Odessa's House

I recently won this wonderful dolls house on ebay. It was in a Sydney suburb not far from where my sister lives, so it was only a short drive to go and pick it up.

The house is made largely of plywood, and there are some small areas of damage. But what an amazing facade! As you can see, there are two entrances at ground level - the arched opening in the centre, with a seat on each side of the arch, and tall (7") doors under a porch roof at the left. On the first floor above the central arch is a small balcony with double doors again  - and at the side, a single door opening to a large roof terrace.

Some features of this house - the arches, the circular fretwork windows, the roof terrace - make me think of Moorish or Middle Eastern architecture. The plywood stencils of a camel and a bear add to this impression. We think the two animals on either side of the arched entrance are goats - what do you think?

The whole front of the house lifts away. Inside the double doors is the hallway and stairs. On a small door to a cupboard under the stairs is another plywood animal - a donkey, I think. And leading in to the next room is a large archway, with little round tables at the base of the arch. (One of these is broken, but there are more between the other rooms.)

Above each room, at the front, the plywood is shaped to form something like a proscenium arch or drapery. I'm sorry I didn't take a photo of the whole house open, so you could see them in each room. You can see them clearly in some of the photos of individual rooms, including this one:

This is the room that the arched entryway leads into. I found it a bit hard to arrange furniture in here - it seems natural to make it a living room, but the lounge chairs and sofa, and the small kidney-shaped table, make it a bit full - and it would be hard to enter through the arch!

This room is on the right side of the ground floor, under the roof terrace. I have placed a dresser and table with matching chairs here - I think this is the kitchen, although no stove or fire came with the house.

Upstairs on the left, the stairs lead to this landing. The green bench is removable - it is built to fit around the balustrade.

As you can see, all the floors in the house are covered with the same lino. In fact, the green base at the front of the house is lino too, which has been painted green.

I have placed the wardrobe in this room, with a matching chair - but there is no bed! My sister said that the people who live here must be party animals - there's nowhere to sleep, and nowhere to cook, either, so they must always buy takeaway food!

Through the door on the right of this room is the roof terrace.

I mentioned that the walls of this house are made of plywood. The furniture is mostly solid wood, although two of the tables have formica tops. The windows have a hard kind of plastic, like the kind that used to be used in shirt boxes, fixed between inner and outer fretwood frames. The flooring is hardboard, covered with the lino - you can see the underside of the hardboard in this photo:

(I haven't cleaned the undersides of the roof or floors yet!)

The roof is made of plywood over wooden struts, and the coloured tiles on the roof top are plywood too.

The base is interesting - the ground floor, like the first floor, is hardboard, but the frame is made of planks of solid wood, one of which has printed on it SYDNEY NSW AUSTRALIA. The base of more letters can just be seen above this, but not enough of the letters is visible to work out what it says.

The ebay seller I bought this from had bought it for her daughter Odessa, probably about 10-15 years ago. I don't know who made it, or when. It is probably homemade, perhaps in about the 1950s (going by the presence of both the lino and the formica) - or perhaps earlier, as the architraves and arches also have an Arts and Crafts look about them.

I'm not sure yet who will live here. What do you think? What does this house make you think of?  What kind of dolls do you think would like to live here?