The Nostell Dolls' House
Unknown
Date
circa 1729 - 1742
Materials
Oak, mahogany, walnut, marble, ivory, carved and painted ebonised wood, glass, brass, gilt bronze, steel, pewter, silk, chintz and other textiles, paper, porcelain, wax candles, wax and composition dolls
Measurements
212 x 191.7 x 76.2 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire
NT 959710
Caption
Inside this richly decorated townhouse lies a world of imagination and enchanted play. Looking in from the front, we can see all the rooms at once, having a god-like view of the imagined goings-on of the doll inhabitants. Are we visitors or nosy intruders? Adults have always been as fascinated with dolls’ houses as children. In fact, dolls’ houses of this quality from the 17th and 18th centuries were not so much children’s toys as works of art in their own right. Each room of this house is beautifully furnished, like a well-decorated house of the early to mid-1700s. Silverware is displayed on the table, the beds are hung with velvet, silk and chintz, and fashionable porcelain is found in several rooms. The house was commissioned by or for Sir Rowland Winn, 4th Baronet (1706– 65), and his wife Susanna Henshaw (d.1742), who were married in 1729. They lived at Nostell in Yorkshire and had seven children.
Summary
A dolls’ house, English, circa 1729-42. The exterior fronted by a pair of sliding doors beneath a roof of intersecting ridges, balustrade and seven miniature statues. The doors and the side elevations with crown glass windows and painted to resemble ashlar in horizontal courses. The basement level non-functional. The interior constructed with nine rooms over three floors: on the ground floor a dining parlour, entrance hall and kitchen; on the first floor, or ‘piano nobile’, a state dressing room, state bedroom and drawing room; on the top floor, a dressing room and two bedchambers. All fitted with contemporary miniature fixtures, furniture and objects.
Full description
This magnificent dolls', or 'baby', house was made in the third quarter of the 18th century, but the exact date of its manufacture is unknown. It is thought, however, to be associated with the marriage of Susanna Henshaw (c. 1710-d.1742) and Rowland Winn, 4th Bt. (1706-65), of Nostell near Wakefield in Yorkshire, in 1729. This is not only because the house and its contents are in the style of the late 1720s and 1730s, but also because a label once fitted to the floor of the Yellow Bedchamber (top floor, central room) said 'This house was made by Lady Winn and Miss Henshaw'. The Winn/Henshaw connection to the Dolls' House is reinforced by the coat of arms in the pediment, which is carved with the impaled (joined) arms of Winn and Henshaw. Susanna Winn died in 1742, and so that year is normally given as the last possible date for the dolls’ house's manufacture. Its maker is also unknown. It is popularly attributed to the famous cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718-79) but as his work at Nostell didn't start until the mid-1760s, it is now considered more likely that the architect James Paine (1717-89) - who worked at Nostell from 1736 - may have designed it. He also designed a London townhouse for Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh (1714-74) of Uppark in Sussex, where the closest known parallel to the Nostell 'baby' house survives (NT 138073). The house is laid out across three floors or storeys, each of three rooms. Their layout imitates that of a full-size mid-18th century house, where particular rooms formed a formal route or ‘parade’ for important guests to follow. In this dolls’ house, that route begins with the Entrance Hall on the ground floor and rises via the beautifully cantilevered mahogany staircase to the Drawing Room, state bedroom and state dressing room on the first floor. These three rooms all have the finest panelling, cornices, doors and fittings. The walls of the Drawing Room, for instance, are covered in pastoral scenes formed from hand-coloured copperplate engravings painstakingly cut out of Dutch and French books and pasted in place. The top floor represents the family’s living quarters, with simpler doors and panelling: one is fitted out as a ‘lying-in’ chamber, where a mother would prepare for, and recover from, childbirth. Some of the objects in these rooms would have been specially commissioned when the dolls’ house was made, others would have been purchased over time from specialist dealers and craftsmen. Thus, the house contains forty-five pieces of miniature silver, including a full tea service, pans, a plate warmer and fire tools, by the London silversmith David Clayton (fl.1697-1720), whilst the brass dial of the miniature walnut-cased longcase clock is signed by the clockmaker John Halifax of Barnsley (c. 1710-1750). The attention to detail is astonishing: fire tongs are articulated, doorknobs turn, drawers open and close and the spit in the kitchen operates on a weight-driven pulley system. Most striking, however, is the realism of elements not intended to be seen: the dolls themselves are dressed in the full panoply of 18th century clothing, with undergarments, and the curtains on the beds and windows are fitted with tape and rings, and run on metal rods. Recent research and conservation has revealed new things about the dolls’ house. The beds on the top floor, for instance, were made and stiffened with 18th century playing cards; the middle room on the first floor may originally have been fitted as a dining room; and one of the ivory chairs in the ‘lying-in’ chamber on the top floor was repaired with a ticket for a concert given by violinist Gaetano Pugnani (1731-98) at the Merchant Taylors Hall in York on 27 August - a Saturday night - 1768, indicating that the dolls' house was cared for by the generation subsequent to the one for which it was made, when Nostell was presided over by Rowland Winn, 5th Bart. (1739-85) and his wife, Sabine (1734-98). How it was cared for or used by subsequent generations is not known but, in 1915, when a catalogue of the picture collection at Nostell was published, the dolls' house was photographed in a prominent position on the landing of one of the house's main staircases. The purpose of these dolls' houses is not yet fully understood. Dolls' houses in England were derived from earlier Dutch and German examples which began as cabinets with shelves dividing an interior fitted out as 'rooms': we know that some of their owners were the wives and daughters of rich merchants. They may have been originally understood as the 'feminine' equivalent of the more 'masculine' fashion for collectors' cabinets. They were not, therefore, merely playthings for children. For instance, the term 'baby' house emerged in the early 18th century with reference to the contemporary word for dolls, rather than to the people who used, or played with, these objects, and the dolls' house at Uppark, which stands on its original, high base, is almost three meters tall and, as such, would have been far too high for children to reach and play with. Another view proposes that they were educational tools, used by mothers to train their daughters in the workings of a large household. Undoubtedly, however, they were objects to delight in, and a means of signalling a woman's style and her family's wealth and status.
Provenance
A label, once fixed to the floor of the yellow bedroom with sealing wax, probably a later addition and now lost, is reported to have said 'This house was made by Lady Winn and Miss Henshaw'. First recorded in September 1753 by Lady Wentworth, who saw, on a visit to Nostell, 'In a Closet upstairs...a Remarkable Curiosity in its Way, Viz a Compleat Babee House, divided into three rooms on a floor each of which thoroughly furnish’d tis said ye whole cost £300…'. Next noticed by Dorothy Richardson in July 1761, who described it in her diary as 'a Curious Model of one Front of the House with a range of Rooms very Elegantly fitted up – It is said to have cost two hundred Pounds'. By descent, and accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of death duties on the estate of Rowland Winn, 4th Baron Oswald (1916 - 1984), 1986.
Makers and roles
Unknown, designer
References
Brockwell 1915 Maurice Walter Brockwell, Catalogue of the Pictures and Other Works of Art in the Collection of Lord St Oswald at Nostell Priory, London 1915 Jackson-Stops 1985: Gervase Jackson-Stops (ed.), The Treasure Houses of Britain: five hundred years of private patronage and art collecting, exh. cat. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, New Haven and London 1985, pp. 661-3