This warm interior is that of a doll house, which Michele Simmons, a 57 -year -old American, admires in a London festival.
“I love Victorian houses (from the 19th century) and I always dreamed of living in one, but it never happened. So I console myself with that,” laughs this recruiter, faced with this scene made by the company specializing in historic interiors Mulvany & Rogers.
Michele Simmons fell back into his childhood passion during the Cavid-19 pandemic. Since then, she has “renovated” a dozen miniature houses which she then sold.
She and her daughter did not hesitate to take a night flight from Boston, in the United States, to come to the Kensington doll’s house in London last week.
“I love it! When you immerse yourself, you don’t think about anything else,” she said to AFP.
Since 1985, the London festival has brings together some of the best miniaturist craftsmen in the world, capable of making chandeliers, tables, mahogany dining tables, trinkets or kitchen utensils.
If the doll houses are rather reminiscent of children’s toys, here they are mainly adults who crowd in the aisles, and spend at least fifty euros to add a room to their collection.
“These are craftsmen who create absolutely exquisite things”, ranges Rachel Collings, 47-year-old editor, who has just bought “half a lemon”, “a juice, a baking brush and manual whip that really works!”.
“Escape”
Susan Evans, 67, a retired midwife who came as every year in Wales, pushed his passion even further.
“I have a whole village,” she said, listing “18 Victorian shops, a school, a manor, a pub, and now a church”, which she bought for more than 4,700 euros.
At the start, this passion simply helped him to evacuate stress after exhausting guards but today the visits she organizes at her house allow her to harvest thousands of pounds sterling for the local hospice.
“It’s escape and it is also a way of making your imagination work, which is excellent for mental health,” she says.
Medical anthropologist Dalia Iskander, from the University College London (UCL), spent three years studying the subject for his next book entitled “Miniature Antidotes”.
“For many people, it is a way of exploring their own experiences, their memories, their imagination, and to integrate all this into these miniature worlds,” she explains.
Health problems such as depression, anxiety or social disorders such as compulsive accumulation can be discussed through miniatures, and this practice can have beneficial effects for people, she adds.
The tradition of dollhouses dates back to the 16th century, when they were used to represent the wealthy heritage in miniature.
Charlotte Stokoe, organizer of the Kensington Festival, explains that they are experiencing a huge craze from the Pandemic of Covid-19.
“When the world is going a little crazy and stress is everywhere, it’s relaxing. We have control,” she said, adding that many people came back at this hobby after having lifted boxes their old doll houses during confinements.
And at a time when prices are soaring, people can “make the interior decoration that they may not have the means to do at home”.
“When everything is difficult, there are these little things. (…) Sometimes I sit to look at them, and it makes me happy,” says Rachel Collings.