Secret Knowledge: The Private Life of a Dolls' House

I watched this documentary last week as a part of my research for the John Lewis competition. It's presented by Lauren Child, the author and illustrator of Charlie and Lola.

Child's work, with it's use of collage and playful attitude to scale, clearly has its roots in her love for miniatures. She says in the documentary that Charlie & Lola almost exist in a Scandinavian doll house, where the rooms are tall and warm and patterned, with low handing lights and orange colours.

Her work is very charming, I remember reading Clarice Bean books when I was a child and loving the illustrations.

It's interesting that she now designs fabrics for Liberty - it's almost as though her work has come full circle back to the dolls house.

I love her collaboration with Polly Borland, the photographer, on The Princess and the Pea. The mixture of her illustrations and the dolls house techniques, mostly made by Child herself, is very cute! As she notes in the documentary, dolls houses have an air of nostalgia for a time that didn't really exist - a Victorian or Georgian era minus the slums and rickets. (Although I'm sure somebody has made that.)

Another interesting thing from the documentary, is that 'baby houses' were often used as teaching tools for young girls. By playing with the miniature house they could learn about housekeeping, cleaning, decor. Despite being a product of an oppressive era for women this is oddly empowering, girls teaching other girls about one of the few areas of their lives they had real control: the home.

My initial idea was greatly inspired by the dolls house. I get a lot of what Lauren Child says about feelings of warmth and nostalgia and cuteness evoked by the dolls house, they are ideas I want to get across in my concept for John Lewis. I think it's important the idea still feels modern however.