Dolls House World Magazine Issue 379 Back Issue

I’ve learnt a lot this issue, about everything from a frozen Charlotte to a superstar couple from Sweden.
The Charlotte was a tiny doll, hugely popular in Victorian times. The Swedish artists, Carl and Karin Larsson, were also developing their popularity around the same time.
Carl escaped a wretched childhood when a teacher at a school for the poor recognised his drawing skills and recommended he apply for the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He later met and married Karin, who was training to be an artist at a time female painters were struggling to be taken seriously.
Karin went on to develop her interior design skills creating a style of interior decoration recognised as quintessentially Swedish with colourfully painted furniture and woven textiles. You can view the couple’s famous home in this issue, courtesy of the replica made by Inga Lindgren.
Elsewhere a talented miniaturist tells us how she transformed an old wooden crate into a fascinating house filled with cigar-box furniture, those frozen Charlottes, and dolls with missing limbs
Mira Heath explains how “weaving is one of the most authentic crafts humans invented that never loses its warm appeal.”
And Stephanie Johanesen takes us round her wonderful toadstool cottage which, according to her, is “clumsy, organic and lacks symmetry.”
She told us that miniatures have been a profound and personal part of her life, and concluded: “Don’t let the perfection of others’ work discourage you from jumping in and making something. “Make it clumsy, rickety, rustic, or unfinished. Just make it.”
Wise words indeed for the start of a new year.