Blount County Public Library staff members have been participating in a miniatures workshop conducted by miniaturist, Beverly Johnson. Their goal has been to restore and furnish a dollhouse. For several hours one evening every week for the past six months, the staff has met after work to paint, furnish, wire, wallpaper, and build pieces for the dollhouse. Wooden shingles were cut and added to the roof, piece by piece. A brass key, fitting a lock on a brass plate and knob that measures about ¾ inch in length, hangs on a hook beside the painted front door.
Created in the fashion of a 1900-1920s-era three-story, white frame farmhouse, the front porch has spindles around its perimeter and a porch swing suspended by tiny silver chains. Decorated for the holidays, the house is adorned by tiny wreaths at the doors and windows. While a mother catnaps with her kitten in front of the fire, a Christmas tree stands by the fireplace, with mounds of wrapped gifts tumbling around it.
Each of the eight rooms is completely furnished with style-appropriate, miniature furnishings, including an upholstered sofa, chair and ottoman, trimmed with miniscule white, lace doilies. A nursery comes complete with cradle, rocking chair, teddy bear, miniature train, braided rug and rocking horse. The kitchen is equipped with a wood-burning cook stove, wooden dining table and four chairs, baby’s high chair, wooden ice box, open shelf dish cabinet, woven cane seat chair, butter churn, stone crock jar, white porcelain sink, blue speckled enamel coffee pot and cooking pans, and a little copper tea kettle.
Regal Towers residents donated the fixer-upper dollhouse to the library after a rummage sale benefit for the library in the spring of 2004.
The library staff that worked on the doll house are Carol Thomas, Louise Johnson, Jean Closz, and Lisa Tipton. Also assisting were Carol and Trace Rule.
Window treatments (drapes and curtains) were sewn by Lisa Tipton, and electrical wiring and lighting for each room was done by the staff under Johnson’s supervision.
The house has eight rooms:
Lower Level Rooms—kitchen & living room with fireplace and “fire.”
Middle Level Rooms—master bedroom and library
Upper Level Rooms—one bedroom, nursery, bathroom and attic “storage room.”
Furniture and furnishings were donated by Friends of the Library, Carol Thomas, Jean Closz, Louise Johnson, Laura Hutchens, and Carol Rule.
The doll house will be on display in the Children’s Library, and the public is welcome to drop by to view it at any time. As other holidays approach, the staff anticipate re-decorating the house appropriately for each event.
The next project is already waiting for attention, a “Tara” (reminiscent of Tara plantation house in the book Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell), doll house donated to the library by John and Anne Scruggs of Friendsville.
The Blount County Library is located at 508 N. Cusick Street, Maryville.
For further information about other library programs or services, call the library at 982-0981 or visit the Web site at www.korrnet.org/bcpl.

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