Miniatures to resolve crimes

Have you heard of Frances Glessner Lee, the "Mother of forensic science" and maker of "the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death"?
Frances Glessner Lee was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1878. Fascinated by crime stories, she wanted to study forensic science, but her father was against it. Forensic science at the time was a men's world. In the thirties, after her father and brother passed away, she inherited the family's fortune and decided to invest it to help forensic science. She founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936. She herself studied the subject around the age of 50. To help "freeze" crime scenes, she combined her hobby of making dollshouses (a popular hobby for women in wealthy families in the early 20th century) with her knowledge of forensics to make miniature crime scenes to help police resolve crime mysteries. She made about 20 nutshells, 18 of which are still used today to train detectives. These "nutshells" are now preserved in Baltimore where she lived, and not open to the public (although it seems they can be viewed by appointement in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner). The dioramas were exhibited from October 2017 till January 2018 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The "nutshells" were made in 1:12 scale, based on actual crimes scenes after extensive research, with objects placed carefully to provide clues to the crimes. They have an amazing level of detail, down to the cigarettes butts in the ashtray (cigatettes she rolled herself with paper and tobacco and half smoked to make them look real), copies of real newspapers, books with real pages, working locks on windows and doors. Fascinating!

Frances Glessner Lee passed away in 1962, leaving an incredible heritage to forensic science and legal medicine.

check out the picture gallery on the website of the Smithsonian American Art Museum here:
https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/nutshells

La maison de poupee bruxelloise

Hello readers,

I've made no progress on the house lately, as I was busy with lots of other things: spending time with my mother, visiting exhibitions, making Christmas cards (another one of my hobbys), daydreaming about the mini house (a lot of that....) and the usual household chores, but you don't want to hear about that.

Exhibitions of miniatures in Brussels are rare enough to give them special attention. « Mini Life » was held at the Porte de Hal in Brussels. It featured old miniatures from the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century.

La Maison de Poupée bruxelloise

The main attraction was « The Brussels dollhouse », labelled La maison de poupée bruxelloise. It was made around 1900 by Jules Charlier, a Belgian engineer and electrician from Brussels. Although it was based on his own house, it’s not an exact copy. While the real house had 3 floors, the miniature only has 2. The real house was located on rue Froissart in Etterbeek, no. 54 (later changed to no. 70 in 1911 due to the expansion of the area). It was demolished in the 1990s and no records have been kept other than a photograph of the facade. According to the family, the miniature took around 10 years to make. Jules Charlier never married and his sister, Jeanne Charlier, gave the dollhouse to her sister-in-law, Marthe Verhas, who then donated it to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in 1941. No-one knows if the inside of the house was copied from the real house, but it does show the style of furniture common in middle-class houses of the early 19th century.
The miniature house opens on both sides

The couryard at the back of the house

More information on the  Brussels dollhsouse and exhibition details can be found in the exhibition brochure (€7.00 – lots of photos) available here: http://www.kmkg-mrah.be/fr/la-maison-de-poup%C3%A9e-bruxelloise.

More photos of the exhibition to come soon....