Ruth Leon recommends… Rijksmuseum – Dolls’ Houses

Rijksmuseum – Dolls’ Houses

Click here to watch
Jeroen Krabbe is a famous Dutch actor  and film director who has appeared in more than 60 films. He is also a well known painter. Now 77, in this lovely video, he takes us on an enchanting tour of two of the dolls’ houses in the Rijksmuseum. He explains that, as a child, he loved to come to the museum to see these amazingly detailed miniature grand dwellings, dating from the 16th century, and that now he brings his grandchildren to see how some people lived at that time.
​
These dolls’ houses were not childrens’ playthings. They were the treasured hobbies of rich women who went to extraordinary lengths to replicate the furniture and decoration of their own time in miniature. They spent unimaginable sums on their little houses, often enough that what they spent on their contents could have bought them a full-size luxury house on a canal in Amsterdam.

Read more