With her granddaughter’s birthday quickly approaching, Joanie Gottlieb was stuck on what to get that might please a newly six-year-old. Most toys on the market were entertaining, sure, but didn’t exactly possess the specialness or heart-warming feeling that she wanted to provoke in Gigi, her granddaughter. Luckily, a good friend told her a story of how she was recently cleaning out her attic and stumbled across an old dollhouse that her father had created for her daughter, who is now 44 and pregnant. Rather than leaving it up there, she plans to preserve her father’s craftsmanship and give it to her new grandchild. Well, there’s an idea!
Gottlieb began researching. She had made one house in the past, as a fun project, and ended up selling it by chance on Facebook Marketplace. But this project required even more extensive planning. She worked to specialize the farmhouse with small pieces of love: headphones on a chair because Gigi loves music, a pink bedspread because it’s Gigi’s favorite color and a picture of herself and her husband above the fireplace in the main family room.
“I was trying to think of something that I could do for her that was handmade and may be an heirloom,” Gottlieb said. “I wanted to give her something that she could proudly say ‘Oh, my grandmother made this for me.’”
Gigi’s dollhouse, as it is now labeled, took about two months. Gottlieb’s passion for this unique craft, however, has stretched on for about six.
The house she had made previously had a modern-Victorian style, which she, of course, added her own touch to.
“I didn’t bring it to the past,” Gottlieb said. “I kept it as if someone had renovated it, and took out some details I didn’t really like, like arched windows or bricked exterior. That one sold right away.”
With attention growing among friends and strangers alike on Facebook, one man reached out asking for a personalized, masculine house for his apartment. With that, her craft grew into a full-time hobby and part-time job. She is currently working on this newest house, which is a bit of a change from the houses she normally makes. She plans for it to be three stories, and to incorporate a music room, inspired by the man for whom she is making it.
“The inspiration for this one is the man himself,” Gottlieb said. “For the houses, a little bit of it is who you are building it for, a little is the general style of the house.”
And each house’s completion is no small feat. It takes an average of three months from start to finish, beginning with Gottlieb ordering the cutouts online. Once they arrive in a 50 pound flatbox, she has to saw out the pieces and tape them together to visualize what it might look like in the end.
“Then you take it apart again so you can do the wallpaper, the floors, the painting, the windows,” Gottlieb said. “Everything has to be done in stages because if you glue it together at the beginning, it is impossible to decorate it. Every single floor has to be perceived.”
If she can’t make something herself, she gets most of her decorations or supplies from Etsy. When she bought her first dollhouse template, she received a postcard directing her towards companies on Etsy who sell miniatures.
“I stumbled into a world that I had no idea existed,” Gottlieb said.
She has received items ranging from beds from Australia to brick-work from Greece, but mentioned that her favorite experience was attending the Philadelphia Miniatures Convention with her husband, where she met thousands of vendors selling things from kitchenware to functional lighting fixtures. Everything was handmade, and everything was tiny.
She hopes to continue on with her work, potentially even turning her business into a website. For now, she is sticking with making houses for loved ones, and embracing her imaginative side.
“My favorite part is the creativity,” Gottlieb said. “I try to make each one different. I try to get better at each one. I look at the mistakes I make with each one.”
And mistakes do happen. In Gigi’s house, Gottlieb spent a lot of time constructing an intricate chandelier, only for it to fall and break when she attempted to glue it to the ceiling. For anyone interested in learning more about what it takes to be an expert dollhouse-creator, she yields a piece of advice.
“You need a lot of patience,” Gottlieb said. “Sometimes glue doesn’t stick, wallpapers curl, chandeliers fall and break. You need a lot of patience because you are working on a very small thing in a very small space. There are going to be failures. Learn from it, and move on and grow.”
For business inquiries, email [email protected].
