Doll's House of Sara Rothé

In April 1743 an Amsterdam newspaper advertised the auction of three doll's houses, and Sara Rothé, a well-off Amsterdam collector, bought all three for 1,000 guilders. Two of them had once belonged to Cornelia van der Gon, widow of the Amsterdam architect Adriaan Dortsman. Rothé had the three rebuilt into two. This is one of them, and the other is in the Kunstmuseum in The Hague. Houses like these were costly showpieces kept by well-to-do women. Closed, this one looks like an ordinary cabinet. The outer doors open on the front of a canal house, and the inner doors on its rooms, furnished at about one tenth of real size with nearly 1,000 objects. Much of the tiny silver and furniture was made by craftsmen who produced the full-size versions, and Rothé probably did the sewing and embroidery herself. In the library, the books can actually be read.