I’ve spent £50,000 on dolls’ houses!
Potty? Wait until you hear about the £5,000 Japanese furniture and £500 bathroom tiles (not to mention the £120 mohair poodle) Katina has bought to go in them
LAST week Katina Beale put the finishing touches to a bespoke kitchen in her Alpine ski lodge. Then she agonised over whether to decorate her 17-room Georgian mansion or the Art Deco townhouse. The solution? To splash out on a completely new residence instead – her ninth in total.
Yet, for all her many properties, Katina is neither aristocrat nor billionaire. The 64-year-old from Northamptonshire is one of a growing number of women shutting out the stress of real life by devoting themselves to dolls’ houses and the kind of exquisitely detailed contents – all one-twelfth of their ‘real’ size – pictured here.
There are already some 1,000 craftsmen in Britain creating furniture for dolls’ houses, some with waiting lists of more than two years, and the market is growing rapidly. The leading magazine in the field, Dolls House World, reports that its subscriptions have risen by a fifth in the past year alone, despite the eye-watering cost of the hobby.
Katina reckons to have spent at least £1,000 furnishing each room in her 5ft-tall Georgian townhouse, bringing her total spending on the hobby so far to £50,000. ‘It’s not a child’s-play thing
– it’s an adult pursuit,’ she insists when we meet at her entirely lifesized three-bedroom home near Kettering. ‘The houses are not the only thing in my world,’ she says.
‘I have a very busy social life, I love eating at nice restaurants and going to the theatre. But this is a calming hobby.
‘Sometimes life comes along and sinks you. There’s Mr Trump with his hand on the nuclear button, for example. You can’t control things like that, but you can control your miniature houses. I can just sit and stare at them thinking, “What do I need?”
‘I do play with them. I rearrange furniture and create Christmas displays. I also make things for them such as books and luggage.’
Like many people, Katina had a Tri-ang dolls’ house as a child. But the former librarian had reached the age of 52 before she decided to take dolls’ houses seriously – and promptly spent £1,500 on an Art Deco residence, plus a great deal more to fill it with period furniture and fittings. The hand-painted tiles above the roll-top bath cost an eye-watering £500, for example, while the table and chairs in the style of architect and designer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe set her back £350.
Two pairs of tiny silver and gold candlesticks cost £300.
The bedroom houses a number of solid silver picture frames containing tiny photographs of Katina and her late husband, John. These cost up to £50.
Even the blue and white Cornishware-style pots in the kitchen cost £18 each. No wonder the house is insured for £15,000.
As impressive as the Art Deco house might be, Katina’s pride and joy is her Georgian mansion, bought for £1,800 in 2009, and now insured for £25,000.
Pieces inside include at least £5,000 worth of highly prized Japanese-style furniture by the miniature specialist Judith Dunger, £150-worth of bespoke wallpaper and a £120 mohair poodle. As to her latest acquisition, her ninth, this will be a modern creation because she wants to accommodate a £500 giraffe-print leather sofa by Desiree Lafuente, another leading designer in the field. ‘You can never just stop at one house,’ Katina continues. ‘I’ve known people with 13. You get hooked, it’s like a syndrome.’
Indeed, for her, it was something of a lifesaver following a brain haemorrhage in 2006.
‘I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything,’ Katina explains. ‘But I could just sit quietly and make things for my dolls’ house. It helped me get back to normal.’
If Katina’s commitment to the world in miniature seems excessive, this is nothing compared to some of her fellow collectors. ‘At fairs, grown women arrive early and race each other to certain makers’ stalls to buy their one-of-a-kind pieces,’ she reveals. ‘I’ve never seen any punchups but there have been arguments.
‘I met one woman who had created a student house and one of the students was having an affair with the landlord. Some people really get into the fantasy of it all.’
Traditionalists who specialise in antique houses are said to be sniffy about modern collectibles, but there is no doubting where the more vibrant market lies.
Kathy Holden, of Delph Miniatures, which specialises in modern furniture, says that some enthusiasts even create replicas of their own houses and those in which they grew up.
She deals with a wide range of colourful requests including, recently, the fittings and equipment needed for a miniature tattoo parlour.
Kathy says: ‘One client, a microbiologist, had made a series of labs and wanted an autopsy suite so we now make morgues.
‘We also sell a condom in a packet for £7.60. They go like a storm. You can’t make this stuff fast enough. We have an eight-week waiting list.’
Richard Jennings, publisher of Dolls House World, says collectors can – and do – buy anything they want.
‘Once people discover dolls’ houses they do get addicted. People want to get away from their tablets and phones and get hands-on,’ he says.
‘I’ve seen a reproduction of the red room from 50 Shades Of Grey. You can get anything made in miniature.’
According to Charlotte Stokoe, who organises the thrice-yearly Kensington Dolls’ House Festival, there has been a surge of younger women taking up the hobby for therapeutic reasons. ‘It’s a way of stepping out of their stressful lives,’ she says.
‘They might have muddy footprints running through their own house, but they don’t have to put up with it in their dolls’ house.’
Louise Jones, 49, is a case in point. A mother of three and a primary school teacher in Pontypridd, she looks upon her four dolls’ houses as islands of tranquillity. One of them is a 6ft by 5ft Georgian property with 28 rooms.
‘I open the door and a calm comes over me,’ she admits. ‘Doing the dolls’ house is extremely relaxing.’
Her latest task is to apply 8,000 brick slivers just a millimetre apart to one of the exteriors.
Like Katina, she has spent around £50,000 on her hobby, with many of the pieces appreciating in value.
‘A Victorian meat-mincer by [leading designer] Barry Harris would have cost £65 a few years ago,’ she says. ‘One sold on eBay last week for £238. I’ve got a lot of Barry’s stuff. I’d never sell my dolls’ house but perhaps if my children aren’t interested they can and it will be an investment.’
Not that her three children, now aged 27, 21, and 16, have ever been allowed anywhere near it.
In fact, it was only in the mid-1800s that dolls’ houses came to be seen as toys. Before that, traditional ‘baby’ houses – dating from the 1600s and popularised in the Netherlands and Germany – had been used to teach women how to manage a household.
Emma Chepaldin, 52, an IT project manager who lives with her partner and 16-year-old son in Cambridgeshire, has splashed out £15,000 furnishing her £8,000 4ft-high 13-bedroom Georgian house. She had spent two years on a waiting list to buy it.
‘I no longer have a mortgage and I’ve finished our own house. I wanted another project so I thought, “Right, I’m getting a dolls’ house.” ’
She has forked out £1,350 on a grandfather clock, one of only five in the world made by specialists Halls, and a tiny £200 reproduction of a Stubbs equestrian painting.
A solid silver chatelaine – a decorative belt with a series of useful household items suspended from it – by Jens Torp, the Bulgari of the miniature world, set her back £720.
Emma is currently on a three-year waiting list for a piano with movable keys and a lady’s desk, together costing £1,700. ‘I don’t see it as a dolls’ house. It’s more of a piece of art and a recreation of something historical,’ she says.
‘To begin with my partner didn’t understand why I was doing it. But I earn the money so he can’t really say anything.’
‘It’s not a toy – I see it as a piece of art’