The Tiny and the Curious: The seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouse as the feminine cabinet of curiosity

Written by Sarah Youinou, McGill University

Edited by Iris Bednarski

Introduction

When imagining collections of the seventeenth-century Dutch home, the cabinet of curiosity comes to mind. As a masculine space of intellectual and economic flexing, the cabinet came to represent the Dutch Republic’s newfound status as a global powerhouse of trade, displaying items from dominated lands and peoples alike. Dollhouses, however, were just as influential a presence in powerful Dutch homes. Curiosity collecting spread to the middle classes as a means of participation in national culture, but dollhouse curation was a hobby relegated to only the wealthiest women in the country. While similar to curiosity cabinets in their stimulation of display and discussion culture, dollhouses diverge in their explicitly feminine context and content. As a miniature domestic space, these dollhouse cabinets displayed contents much like curiosity cabinets, but with added intricacies of upper-class Dutch womanhood. One may assume a less prestigious status due to the inherent femininity of such a form of expression, but dollhouses were precious and influential to seventeenth-century Dutch society in a manner not unlike their masculine counterparts of curiosity cabinets.

The Feminine Cabinet of Curiosity

The patrician class of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic understood dollhouses to be the female equivalent of the masculine kunstkamer—literally translated as “art room,” but also meaning cabinet of curiosities.[1] Whereas the cabinet represented a man’s knowledge and economic power over foreign lands, the dollhouse was a representation of the woman’s domestic domain. [2] Both types of case were created to display objects and elevate the owner’s status, but in a very gendered way. Even the shape of the dollhouses themselves encourages this comparison. Instead of constructing a miniature home with logical entryways and staircases, dollhouse rooms were often unconnected.[3] Without a way for the imagined people to cross in between rooms of the home, the miniature spaces serve as multiple sections in a display case rather than a tiny, navigable home. In this way, the dollhouses were as much a cabinet as the traditional cabinets of curiosity, simply containing different rarities. Petronella Oortman’s dollhouse exemplifies this phenomenon with its symmetrical three-by-three room layout that more closely resembles a display case, with separate niches for prized items, rather than a real floor-plan (Fig. 1). Beyond their interiors, the dollhouses’ façades also emphasized their status as framing devices for the precious objects contained within. Glass panelled doors covered up the rooms inside, lending the dollhouse the appearance of a typical cabinet rather than a miniature home.[4] Without their lavish furniture and wall paintings, seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouses were much like standard cabinets for storing valuable exotica.

Figure 1. Various makers, The dollhouse of Petronella Oortman, various materials, c. 1686-1710, 255 × 190 × 78cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,

Besides the parallels between the interior and exterior of dollhouses and curiosity cabinets themselves, the contents of both shared similar philosophies. Much of the appeal behind objects in curiosity cabinets lay in their provenance. The visual interest was important, but the exoticism and rarity of these items were what truly made them sought after.[5] Petronella de la Court’s dollhouse (Fig. 2) illustrates the same mentality in miniature with its curiosity cabinet (Fig. 3). Instead of a small replica of a curiosity cabinet, it is a true kunstkamer in its own right. The line between replica and true curiosity is drawn along the origins of the objects, a crucial differentiation in a world where objects from distant colonized countries—even objects that local people considered disposable—were prized above all else. Coconut cups are an example of this phenomenon, two of which are displayed in Petronella de la Court’s dollhouse kunstkamer (Fig. 3) atop the dresser (isolated in Fig. 4) on the right side of the room. Coconut shells were simple food-related waste in their native countries, but the novelty and exoticism made them very valuable to Dutch collectors. Carvers and silver-workers “civilized the uncivilized” by transforming the coconut shell into an intricately wrought cup fit for an expensive collection, illustrating the complicated global ties behind Dutch collecting practices.[6] Other curious objects found in extant dollhouses include preserved baby turtles, an authentic Japanese folding screen, hand-woven reed baskets, stones, minerals, pearls, and, of course, myriad shells.[7]

Figure 2. Various makers, The dollhouse of Petronella de la Court, various materials, c. 1670-90, 206.5 x 189 x 79 cm, Centraal Museum, Utrecht.

Figure 3. Kunstkamer in The dollhouse of Petronella de la Court.

Figure 4.  Dresser from the kunstkamer in The dollhouse of Petronella de la Court.

Seashells exemplify some of the primary features that rendered collectable objects valuable in the Dutch Republic, made all the more valuable due to their miniaturization (Fig. 5). Shells were among the most coveted collectables for their combination of natural beauty and distant origins. Despite the Dutch perceiving them as untouched, naturally beautiful objects, shells actually underwent a lengthy preparation process before transforming into the milky, nacreous swirls collectors expected.[8] The intensive, often dangerous labor that went into collecting and cleaning the shells was invisible to their eventual owners, but absolutely necessary to achieve the “naturally perfect” result.[9] Tiny shells were the only item in Petronella Oortman’s dollhouse that could not be created by human hands, a “nature-made” miracle rendered even more precious by the miniature scale of their perfectly formed spirals.[10] Curiosities that were already high in value at their full size were even more expensive in miniature for their rarity and delicateness. Dollhouses, just like full-size homes, contained shells from all around the globe. Oortman’s dollhouse boasted shells hailing from the East Indies, West Africa, and South America,[11] highlighting the wide reach of the Dutch trading empire and its impact on objects displayed in Dutch homes.

Tiny Worlds

Figure 5. Drawer of shells from kunstkamer dresser (Fig. 4) in The dollhouse of Petronella de la Court.

Dollhouses were not mere decorations, but complex miniature worlds with their own commissioned pieces, rules, and masters. The obsessive material authenticity of dollhouses went beyond the contents of tiny curiosity cabinets, applying to every object in the miniature home. In fact, the objects in dollhouses often hailed from the same far-away locations and were created by the same artisans as pieces in full-sized homes. Porcelain dishes were true Ming porcelain, painstakingly created and shipped from China.[12] Real artists were commissioned to create tiny paintings, real carpenters for miniature furniture.[13] These objects were not replicas, but fully original pieces made for a home, their tiny size almost irrelevant. Much like the insistence on material authenticity in curiosity collections as a way of capturing a microcosm of the world in a Dutch home[14], an insistence on authenticity in dollhouses created a microcosm of the home inside the home—a sort of meta domesticity. The dedication to sourcing real objects for the dollhouse is typical of upper-class conspicuous consumption, but also speaks to a deep care for constructing a real home, albeit a small one.

Women ruled these domestic spaces entirely. The actual home was also the woman’s world, but there she was subject to the ever-present watchful eye of the master of the house. Wives were charged with home duties and were often conceptualized as the head of the domestic domain, but it was ultimately the husband who owned everything in the home. A dollhouse was a universe in which its female owner controlled everything. She chose what that went inside, arranged the dolls, moved the furniture; she was the god of this tiny world.[15] As the master of this world, the owner held a certain power over viewers as they marvelled over her dollhouse. When the cabinet doors opened, they entered a world she had meticulously planned, commissioned, and arranged. Every doll was seated in a location the owner determined, her control absolute over the space and its inhabitants.[16] As visitors visually enter the home, they become a participant in the piece, almost taking the place of the dolls.[17] They are subject to the rules of the dollhouse, forced to navigate this tiny world on its terms by crouching, craning, and shrinking themselves.[18] If the owner allows her guests to handle the miniature objects then they are subject to rules in an even more literal sense—do not drop it! In this regard, it is not only the influence of the dollhouse itself that can be compared to the kunstkamer, but that of the owner. Despite her female status, the dollhouse lends the owner the ability to exert social power over guests and fully control her own space.

Vanitas and Moral Lessons

Figure 6. Linen room in The dollhouse of Petronella de la Court.

Kunstkamers, as the containers for curiosities so often featured in still life paintings, have an obvious connection to the concept of vanitas. As in much of seventeenth-century Dutch culture, there is a complex relationship between religious expectations and the socially encouraged delight in material goods. The collector and their visitors may take pleasure in handling and viewing these items, but there is an assumed accompanying self-chastisement. Art historian Norman Bryson even writes of vanitas, saying that “the conflict between world-rejection and worldly ensnarement is in fact its governing principle.”[19]

Figure 7. Various makers, linen room in The dollhouse of Petronella Dunois, various materials, c. 1676, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Dollhouses make this moral angle more explicit in their connections to emblem books, a type of instructional manual in which readers were expected to interpret moral meanings in ambiguous images. One dollhouse even has wall-hangings of emblem book verses including, “All things that one sees here on Earth / are dolls’ goods and nothing more.”[20] The addition of this wittily topical vanitas message to the dollhouse gives the owner a moral shield against accusations of earthly obsession. Dollhouses connect to emblem books not just in the injection of moralistic quotes, but also in their similarity of purpose. An eighteenth-century inventory describes a dollhouse as “the most perfect way that ever has been invented, to show foreigners a proper image (denkbeeld) of the renowned Dutch cleanliness and proper domestic economy.”[21] The concept of denkbeelden refers to thought-images, or an example of the ideal for something, and can also be taken more literally to refer to examples from emblem books—the pictures a moral puzzle for the viewer to disentangle.[22] This indicates that around the era of their production and display, these dollhouses were understood not just as valuable collectables, but also as powerful moralizing tools. Contemporary Dutch viewers well-versed in interpreting mundane images from emblem books as multifaceted moral scenarios would have had no trouble extracting these meanings from dollhouses.[23]

Figure 8. Linen room in The dollhouse of Petronella Oortman.

The moral messaging of the dollhouse is also inherent in its domestic context. An interesting trend in seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouses that demonstrates this emphasis on domesticity is the consistent presence of linen rooms (Fig. 6, Fig. 7, Fig. 8).[24] Women of very high status likely had enough linens that full washing and bleaching only needed undertaking a few times a year, so why include a room hardly ever used in a dollhouse with limited space? By dedicating space to visible domestic labor, the owner emphasizes the importance of keeping a clean and orderly home, once again underlining the place of the dollhouse as an example of virtuous domesticity.[25] Despite empowering women with their own realm to reign over, it remained limited to the domestic domain, ultimately reinforcing gendered expectations for motherhood and homemaking. The owner may have had increased social influence with such a precious collectible, but the influence of the dollhouse goes both ways: she, too, is influenced by its messaging.

Women Collectors

It is true that all extant seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouses were owned by women and that nearly all curiosity cabinets belonged to men, but it would be an oversimplification to claim that these gendered boundaries were impenetrable. Men curated the majority of collections, but it was not uncommon for women to engage intellectually with the curiosity collections within their homes. Although it was rare for women to purchase the items under their own names,[26] contemporary accounts of women leading well-informed tours through private home collections point to a class of educated women who took a personal interest in curiosity collecting.[27] The women that were wealthy and powerful enough to own dollhouses often even had traditional curiosity collections themselves.[28] These women were able to sidestep the gendered expectations of the curiosity cabinet through the sheer level of social power they held, indicated by their ownership of a dollhouse cabinet. The dollhouses were not replacements for curiosity cabinets, but a valuable and influential object that was both equivalent to and a part of larger collections.[29] In her will, Petronella de la Court allowed all of her extensive collection to be sold, except for a handful of objects including her atlas and her dollhouse, stipulating that they were to remain in her children’s possession.[30] Despite the sprawling collections these women amassed, dollhouses still held a particularly precious status amongst their other collected objects.

Conclusion

Dollhouses of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic are a unique phenomenon never again repeated with such exacting precision, luxury, and moral significance. Generally seen as children’s toys in other contexts, the dollhouses owned by upper-class Dutch women were extremely valuable collectibles that served to elevate the owner’s status while reinforcing societal expectations of household perfection. Dollhouses were the acceptable female equivalent of cabinets of curiosity, the intellectual and economic emphasis of the latter turned into a domestic one. Their utter intricacy and commitment to authentic materiality created a tiny world with its own rules, endowing the owner with control over a domestic space and the viewers who interacted with it. Their owners avoided accusations of immorality by referencing emblem books and shaping their dollhouses into moral lessons for visitors to decipher. Some owners also collected traditional objects, but the unique and exquisite qualities of their dollhouse took priority over them. Whereas the traditional cabinet of curiosities aimed to collapse the wonders of the world into Dutch homes, the dollhouse collapsed the complexities of the homes it resided in into a mid-sized cabinet.

Endnotes

[1] Michelle Moseley-Christian, “Seventeenth-century Pronk Poppenhuisen: Domestic Space and the Ritual Function of Dutch Dollhouses for Women,” Home Cultures 7, no. 3 (November 2010): 345.

[2] Moseley-Christian, 345.

[3] Dollhouse builders generally did not bother with doorways and even when included, they were often one-sided. See Jun P. Nakamura, “Small worlds: The miniature logic of the seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouse,” in Arts in Society: Academic Rhapsodies, edited by Sophia Hendrikx et al., (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, 2020): 16.

[4] Nakamura, 18.

[5] Virginie Spenlé, “‘Savagery’ and ‘Civilization’: Dutch Brazil in the Kunst- and Wunderkammer,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 3, no. 2 (June 2011): 1.

[6] Spenlé, 1.

[7] Nakamura, 11.

[8] Naturalist Georgius Eberhard Rumphius laments the common misconception that shells are found on the beach “as beautiful and clean as when we send them to them.” See Claudia Swan, “The Nature of Exotic Shells,” in Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marisa Bass et al., (Princeton University Press, 2021): 45.

[9] Rumphius describes perilous nighttime conditions with risks of stepping on spiny urchins, sharp coral, burning sea slime, or even crocodiles. See Swan, 45.

[10] Hanneke Grootenboer,.“Thinking with Shells in Petronella Oortman’s Dollhouse,” In Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marisa Bass, et al., (Princeton University Press, 2021): 104.

[11] Grootenboer, 107.

[12] Nakamura, 11.

[13] Nakamura, 10.

[14] Spenlé, 5.

[15] Moseley-Christian describes women’s interactions with their dollhouses as “like a ruler and owner.” See 355.

[16] Moseley-Christian, 357.

[17] Nakamura, 11-12.

[18] Nakamura, 15.

[19] Norman Bryson, “Abundance,” Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990): 117.

[20] Nakamura, 18.

[21] Grootenboer, 112.

[22] Grootenboer, 113.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Susan Bromhall, “Imagined Domesticities in Early Modern Dutch Dollhouses,” Parergon 24, no. 2 (2007): 58.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Melinda K. Vander Ploeg Fallon, “Petronella de la Court and Agneta Block: Experiencing Collections in Late Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art 4 (2003): 95-96.

[27] Vander Ploeg Fallon, 106.

[28] Nakamura, 19.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Broomhall, 55.