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