Dollhouse Room Gets a Makeover

Although 17th-century doll’s houses were intended to be looked at rather than played with, quite a few things have changed in the house since De la Court’s masterpiece was completed over 300 years ago. Old descriptions and estate inventories reveal, for example, that several dolls have occupied different rooms over the years. The little dog now warming itself by the open fire on a green cushion in the kitchen previously belonged to the company in the art room.

The most striking change the doll’s house has undergone probably took place in the early nineteenth century. Long before ‘neutral’ exhibition spaces were advocated in the 1930s and the white cube enjoyed its heyday in museums of the 1970s, the art room’s luxurious silk damask wall covering was whitewashed. It was therefore high time to put an end to this strange situation and restore the walls of the most lavish room in the doll’s house to their former glory.

The doll’s house is one of the most lavish works of art in the Centraal Museum’s collection. It was made between 1670 and 1690 at the request of Petronella de la Court of Amsterdam. It is not only its size and the sheer number and completeness of its miniatures that make the doll’s house invaluable. Doll’s houses of this kind are also extremely rare, not least because assembling them required a great deal of time and an enormous amount of money.

Together with her husband, the brewer Adam Oortmans, Petronella de la Court owned an extensive collection of art and curiosities. The couple belonged to Amsterdam’s affluent middle class and lived in a canal house on the Singel. After her husband’s death in 1684, De la Court, by then sixty years old, continued to run the business and maintain the collection on her own. The artist biographer Johan van Gool described her as ‘an art lover who in her day possessed a magnificent cabinet, of which I have often heard people speak highly’.

Her collection comprised works by leading masters, ranging from paintings and prints to valuable atlases, precious porcelain and carvings. The doll’s house was one of the absolute highlights of De la Court’s collection.

In the Netherlands, collecting was widespread at the end of the seventeenth century, particularly among wealthy citizens. By far the majority of private art collections were broken up after the owner’s death. Sometimes a few pieces were inherited by relatives, but most were sold at auction. For this very reason, collections have rarely survived intact. The doll’s house is an exception. Its contents remained together, and the fully preserved art room offers a glimpse into how art collections were displayed in the seventeenth century.

Cabinets of curiosities—both life-sized and miniature—were not primarily intended to flaunt material wealth. They served mainly as intellectual status symbols, showcasing inner riches and scholarly knowledge. The objects collected were meant to reflect the entire world, with virtually no limits on the scope of the collection. The aim was to represent the macrocosm within a microcosm. In cabinets of curiosities, science and beauty went hand in hand. It was precisely the abundance of remarkable objects that took center stage. Both naturalia (objects produced by nature) and arteficialia (objects made by human hands) belonged in them. All these objects derived meaning from their interrelationships and their place within the whole. This macrocosm–microcosm concept also applies to the dollhouse cabinet of curiosities.

Most art cabinets had an elaborate iconographic programme. The decorative imagery gave the art collection a deeper meaning. In De la Court’s miniature art cabinet, for example, we find an extensive ceiling painting depicting, among other things, the four elements—air, water, earth and fire. These are represented in the various objects collected in the room. The aim of the art cabinet was anything but to present works of art as ‘objectively’ or ‘neutrally’ as possible.

Unlike the twentieth-century ideal of the ‘white cube museum’, objects in seventeenth-century art chambers were deliberately displayed in relation to one another. Connections between them were actively sought out. Nor was there any room for empty space. Paintings were hung above and beside one another, cabinet drawers were filled with shells and coins, and porcelain tableware filled entire cupboards. Together, everything in the art chamber formed a unified whole, told a story and, above all, represented a – Western – worldview.

Before the walls of the art cabinet in the doll’s house were painted white, they were covered with the same silk damask used to upholster the doll-sized chairs in the room. The cream-coloured fabric has darkened over the years, but the striking pattern of flowers and dragons is still clearly visible. This traditional pattern in the fabric suggests a possible Chinese origin.

Global trade played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch art collections. There was great interest in products from Asia. This interest would not have escaped Petronella de la Court, who lived, after all, in the trading hub of Amsterdam. Her small art cabinet contains a large quantity of ‘porcelain’—the miniatures are made of glass.

On the small cabinet are two goblets made from nutmegs, nowadays known mainly in ground form as the spice nutmeg. In the seventeenth century, nutmeg was traded by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which had violently secured a monopoly on the trade in this tropical spice. In the doll’s house Kunstkamer, the nutmegs were used to create miniature versions of the larger coconut goblets. The drawer beneath the small porcelain cabinet contains a large number of tiny tropical shells, while a small taxidermied turtle stands on the floor.

The dolls’ clothing can also be traced back to overseas trade. The dressing gown worn by the man at the table is a Japanese robe. Originally from Japan, it was an important status symbol. The robe was shaped like a traditional kimono, but was often adapted slightly to suit Dutch tastes. It was a popular garment among those who could afford it, as such robes were made entirely of costly silk, including a lining of silk wadding. In the doll’s house, the kitchen maid also owes her cotton outfit to global trade. Unlike wool and linen, cotton was not grown in Europe, but imported mainly from India.

To reconstruct the art room’s original wallpaper, the Centraal Museum contacted the Dutch damask weavers’ guild. All members of this guild own their own damask loom. They meet twice a year to share their experiences and expertise. Most of them have many years of experience, but anyone who owns a damask loom and uses it regularly is welcome to join the guild.

The original damask in the doll’s house is made up of a large number of extremely fine silk threads. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the textiles produced by machine today. Drawing on their specialist expertise, Corrie van Eijk and Corrie Sevinga were able not only to provide targeted advice, but also to weave a reconstruction of the original wall covering that was as faithful as possible.

The new damask for the Art Chamber is woven from cotton. The expertise required to produce the extremely fine silk threads used in the original damask wall covering has largely been lost. However, the lustrous quality of silk can be closely replicated using modern mercerised cotton. The mercerisation process not only makes the cotton fibres more lustrous, but also stronger and easier to dye. Moreover, this lustrous cotton is available in a wide range of shades, overcoming the greatest obstacle in the reconstruction. Over the course of 300 years, the silk upholstery of the chairs in the Art Chamber has faded from ivory to cream with a grey-green sheen. It is precisely the fabric’s lustre that makes its exact colour difficult to determine, as the weaving technique causes it to change with every angle of light.

To make the pattern in the fabric as clear as possible and reveal the subtle variations in colour, the new wall covering was ultimately made using cotton yarn in two colours, interwoven horizontally and vertically. Together, the threads form a fabric that restores the art room as a whole as closely as possible to Petronella de la Court’s original design.

Presenting art in an environment designed for it, rather than in a constructed white void, is in keeping with the current thinking of many museums. The idea that museums are neutral institutions capable of presenting art objectively is outdated. Instead, museums are now exploring new forms of presentation that do justice to the art while also providing context. This is similar to what Petronella de la Court envisioned for her miniature art cabinet—although the nature and context of her collection are clearly different from those of ours.

Just like the height at which a painting is hung on the wall, the frame surrounding it and the way it is lit, the space itself influences how we experience a work of art. The renewed—or restored—art room in the doll’s house now shows how wall coverings can completely transform the impression made by a collection display.

With special thanks to Loïs van Olst (freelance collections management assistant)