Ever wanted to stand inside a historic Dollshouse? Now you can!

Hello my friends, 

Last week I attended a businessmeeting wich was held in the historical center of city of Utrecht. During our lunch break I walked over to the Centraal Museum in Utrecht where they display the oldest of all the remaining Dutch Cabinethouses still in (known) existence. The house of Petronella de la Court. 

I was not planning on entering the museum, since the second half of the course I attended was to begin soon. I only wanted to buy a new book that has been published concerning this cabinet house. "Een huyshouding in' t klein"  written by Margreet dan der Hut. 

To my surprise, the woman who helped me in the museum shop told me that they were dismantling the dollshouse, to put it in storage. They will renovate the museum building and therefor everything needs to be put away safely into the museum's depot. 

The video at the beginning of this post is a short stopmotion film where you can see some of the rooms being emptied of their miniature contents. 

I wanted to see a glimpse of the empty house and bought a museum ticket. Whenever will I get this chance again? unfortunately the curators were on a lunchbreak as well (which makes sense) so I could not talk to them and ask them a few questions. 

 Moving the house and its contents into the depot is quite a job, because the house consists of 1,500 parts. A miniature bookcase, a scaled violin, a few centimeter long waffle iron... you name it.

 Everything has to be filed, photographed, packed, and prepared for the move, piece by piece. So you see here the makeshift studio in the museum where they catalog and pack all the miniatures. 

 But what is all that talk about standing inside a dollshouse? Did I try to stick my feet into the empty rooms while noone was looking? Certainly not! But for the year that the renovation of the building is being carried out and the dollhouse of Petronella de la court is not on view, the museum has made a virtual tour of the house. See this link to the website with the virtual tour.

 You can "enter" every room and look around in 360 degrees. In some rooms there is extra information (look for the + symbols inside the room) on certain objects. in the 'Saletkamer'you can click on the music stand in the middel of the room. there you can listen to 5 short fragments of music. It is the music that is actualy written on the original mini music sheets you see in the room. they are played on original instuments. The music may, or not, be your taste but I think it is wonderful to know that the music sheets contain actual contemporary melodies and are not just decorative scribbles. But then again, if you see the details and objects petronella collected for her cabinet house, you really need not expect anything less than real sheet music. 

 I am happy that I could get a glimpse of the dollshouse being emptied and made ready for storage. And I love it that the Centraal Museum has made this video and virtual tour for us all to watch and enjoy! I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I do.

And with this post I will leave you for my summer break. My own move to our new house is coming closer every day. I hope to meet you all again here in september.

Huibrecht