This is a trial run of a little paper dollhouse that is made of ink-jet printouts fused to cracker and cereal box cardboard. The files were sent to me by Esben (a very generous toy theatre fan) from Denmark. The dollhouse was originally published in Illustretet Family Journal in the first part of the 20th century. This was a Danish magazine that included a great many paper models including some fantastic toy theatres. Since this is just a trial I shrank all the parts down to fit on 8-1/2 x 11 paper and didn’t pay strict attention to scale. The house turned out to be around 1/24 scale (1/2″ to the foot). Even at this size I can easily fit my hand into the attic to arrange the furniture and a friends six year old had no trouble at all playing with the house.
The house is designed to come apart into two pieces — voila! the attic comes off. I particularly love the wallpaper and wainscoting in the attic.
The parquet floor and french doors in the downstairs room are rather elegant, and the little portraits and sconces are lovely.
The attention to detail carries over into the furniture. Notice the woodgraining on the bedroom set (and the mattress ticking on that bed). Downstairs the table cloth does overhang the table legs all the way around (the legs are inset about 1/8″) and the designer included a piano!
The furniture is only partially cut out — those little white spaces in the chair and table legs should normally have been trimmed but this was only a test. I printed the furniture sheets on plain white cardstock and didn’t fuse any reinforcement. They are surprisingly sturdy.
The actual assembly went smoothly, all the parts were well designed and fit together as they should. The only problem I had was that I should have just used plain card stock for the attic dormers. The cardboard was a bit too thick and made fitting them very fiddley. Also next time I would cut out the window panes; it’s too dark in that attic. It would be great fun to do this project again on a slightly larger scale and make little dolls to live in it.
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