Children's dreams

Doll's houses and merchants' stores fascinate young and old alike with their wealth of detail. As stages of idealized historical worlds, these miniatures invite you to make exciting discoveries. They contain more "reality" than it first appears. Especially since the 19th century, playing with them has fulfilled children's dreams of slipping into the role of adults. And these in turn used the toys to introduce the adolescents to their later tasks: these included traditional gender roles as well as stockpiling, food preparation, handling kitchen utensils, trading or selling. Department stores and drugstores not only show a selection of goods typical of the time, which corresponded to the upmarket needs of middle-class households. They also provide information about social issues such as furnishings, hygiene, health, industrialization and colonialism. The exhibition shows an extensive selection of historical doll's kitchens and merchants' stores from a top-class private collection. With historical toy miniatures and original objects, the show paints a multifaceted picture of play, learning and life around 1900.