Dollhouses and Bookhouses

Today I put a SIM card in my phone, used it for a minute, and left for the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. 

I had not added any data to the card, so it didn't work until later in the day, when I endured the worst breath I've ever encountered to get more data and get my phone working. But anyway, back to the real journey (away from the breath...)!

I love this museum. It's very simple, and it's been designed for kids and adults, but mostly for kids. The displays are close to the ground, there are hobby horses to ride, and some items have moving, touchable, turnable parts. It's neat, but because it serves children for the most part, you get a sort of film on you being there.

But that's ok. TOYS! The toys and games and dolls and cards and books and magic lanterns and everything else you can think of makes it all worth it to an adult who is not visiting the museum with a child in tow. Last time I came here, there was an incredibly moving display on the top floor about children who were displaced during the world wars and sent to live with farmers in America and Australia, and how many of those children were terribly mistreated. I encourage you to research this somewhat forgotten side effect of war.

This time, there wasn't a display like that, but there was an enormous display of doll houses. Seeing so many different kinds built up like a city on the side of a hill was beautiful; the video doesn't do it justice.

What I found even more compelling were the singular doll houses that had been owned, for the most part, by single families, and sometimes by adult women. I'm intrigued by the idea of adult women, with, most likely, their own houses to take care of, playing house with dolls. Theories on the gigantic and the miniature tell us that the miniature gives us a sense of control: something that is tiny in comparison to ourselves not only holds an entire universe within it (think of a tiny book), but is completely within our control because it is so tiny. I imagine these women finding comfort and inspiration in the tiny houses they furnished and decorated, posing the tiny people the way they liked, stuffing the tiny people who had pissed them off that day into a drawer.

Feel free to give me a dollhouse any time, dear reader.

There's me in the mirror!

One dollhouse even had a little solarium:

After the museum and some harried navigation (I'd left with no plan, thinking I had data!), I wound up at the British Library, a building that I love not so much for its books (you can't see most of them), but for the promise it makes. There are books here, and if you want, you can see them. It takes a little effort on your part, an effort I haven't made yet. 

I did buy a silly fancy ink pen in the gift shop, along with some nice cards with archival images. Then I headed to Judd Books and Scoob Books, two close by used bookstores. I highly recommend the second for classics and children's books, though the first has plenty of newer titles to choose from.

At home, Paddington Bear was up to bat—I got a copy of his first adventure at Scoob Books, and I was excited to read about him (I'd only ever seen the stop-motion show when I was a kid!). He's one salty bear from "darkest Peru." I do love him.