the objects within it, many of which are 1/12th replicas of items in Windsor Castle. These were either made by the companies themselves, or by specialist modelmakers, such as Twining Models of Northampton, England. The carpets, curtains and furnishings were all copies of the real thing, and even the light fittings were working. There is for example a flushable toilet. In addition, well known writers such as Rudyard Kipling wrote special books which were written and bound in scale size and painters provided miniature pictures. Even the bottles in the wine cellar were filled with the appropriate wines and spirits, and the wheels of motor vehicles were properly spoked.[1]
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[edit] References
- Stewart-Wilson, M. Queen Mary's Dolls' House, (Bodley Head) 1988.