vintage living room dollhouse

something terrible happened in these dollhouses. maybe a suicide. a murder. a stabbing with an adorable knife. these dollhouses are part of frances glessnerlee’s nutshell studies of unexplained death, which she made in the 1940s and early 50s. they’re in the renwick gallery of the smithsonianamerican art museum for a reason. they’re incredibly detailed —

these cans are all labeled. accurately. and these dollhouses are used by law enforcement to train and to develop analytical capabilities. but these artful dioramas actually containtwo mysteries: what happened in these houses? and why did frances glessner lee spend hertime, and part of her fortune, making them perfect? this is “three-room dwelling,” and it’sa dollhouse murder showstopper.

there are 19 of these dioramas and each onecomes with a backstory, drawn from composite real crimes. in this one, robert, kate, and baby lindamae judson had a nice porch where the milkman stopped by. they were living the american dream untilthe murders happened. “as you start to sort of investigate theevidence... the first time i approached this case, i lookedat it for a couple of hours, i took tons of pictures home and i analyzed them for hours,trying to figure this out, because it doesn’t seem like things add up.

there’s a bloodstain that’s in the baby’sroom but it’s just a blood pool, and there doesn’t seem like there’s any kind oftrail from it, it’s just sitting there. we don’t know what had happened there. there’s bloody footprints that are leadinginto the bedroom, the husband is lying on the ground on some of the bed coverings, wehave no idea how he died, he’s covered in blood all over his pajamas, so it’s veryhard to tell.” three-room dwelling’s morbid details comefrom the same mind that crafted incredibly delicate ones. “there’s this little eggbeater down underthe cubbard here that i like to point out,

and this was apparently originally a solidgold charm from a charm bracelet. the nutshells themselves are lit as the roomswould be, the flashlight helps you find the evidence. there’s quite a lot of evidence in thesepieces that you would probably never discover without it, so it’s a fun thing to havein the exhibition, but it’s also a real training tool for really systematically lookingthrough these pieces.” and you notice the fabric on a chair, theblocks scattered on the porch, and the blood spattered on the baby’s wall. because law enforcement still use these totrain, it’s tempting to play csi with these

murders. but notice that atkinson only broke down thenutshells, she didn't didn’t give away any solutions. that's partly because the solutions are stillkept secret for those in training. but mostly, it’s because the mystery servesa purpose. “the point of the nutshells is not to solvethem. the point is to collect detail.” erin bush saw the nutshells in their homebefore the renwick gallery — the maryland medical examiner's office, where they're usedfor training investigators.

“the goal of the nutshells is to train youreye to see small, minute, seemingly insignificant details that stand out. so the kitchen:it’s spring, 1944 — robin barnes is a housewife. fred barnes, her husband finds her. and the story is, he’s out of the houseto run an errand. he comes home, he looks through the kitchenwindow and he sees her laying on the kitchen floor. he can’t open the door, the door is lockedfrom the inside, the window is locked from

the inside. so he calls the police, the police break thedoor down. so this is what we know when we arrive. she was clearly in the middle of something. she’s clearly preparing a meal. there’s a pie in the stove, there are potatoesin the sink. you don’t commit suicide if you’re inthe middle of dinner. and i think, if you look very closely at thestove, and if you can recognize a 1940s stove, you will see that all the gas jets are on.

there are a lot of weapons in the room. there’s a rolling pin, there’s an iron,there is a knife, on the chair. it’s very possible someone hit her overthe head. if you look very closely at the door, it’sstuffed with newspaper. so now we’re back to suicide. the point, of course, was to recognize thesedetails and to teach investigators how to recognize these details. it was a very different way to investigatecrime than they were used to.” frances glessner lee was an heir to internationalharvester, a company that produced farm equipment

and other machinery. her family made a fortune, a part of whichshe eventually used to fund miniature crime scenes. she endowed harvard’s department of legalmedicine, the first of its kind, and became an honorary police captain. her artistic obsession helped detectives becomemore attentive to crime scenes, relying on evidence instead of hunches. “for me, as a historian, when i look atthem, i don’t think who did it, i think my god why is she inventing this scene theway she’s inventing it, you know, what’s

in her head, and to me that’s fascinating.” lee's nutshells are as complex as the scenesthey depict. they overflow detail: the magazines crumpledon the floor; the apples that will never be eaten; the body that will never move but isso vividly rendered that you can imagine it once did. “on the one hand, she was the young francesglessner who was this philanthropic lady who was brought up in a fine household,and the other half of her personality was captain lee, and those two things did cometogether sometimes.” lee wrote a 1952 article in the journal oflaw and criminology.

“some years ago, the writer was greatlysurprised to learn that nowhere in america was legal medicine, as thus described, beingtaught. the writer has for many years worked sporadicallyat miniatures, hence these presented themselves as the solution.” frances glessner lee died in 1962 of naturalcauses. “it must be understood, these models arenot ‘whodunits’ - they cannot be solved merely by looking at them. they are intended to be an exercise in observing,interpreting, evaluating and reporting-- there is no ‘solution’ to be determined.”

this toy’s only approved for ages...deadand older. “yeaaaahhhhhhh!!!”

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: