Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by anna from milwaky, WI. anna Wonders, “What is the smallest house in America?” Thanks for WONDERing with us, anna!
Do you like to play with dolls? Of course, some of our male Wonder Friends might say, “No!" But we bet everyone likes to play with dolls from time to time. They just might not always be called dolls. Sometimes we call them “action figures."
If you've ever played with dolls or action figures, you know that one of the most fun things to do with them is to create places for them to live. These might take the form of dollhouses or even more elaborate outdoor activity areas.
The charm of many toys kids enjoy is that they take real-world items and reduce them down to a manageable size to play with. We often call these smaller versions of things miniatures. In addition to dolls or action figures, you might also have played with various other types of miniatures, such as toy cars.
But how are these miniature versions of things made? Do toy companies use a shrink ray? Nope! It might sound like it should be easy to make a small version of something, but it can actually be quite difficult and take a lot of time to do correctly.
Someone making a miniature toy home — what we often call a dollhouse — must pay attention to all sorts of details. For example, scale is one important consideration.
If a door of a real house is 6 feet tall and the door on your dollhouse is 6 inches tall, you'll need to reduce everything else according to the same scaled set of dimensions for it to look right. The most common scale for adult collectors of dollhouses is 1:12 scale, which is also called one-inch scale where 1 foot of actual size is represented by 1 inch in the miniature version.
In addition, as you make things smaller, it can be easy to lose the intricate details that can easily be seen on something in its actual size. The best dollhouse makers spend hours creating miniature versions of everything within a house while maintaining all of the details of the original items.
Miniature homes have been hand-crafted for thousands of years. Some of the oldest examples have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. More modern dollhouses date back over 400 years in Europe. The first dollhouses were all handmade, but over time they began to be made in factories and sold inexpensively in stores.
Today, making miniature dollhouses is a popular hobby for many adults. While some dollhouses are still made entirely by hand, others come in kits that can then be assembled over time. Interior decorations, such as furniture, dolls and household items, can be purchased at special hobby stores or made from scratch.
