Dollhouse Miniatures

Come On In: This web site has many photos of my Dollhouse Dolls, Portrait Dolls and Hooked Rugs, so please, please, if you can...turn on the graphics. Otherwise, please click on the note below.

To order or see photos of my dollhouse dolls, portrait dolls,
hooked rugs and other dollhouse miniatures, please click on
the brick dollhouse.

A word about this Web site...

I began creating dollhouse miniatures in 1982. It didn't take long before I knew this would be my life's work, so I started my own business and called it "Nostalgia By The Inch". Collecting and making dollhouse miniatures is a wonderful way to honor the past and give it meaning in the present. When I first saw antique hooked rugs, I fell in love with them. Today we buy ready made - usually machine made - rugs without giving them much thought. By the 1850's women were creating their own rugs, hooking them onto old pieces of burlap. These rugs had meaning. Many told a story. So I decided to create, in miniature, these wonderful treasures. The result is the collection you see listed under Hooked Rugs. They're expensive, I know, but they also took up to 80 hrs. to hook. I'm not making hooked rugs anymore, so when these are sold there won't be any more to replace them.

After rug hooking, I moved on to making Dollhouse Dolls. I've been sculpting since the early 70's, so it was a natural transition. While attending several miniature shows in the mid 80's I noticed that most of the dollhouse dolls were women. The men seemed to be women with moustaches or beards. So I decided to specialize in male dollhouse dolls. I think I can safely say that I offer more original male dollhouse dolls than any other doll artist. I have 16 men and several more on the way. All my dolls are in 1/12 scale (one inch = one foot).

In the mid 90's I felt it was time to take on new challenges, so I've begun to add women and children to my selection of dollhouse dolls. As with my men, I think it is important that these dollhouse dolls look like real people - not dolls. After all, dollhouses nowadays look so real that it is often impossible to tell from a photo whether it is real or a miniature. Dollhouse miniatures have come a long way in the past 20 years. So the people inhabiting these wonderful dollhouses and room boxes ought to look just as real. My emphasis has always been on variety: lots of male dolls, lots of costumes, lots of shoe styles etc.. The same will be true of the women and children...many many more dolls are to come, so stop back often.

A real specialty item that I offer are my Portrait Dolls. These are one-of-a-kind dolls sculpted from your photos to look like you or someone special to you whose likeness you would like to capture forever. Like my dollhouse dolls, my portrait dolls are made of porcelain and have china painted faces. They are 1/12th scale. This means that a man who is 6 feet tall would become a doll 6 inches tall. Each portrait doll head takes around 30 hours to sculpt. You can see examples of my portrait dolls in the section appropriately titled "Portrait Dolls". :-) It is a category distinct from my dollhouse dolls because they are created totally to your specifications, from your photos.

The purpose of this web site is to be a complete catalog of all the dollhouse dolls, character dolls, hooked rugs and other dollhouse miniatures that I offer. My dolls come fully dressed and ready to go or customized by you. They also come as doll kits. In the future I plan to sell miniature settings (small room boxes) as well as the items in the settings. This will let you see the dolls in a more natural setting instead of just standing in front of the camera. It will also let me give full reign to my creative impulses. In other words, I want to have fun. :-) My more unusual dolls are in the section called "Character Dolls". The character dolls already available are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Quite a few new character dolls are on my work table, those include a gypsy, a bag lady, Scrooge and Jacob Marley. I expect the character dolls section to grow hand in hand with the miniature settings. If you have any character dolls you'd like to see - drop me an e-mail and suggest it. The hooked rugs available for sale are the ones you see in the photos. I've only made one of each - so what you see is what you get. So there you have it, I created this Web site so that I could have a catalog that would both keep up with all of the new dolls and miniatures I am making and would also be interactive. With the on-line surveys I keep in touch with what you want and make it easy for you to ask questions or make comments to me directly. You can also order my dolls or miniatures on-line...though you still have to send your check by snail mail. Having read all this it's time to enter my miniature world. Have fun. If you want to be notified when I add more dolls or miniatures, please sign my guestbook or fill out one of the surveys on my site.

Privacy Policy: All information given to me via my surveys, order forms or e-mail is kept strictly confidential. It will never be sold. The guestbook, however, can be read by anyone (unless you use the 'private message' option). I value your input. This is what makes an electronic catalog so special - it's interactive.

This page has been viewedtimes since July 4, 1998

Hooked Rugs    Portrait Dolls    Dollhouse Dolls    Miniatures

This web site designed and maintained by Debbie Olsen.

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