Queen Mary's Dolls House - Tapa dura

This dolls' house, built by Sir Edward Lutyens in the early 1920s as a gift for Queen Mary, was presented to her as a gesture of goodwill from the artists, craftsmen and authors most prominent at the time. Nearly everything in it was especially commissioned and made in some of the finest British workshops of the era and it also includes a garden plan by Gertrude Jekyll. The house shows in miniature a detailed picture of a domestic interior. It represents the established way of life between the wars, showing accurately the upstairs and downstairs worlds in the contents of the forty rooms and vestibules of the house. The 200 colour photographs are by David Cripps, who has worked for the Arts Council, the Crafts Council, "Crafts Magazine" and "The Sunday Times Magazine".