As part of a new exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., twelve dollhouses tracing the history of British domesticity have been lent by London's Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood. The show?Small Stories: At Home in a Dollhouse?spans 300 years and presents a miniature-sized, up-close-and-personal view of developments in architecture and design ? from lavish country mansions, to an urban high-rise.

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

As part of a new exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., twelve dollhouses tracing the history of British domesticity have been lent by London's Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood. The show?Small Stories: At Home in a Dollhouse?spans 300 years and presents a miniature-sized, up-close-and-personal view of developments in architecture and design ? from lavish country mansions, to an urban high-rise.
Displayed chronologically, Small Stories encompasses a stately home, a lodging house, a suburban villa, and a wartime council estate. According to the curators, the "exhibition take[s] visitors on a journey through the history of the home, everyday lives, and changing family relationships." The imagined stories of each house are brought to life by the characters who live or work there?the owners, tenants, children, and servants?as day-to-day life is illuminated through tales of marriage...