The Rosetta Stone Award

Recently I was presented with the Rosetta Stone Award by My Realitty's dolls. I am very honoured - especially as the award was just created by CM and her dolls, so I am the very first recipient (and it's quite exciting to know someone who created a blog award!).


The Rosetta Stone Award, I am informed, is a serious award for scholarship on the history of dollhouses. The dolls said,

This is the first "Rosetta Stone Award". It is given to a dollhouse blogger who has contributed greatly to the information of dollhouse history.

As we all know dollhouses were originally the hobby of rich women or tools to teach girl children to keep house.

Today women all over the world are interested in them. Note the number of bloggers and that Dollhouse blogs are a world unto themselves. Though these houses started as toys and may have led a perilous life, once they are in the harbor of the collector they have a story to tell. This award is to acknowledge the sleuthing it takes to discover that story.

Furthermore this award is issued to only one person, must be kept for 6 months then passed on to another worthy recipient. There are many worthy of this award... ... and this year we are bestowing it on... Rebecca of Rebecca's Collections for her serious and valuable work on English dollhouses.

Thank you very much, CM and your dolls! I appreciate it very much - especially as I completely agree that there are many worthy of the award, and I know that the research I do follows on from the work that others have done.

As some of you know, I love family history research. Researching my own family can be particularly moving, but I also love the thrill of the hunt, when one clue leads on to another - or when you get a bit stuck, and try to think of other ways to approach the problem. I started researching dolls house firms when an article on dolls houses made or sold by the firm C. E. Turnbull was published in the first issue of the Dolls Houses Past and Present online magazine. The author stated that not much was known about the firm, not even an address.

Well, that was a challenge I couldn't resist - and quite an easy one to solve, as this London-based firm existed from the late 19th to the early 20th century, a time for which the UK censuses are available to search online.

So that got me started - and now Florine of My Vintage Dollhouses and other treasures and I are researching the history of dolls houses made by Keystone of Boston, Massachusetts!

I thought about how to celebrate this award - and I decided to make a scene rather like the room where I do my research. I've borrowed the downstairs living room of the Bodensee and filled it with books (borrowed from many other houses too), on bookcases squeezed in everywhere they can fit, with dolls houses on shelves, trolleys, the floor ... and Linda Kimber is modelling me doing research (or possibly browsing ebay ;-) ) on the computer!

I put this scene together, and photographed it - and then thought, but where are the boxes? Because my study has lots of boxes in it - boxes of dolls house furniture I've just received, boxes of stored dolls house furniture, the original boxes for dolls houses and sets of furniture .... So I added some boxes!

It looks like my sister's cats have come to visit, as mine are both black. But they do like to sit with me when I'm working on the computer :-)

Thanks again, CM and your dolls!