Paxton House has shrunk! As part of our new exhibition, Life in Miniature, we are featuring three of the principal interiors in 1/12 scale. The dolls’ house sized rooms were given to the Paxton House Trust by the family of Ken and Nancy James who were inspired to copy the Drawing Room, Dining Room and Picture Gallery in incredible tiny detail when they visited in the 1990s.

When Sandi Toksvig (only 5ft tall) hosted Channel 4’s latest reality TV show, The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge, this Spring, the programme highlighted a growing fascination with creating miniatures as a hobby. Not since the 1700s, have dolls’ houses been quite so desirable. Right on trend, Paxton House had already launched plans for the new exhibition Life in Miniature, now running in the Hayloft Gallery and already a hit with visitors.

The James’ recreation of the period interiors at Paxton are astonishingly intricate, setting a quality standard for all the makers featured in the exhibition. The Paxton interiors, which first inspired the exhibition, are joined by a dolls’ house from the attics which was played with by past generations of the Home family of Paxton and a range of characterful houses from local makers and enthusiasts. While there is something irresistible about the detail of the tiny interiors and objects on display, the exhibition also reveals something interesting about the human relationship with tiny objects.

Miniature houses are a chance to show off (or learn) all sorts of skills. Woodwork skills are important, particularly for our Wealden Tudor House, but so are needlework skills for making soft furnishings, rugs and clothing and modelling skills for sculpting objects. The makers of all the houses in the exhibition are experts at knitting with thread on pins, carving with scalpels and sculpting with tweezers. Everything is tiny and the lights really work.

Some makers love a story. Local maker, Hazel Wight, couldn’t resist inventing a complete backstory for the inhabitants of her houses – there are 9 in the exhibition – so we have Victorian pub keepers, musical families, retired couples and locals visiting the Berwick Quilters’ annual show. Professional maker, Lucy Askew, tells stories through exquisite miniatures made for major international exhibitions. Her exhibit at Life in Miniature is drawn from some of the most famous interiors of the eighteenth century. Bringing things right up to date, local collectors have loaned a range of contemporary Objects of Desire, all tiny of course, handbags, shoes, ivory brushes and combs and exquisite musical instruments.

Psychologists, it turns out, love dolls’ houses. One of the reasons we are drawn to dolls’ houses is because they give us a space to create order in our increasingly busy and chaotic lives. The East Linton House in the exhibition, originally a gift from a railway miniaturist to his wife, is a great example.  She must have relished controlling domestic space that was entirely hers and did not have to include space for train tracks.

Life in Miniature shows that all miniature makers are perfectionists. The level of detail means that however long you peer at one of these tiny rooms, there is still more to discover. Come and enjoy escaping into a series of small ordered worlds, each a work of art in its own right.

Life in Miniature runs until October 2022 in the Hayloft Gallery at Paxton House.  Entrance is free.