Little Princess Dolls' House

The ‘Little Princess’ dolls' house was produced by New Zealand company Jomax in the 1960s, and is a miniature representation of a modern home at that time. The house is divided into four rooms and a corridor, and the internal walls are covered with vibrant decorative papers. Furniture sets for the house could be purchased separately.

David Veart suggests in Hello Girls & Boys that ‘the story of dolls’ house architecture in New Zealand follows, in miniature, what was happening in the grown-up world’ (Veart 2014, 85). At the time this dolls' house was produced, modernism had become mainstream in New Zealand. Modernist homes were designed with functionality in mind, and with an emphasis on informality. Open plan kitchen and living areas, large windows, patios and terraces were common features, connecting the house to the garden and allowing for easy entertaining. By the 1960s the austerity of the early modernist period had been abandoned in favour of bold patterns and bright colours, as suggested by the bold wallpapers in this dolls' house. 

As material culture scholar Thomas Schlereth has argued, toys ‘are small versions of real things, [which] invert reality and enable people to re-examine life at a Lilliputian level’ (quoted in Townsend 2018, 248). This house, a small version of a modern home, represents not only the world of play inhabited by children, but also the domestic world inhabited by adults.

References:

• Swarbrick, Nancy. 2013. ‘Home décor and furnishings.' Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/home-decor-and-furnishings
• Townsend, Lynette. 2018. ‘Making Paper Models in 1860s New Zealand: An Exploration of Colonial Culture through Child-Made Objects.’ In Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700-present, edited by Megan Brandow-Faller, 235-253. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
• Veart, David. 2014. Hello Girls & Boys! A New Zealand Toy Story. Auckland: Auckland University Press.