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Supporting Resources stories for teachers & students 2013
Dutch Lives in the World
stories by winthrop professor susan broomhall
Passions or Playthings
No Ordinary Dolls’ Houses
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a small
group of wealthy Dutch women created and collected exquisitely
crafted dolls’ houses. These were rich adult women who made
miniature houses for their own fun. They shared some things in
common: some were related, and two had no children.
Petronella Dunois was the daughter of a high official at the court
in The Hague, and niece of another dolls’ house owner,
Petronella de la Court. Sara Rothé was born in Amsterdam in
1699, the daughter of a banker, and she married a wealthy
merchant, Jacob Ploos van Amstel. Not all these luxurious
cabinets belonged to childless wealthy women, however. Born in
Leiden, in 1649, in a well-to-do family, Petronella de la Court
married Adam Oortman, and lived in Amsterdam where Oortman
owned a brewery called The Swan.
These houses really mattered to their female owners. They spent
vast sums of money on creating and decorating them, with
artwork and furniture commissioned from the leading
manufacturers and artists of their time. They were mentioned in
their owner’s wills, as important possessions to be passed on
through the family line. Some kept detailed notebooks about
their additions, expenses, and renovations to the houses. Sara
Rothé even ordered a local artist to paint a picture of her house
showing it full of living people!
What is a bit unusual about these houses, and unlike other dolls’
houses that we know were made about this time, is that each
one contained a nursery room and a separate lying-in room. This
was a special room where the mother lay in bed for up to six
weeks and received visitors and held parties after the birth of a
baby. Having a special lying-in room was a bit unusual, as usually
people just converted their best and warmest room into a
bedroom for the six weeks and held their parties there. People
took this very seriously because the birth of a healthy baby was
important. There were even books that told people how these
rooms should be decorated and we have letters between
princesses asking each other for advice on how to decorate their
rooms, especially what colours they should use for the bed linen
and curtains!
real. Petronella Oortman’s house made special places for the
maidservants and nursery staff to sleep, even providing different
fabrics for each of the maids’ beds. Each servant’s bedroom was
carefully furnished with its own chair and chamberpot. Their
houses also had foot-warmers, a special box where warm coals
from the fire were placed which women rested their feet on
underneath their petticoats. Only women putting together dolls’
houses thought of including such things – it was women who
traditionally sat furthest away from the fire.
Did children even play with houses like these Perhaps not very
often. They were often only opened up at adult parties for people
to marvel at the clever artistic skills of their craftsmen who could
make such beautful things in miniature. But we do know that
other, simpler dolls and houses were made for girls. Lots of
books from that time tell us that girls should play with toys that
could teach them how to be useful housewives. Girls were given
play pots to polish up or dresses to sew for dolls. Boys however
often had more active toys, spinning tops, hoops and play horses,
which were seen as useful training for their future lives spent
outside the home.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington has an interactive
website for kids where you can explore a seventeenth century
Dutch dolls’ house. Create your own Delftware plates, make things
move, paint your own masterpiece and hang it on the wall and lots
more. Visit: http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/dollhouse.htm
Each dolls’ house also had a special linen or laundry room. In
the seventeenth-century Netherlands, wealthy people sent out
their linen to be washed and bleached, and it was then returned
to the house for drying and ironing. Often this might be done just
once a year, with maids hired specially to carry out the household
part of the laundry process. The less frequently you did this, the
richer it showed you were, because it meant that you had to have
lots of linen to spare when it got dirty throughout the year.
In the same way, the houses also had beautiful kitchens full of
shiny copper pots or china, some even had two kitchens – a
working one and a ‘best kitchen’ where you might invite your
friends and show off your best and cleanest pots! What these
houses tell us is that when rich women thought about what their
fantasy home would look like, it was one with gleaming, clean
copper pots and fine china in their kitchen, lots of linen and the
maids to clean it, and the joy of healthy babies to celebrate.
These women clearly thought a lot about their houses and the
practical arrangements that would make them work if they were
66 FAR FROM HOME: ADVENTURES, TREKS, EXILES & MIGRATION