- In "The Miniaturist" we see Petronella's doll's house,
and there are really only five surviving doll's houses
from the 17th-century in the Dutch Golden Age,
and here in our galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts
we have a piece that evokes what those doll's houses
might have looked like.
All of the pieces inside of it are from the 17th-
and 18th-century.
I thought I'd start by looking at the entry hall,
this central room,
because it's this transition period between the exterior,
the public life, and the private interior life
of the home.
In "The Miniaturist" we see much of the action,
much of the drama taking place in this kind of limbo space.
It's the place where you would have wanted to show
your wealth, because all of your visitors would come
and go by that space.
We see this beautiful marble floor,
there's a painted ceiling to look like the sky,
and tucked at the back, the blue and white porcelain,
that's Chinese.
It's Kangxi porcelain and it would have been imported
from China by the Dutch East India Company.
- [Male Character] The guilds have a monopoly on trade
and set the prices.
- [Courtney Harris] In this period in the 17th-century
there was a huge influx of wealth coming from
the increased trade, and the Netherlands was really
the center for trade for much of the rest of Europe.
So, people were starting to rise to a new class,
a merchant class.
Showing your wealth was a way of showing that you
had arrived in society.
-I see you are working your usual magic this evening.
-And a way in which they could express their wealth
was by either, for men, collecting art particularly,
or books; and for women, the way in which they could show
their collecting and use their wealth was to have something
like a doll's house.
- You cannot hold wealth, Nella. It's like the sea,
try to hold onto it too tightly and it'll slip
through your fingers like water.
- We see Petronella and her family leading a very different
life publicly than they lead privately,
and that was something that would've been common
in the Dutch Golden Age, where the kind of Calvinist
religious sympathies would've made someone lead a sober life
but at home you would've had other opportunities
in which to lead a more opulent and extravagant life.
While you might not have been able to furnish your home
richly and lavishly, you could furnish your miniature
home in that way.
These doll's houses are very much tied to women.
They are not for children, they were not toys.
We think of them more as truly collector's pieces
at this point, and someone like Petronella Oortman,
who received it as a gift upon her marriage,
that's very common.
Almost all of the surviving doll's houses in the Netherlands
today are tied to a marriage.
- [Man] A wedding gift. For you.
- [Harris] When we see Petronella's doll's house arrive,
we see that it's actually a piece of furniture up on legs,
so that the rooms are at eye level, all the better
for viewing and for manipulating the figures within
and the pieces within, and it also has doors on it
so that you would've had this moment when
you would've opened them up and revealed the interior
to your guests, who might've come specifically to see it.
While women in the Dutch Golden Age might not have had
much agency outside of the home, the doll's house was
a place in which they could have dominion over it.
It was like a miniature home that they would control,
they would commission pieces for it.
They could take ownership of something.
It was a way that they could work with craftsmen,
go to shops, furnish these homes with
a wide range of materials.
In our doll's house here, most of the pieces are silver.
That would've been the highest example of wealth,
but there are also pieces in porcelain, paintings,
pen and ink drawings, a wide range of materials.
This room here is the best room or salon and we can tell
at a glance that it's meant to be one of the spaces
for receiving visitors.
We have this beautiful marquetry inlaid floor
and the walls are covered in fabric as well.
And, again, we have a painted ceiling here with birds.
This room would've been for receiving guests,
you might have dined there,
and here we have it set up as though it's a kind
of music or a gaming room.
We have a virginal here and a keyboard instrument
on the table, there's a viola da gamba and a trumpet,
and then on the wall, a number of pen and ink drawings,
some of seascapes.
A doll's house like you would see in "The Miniaturist"
would have been incredibly valuable,
and we know this because we have a first-hand account
from 1718.
Petronella Oortman's doll's house, the one now
in the Rijksmuseum, had descended to her daughter
and was available for visitors to visit in Amsterdam.
We have someone who visits from Germany who actually
writes in his journal that it would've cost
twenty to thirty thousand guilders, which would be
the equivalent of a fully furnished canal home
of the period.
- [Female] A family could live on that for years.
If you had money to spare you should've given
it to the church.
- Enough of your piety.
- Another symbol of wealth in the 17th-century would
be having white, clean, well-pressed linens.
It meant that you had the money to pay someone
to take care of your linens for you,
likely meant that you could pay to have them go out
of the home, or that you had a servant specially
dedicated to caring for your linens,
and that's why there's an entire room dedicated to that.
We have an iron here on the table,
and then against the wall a small linen press,
so I think the fact that there
are surviving silver miniatures
related to linens is a symbol
of how important linens were to the household.
This doll's house has two kitchens in it.
I'm going to focus on this kitchen.
It's called the display kitchen,
and it wouldn't have actually been used by the servants
or for any practical purpose.
It's really, again, about showing your wealth.
- [Man] The world in a set of plates.
- [Harris] One of my favorite pieces in
the entire doll's house is here in the front.
It's a wicker basket, it's actually made in a technique
of silver called wirework.
It's very thin strands of silver that
have been woven together to make the impression of wicker.
Here in the top left corner we can see a small bird's cage
with a bird inside of it and Peebo features prominently
in "The Miniaturist" and he's often relegated
to the kitchen as I guess this bird was as well.
- Hello.
- You can also see just the wide range of different shapes
and sizes for silver.
We know quite a lot about these silver pieces because
when a maker creates a piece of silver, they mark it with
a symbol that identifies it as theirs, and they also
put something that identifies the year that it was made
and the city that it was made.
We know that the pieces within this doll's house were
made in over five different cities within Holland
and by more than 25 makers.
As an art historian, that type of information is hugely
valuable, and the fact that it's miniature
is all the better.