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Baby House

The term “baby” in baby house is coined from the old English word meaning doll and were mass produced European doll houses created during the early sixteenth century. The baby moniker referred to the scale of the houses rather than the demographic it was aimed towards. In actuality, there were separate baby houses created for both children and adults.

The earliest known recorded baby house was commissioned from 1557-1558 by Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria. It was similar to most adult centered doll houses at the time, as it was the earliest example of creating a cabinet houses with the purpose of exhibiting as a collectible for the elite class, and to display as both a luxury item and a way to demonstrate their wealth to friends and family.

Nuremberg doll houses were produced in Nuremberg, Germany; which, since the sixteenth century, was coined as the toy city. Their baby houses were thought to be the origin for the basic standards of contemporary doll houses. The doll houses themselves were modeled to reflect a realistic representation of everyday life. An example is Anna Köferlin’s Nuremberg baby house, which was commissioned in 1631. It was publicly displayed and was advertised by Köferlin herself in the form of original verses composed on broadsheet. These verses emphasized her belief that baby houses held a didactic value that educated the masses on proper domestic organization according to the layout of the baby houses’ interior. In short, Köferlin’s baby house held a strong ideology of familial ties and values.

Women and doll houses

As interest in doll houses expanded during the seventeenth century, there was also a shift in the gender-oriented organization of the miniature houses towards a more feminine focus. There is a shift of viewing doll houses as a collectible “male-oriented artefact to a female-organized model of domesticity”. Instead of the typical Nuremberg doll house, Dutch doll houses resembled cabinets with separate compartments of fully furnished rooms than actual houses. They represented the ideal domestic household, “through the inclusion of amply-stocked linen rooms and kitchens” which appealed to the female collectors.  

There is a central focus towards the role of women in the family and the domestic nuisances it entails. A majority of these cabinet houses were produced for “grown-up daughters or wives of regents and merchants”. They employ contradictory desires of imaginative play through harmless escapism of the domestic life into a creation of imaginative reality and childish creativity, while still maintaining the need for fulfilling domestic responsibilities.