- Dec 3, 2024
- 5 min read
Tat could never be accused of hyperbole, never, but Decorating Dolls' Houses by Jessica Ridley is nothing short of a masterpiece. Ridley’s miniature room sets are the stuff of dreams: imaginative, exquisite, and utterly captivating. Honestly, who doesn’t love a doll’s house? As self-confessed interiors fanatics, it’s practically in our DNA. Ridley’s work is so enchanting that her tiny creations could inspire a lifetime of design daydreams. Here’s to Jessica Ridley and her unparalleled knack for creating small-scale magic. Three cheers, indeed!
The Studio At Charleston
Photographs in books and magazines are always a good source of ideas when you are decorating rooms in a doll's house. It is also quite fun to find a photograph of a particularly unusual or spectacular room - a room in a stately home for example - and copy it as accurately as possible in your doll's house. I have chosen Duncan Grant's studio at Charleston which is a very personal and eccentric room, and using a photograph as reference, I have reproduced it in miniature.
Scottish Baronial Hall
The idea here is to create a slightly old and battered Scottish hall. The bare stone walls are covered with chicken wire which is hung with hunting trophies, chain mail suits and a vast array of weaponry. The furniture, which is quite big and chunky, is rather worn - in keeping with the look of the room. All these elements give the room a remote and distinctly feudal feel.
Print Room
Print rooms became fashionable in English houses during the second half of the eighteenth century when engraving was the only method of reproducing paintings. Prints were stuck directly onto the walls of a room, and decorated with borders, bows and other ornaments. This one is painted a very old-fashioned blue which has yellowed with age and woodsmoke. The slightly formal furniture is in keeping with the eighteenth-century style and the room is simply lit by a three-arm chandelier.
Yellow Drawing Room
The design of this room is inspired by a real room - Colefax and Fowler's Yellow Room. With its barrel-vaulted ceiling, deep, marbled mouldings and double doors, it is a very grand, traditionally English drawing room. If you decide to copy or adapt the style of a real room, try to find a few photographs of the room, taken from different angles. Refer to these constantly while you are decorating and furnishing the room to get the details absolutely right.
Modern Kitchen
The idea here is to create a thoroughly modern, hi-tech kitchen. Catalogues from kitchen shops are very good sources of inspiration. The main features are a series of white fitted base and wall units and an island in the middle of the room with a large extractor fan above it. The simplicity of the design and the clean, uncluttered surfaces make this a totally functional room which is in complete contrast to the country kitchen.
Scandinavian Bedroom
A typically Scandinavian room tends to be very simple: sparsely decorated and furnished in cool soft greys, whites, blues or greens, with slightly faded fabrics and bare pine floorboards. This bedroom is typical of the style, with pale blue walls, small-checked green and white gingham fabrics and simple, but elegant furniture, hand-painted in subtly contrasting colours. A characteristic feature is the tall tiled stove for heating the room.
Manhattan Living Room
This 'Italian designer' living room is uncompromisingly modern. Pictures in magazines are a very useful source of inspiration when deciding how to decorate and furnish the room. The furniture is made from the most unlikely materials - pipe-lagging tape and solder wire for the black leather sofa and chairs and wire champagne cages for the metal chairs. All the accessories and details are in keeping with the rather minimalist feel of the room.
Rustic Breakfast Room
The breakfast room, with its trompe-l'oeil walls and rustic twigsy furniture, almost suggests a room outside in the open air. The trompe-l'oeil, with its leaf-covered trellis and balustrades and its distant view of the landscape is based on this painting in the Royal Collection although I have simplified it. The effect is surprisingly easy to achieve and, because it is done on sheets of paper rather than directly onto the walls, any mistakes can easily be corrected. This design does, however, only really work in a square room.
An English Country House Bedroom
This bedroom is decorated and furnished in a traditionally English style. It is almost formal, with its upholstered walls and four-poster bed. The same small-patterned floral fabric is used to make the curtains and upholster the furniture and the painted wooden furniture picks out colours in the fabric. The details, such as the Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece and the porcelain jars on the carved brackets, are in keeping with the rather grand style of this bedroom.
Shaker Bedroom
The design of this rather old-fashioned American bedroom incorporates several typical Shaker features, such as the wooden chairs, which hang from pegs on the wall, and the pantry boxes piled up in the corner of the room. This is a simple but comfortable bedroom, without any unnecessary ornament. It is lit by a single lamp beside the bed.
Grotto
Inspired by photographs of a grotto in a German Baroque garden, the idea is to create a completely fantastical room. You can really let your imagination run riot here - nothing is too elaborate. It is a cavernous room, decorated almost entirely with shells. Before starting, you will need a large selection of small shells- these can either be collected from a beach, or bought from specialist shell shops. Try to get as many different-shaped shells as possible in strong contrasting colours such as red, white, black, brown and yellow to create a really strong and dramatic design.
Etruscan Bathroom
The style of this bathroom is based on an eighteenth-century interpretation of the Etruscan style but, with its clear, clean colours and geometric shapes, the effect is almost modern. The trademarks of the Etruscan style are in the use of colour - duck-egg blue predominating, combined with burnt orange, buff and soft black. The mosaic floor adds to the cool atmosphere, and provides an extra texture in a room which is otherwise almost spartan in its lack of furniture. If you wish to light this room, you could wire in a bulb behind the bath alcove - or have your bath in the dark.
Flower Shop
One of the great things about doll's houses is that if you get bored with the style of a room you can change or redecorate it very easily. The flower shop is being made in what was the Country Kitchen (see page 50). The rustic charm of the room is retained by keeping the beams in position, but otherwise it is completely transformed. A semi-circular shelved plant stand is covered with plants and flowers, and bunches of dried flowers hang on a rack and from the ceiling.
Colonial Dining Room
This dining room is almost puritanical in character, with simple wooden furnishings and one naive picture above the mantelpiece. The colours are muted and earthy - brick-red, green and mustard, which is picked up in the formal curtains. The only decorative objects are the orange trees and a few things on the mantelpiece. Today, however, is Thanksgiving, so the table has been laid with the best cutlery and pewter plates, starched white linen napkins and six candles. A feast has been prepared - pumpkin soup, then turkey and cranberry sauce with pumpkin pie to finish.
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