New Documentary 'Of Dolls & Murder' Explores Macabre in Miniature

Created by Frances Glessner Lee over almost a decade, the collection was designed as a tool for crime solving. By peering into the tiny world, detectives could analyze the clues and learn how to ask the right questions from an exclusive vantage point.

For Lee, every element of the scene was significant. She took care to treat every aspect with equal care, from knitting socks on tiny straight pins to asking a carpenter to create tiny working locks for the doors. With no tiny detail taken for granted, finding the clues that mattered became a much more challenging feat, but also a more fruitful opportunity.

Filmmaker Susan Marks encountered the Nutshells long ago, and years later was still fascinated. Marks decided the best way to get over "that haunting" would be to make a documentary film. 'Of Dolls and Murder', narrated by Baltimore native John Waters, takes the viewer into the real world of forensics starting with the Nutshells and visiting morgues, TV crime drama's, and detective headquarters along the way. The macabre miniatures, however, remain the focus of the film as Waters tells the story of each crime scene.

Film co-producer John Dehn was on the fence about the project until he encountered the dollhouses in person.

"You become immersed in them in a way that, if it was not done so well, you wouldn't," he says. "You can actually go down in there like you're six inches tall. Because of the detail, the effect is much more."

Over the years, the Nutshells proved to be so helpful that they are still used today as a teaching tool. Science and innovation, it seems, are no replacement for investigatory skills.

"You can have all the latest technology in the world," says Marks, "but it doesn't change the fact that if you read the crime scene wrong, all that science isn't going to help you.

Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death [Frances Glessner Lee]

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death were a series of intricately designed dollhouse-style dioramas created by Frances Glessner Lee.

Frances Glessner Lee designed detailed – almost obsessive – scenarios, based on composites of real criminal acts, and presented them physically in miniature. Students were instructed to study the scene and draw conclusions from the evidence presented. Lee used her inheritance to set up Harvard’s department of legal medicine, and donated the Nutshell dioramas in 1945 for use in her lectures on the subject of crime scene investigation. In 1966 the department was dissolved, and the dioramas went to the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office; there, Harvard Magazine reports that they are still used for forensic seminars.

In 2004 a photobook by Corinne May Botz containing 130 photos of Lee’s dolls’ houses is published

What Do Therapists Use to Cure and Treat Children's Mental Health?

Play is a child’s natural way to explore their world. Children also use play to find solutions to problems. Play can be healing. Children’s thoughts and emotions come to the surface during play. You can often find out more about how a child views the world by watching and joining in their play than you can by asking them to tell you what is wrong, or asking why they did something.

"Very young children lack the ability to articulate what is troubling them. Through play therapy, they can express themselves nonverbally".

Psychologists use play therapy, to treat children. Here, instead of asking young patients what the problem is, the therapist provides them with drawing materials and toys, on the assumption that whatever is troubling them will be expressed in their drawings and games.

The main goals of play therapy include allowing a child to communicate his or her feelings, heal externalizing conflicts, master anxiety, take a respite from internal pressure and exercise new solutions of problems.

Trend: The Greatest Pleasure In Life, Is Doing What People Say You Cannot Do...

Unfortunately today, we see young children choosing electronic games instead of old traditional toys.

Children playing computer games have been the subject of widespread talk in the media this week, but it seems that UK parents think gaming is good for their children.

Research has shown that there have been an increasing number of studies that have raised increasing concern over the effect that electronic games and toys are having upon the psychological and physical health of children, which have focused upon issues such as aggression, self esteem and obesity. Moreover, such toys, because they often require the child to concentrate upon the activities taking place on the screen, and that they are played by an individual child, have an adverse effect upon that child’s social interaction and communication skills.

Therefore, my proposed Campaign for the DHE brand will focus on the above issue.

A Doll's House: A woman's world of adventures, fantasies, dreams and desires

No matter what we do, miniatures and dolls houses will always remain a keepsake and a Heirloom in our hearts! I've noticed that once we encounter a miniature shop or a DHE section in Hamleys or Harrods, we become so excited and our psychology immediately rises to a high level! There's always something about miniatures and collectibles that constantly appeals and attracts all sorts of people!

Following, are some videos that I recently spotted and they all have included a Doll's House from the DHE brand.

Price Tag by Jessie J. Price ft B.O.B

Tescos Insurance Ad

Mark-Ronson Record Collection Ad

Lady causes havoc in Churchill shop home insurance advert

Miniatures and dolls houses in Fashion Spreads - Photo Shoots!

Tim Walker

Anne Liebovitz

A Doll's house is a mini masterpiece

Click on the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8094225.stm

I'm thinking of using and referencing this video for my Final Presentation.

Doll's House: A Family's Portrait and Representations

Queen Mary's five foot tall Dolls' House opens its tiny doors to the public

At five feet tall, this miniature house is priceless. From the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in the garage to the original works by Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling, it is a perfectly preserved piece of history.

Designed by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and built in 1924 for Queen Mary, wife of George V, the dolls house reveals a small slice of the royals' high life.

Its tiny contents, on a scale of one inch to one foot, range from the Lux flakes by the kitchen sink to electricty, running water and even a lift.

The house -- now on show at Windsor Castle - has such attention to detail that it has proved to be a valuable document of social history, according to author Lucinda Lambton in her new book,The Queen's Dolls' House.

The glimpse into a bygone age was inspired by Princess Marie Louise, Queen Vicoria's grand-daughter, who asked Lutyens, the architect of the Cenotaph, to build it for Queen Mary.

She was a famous and obsessive collector of 'tiny craft' and the gift would be a mark of nation's thanks for her public loyalty during the First World War.

'There could be no better gift for her than a dolls' house filled with diminutive treasures,' said Lucinda.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323346/Queens-Dolls-House-miniature-library-opens-public-Windsor-Castle.html#ixzz1CoykRDQP

Doll's Houses: Miniature Marvels for the Interiors

This is a magnificent 18th-century wedding cake of a house, five storeys piled high with strings of grand rooms, attics, panelling, ornate plasterwork and an architectural masterpiece of a staircase. It is a small palace fit for a duke and duchess, all limestone dressings and Doric columns. Servants’ quarters, kitchens, pantries and sculleries are buried in the basement. It needs total decoration.

All doll’s house makers say that nine out of 10 of their sales go to adults. Thousands of them attend dedicated doll’s house festivals around Europe. “It gives them back a bit of their lost youth. Most of them are in their mid-sixties and they always say they wanted a doll’s house when they were young,” Mark (The doll's house maker) says. “A doll’s house is an asset, because it goes up in value more than money in a bank account. And it is all about having the fantasy house that you can’t afford to buy.”

Much of the value is in the interior décor. “You can buy furniture room sets for £15 to £20 each, or you can go to proper craftsmen who will make furniture with inlaid marquetry at £400 to £500 a room. It isn’t the houses so much as the things which go in them which are valuable. You can get chandeliers, flock wallpapers, table settings, anything,” Mark adds. Fully decorated, Ashworth Grange could be worth £40,000 to £50,000.

Researching into Miniatures

I always had a passion for Miniatures! In fact I am a collector myself and I decided to incorporate this into my Uni's (PR) Final project.

Above, are some pictures of a Hobbit Miniature Doll's House! Today, collectors and hobbyists create their own themed doll's house. They do it more as a hobby, A Therapeutic Hobby!