The old white-columned traditional house had seen better days. Its wallpaper was peeling and its family members had long since moved on to parts unknown. But the good bones were there in that 1950s home, and it was restored through the imagination of an artist.
This remodel wasn’t the stuff of HGTV. The home in question is a dollhouse, but it is priceless to Marquin Campbell. It was her grandmother who first gave it life.
Dollhouse-Project-Marquin-Campbell
“She was the first Marquin, and she built it from a kit,” Campbell said. “I think it was a little Sears kit. You could go and order all sorts of things from the Sears catalog. I’ve even found out people could order houses. This was a kit that she put together for my mom, and it was my sister’s dollhouse while we were growing up. I had a different one that we lost along the way. I have a daughter, so my mother gave it to me, and it was really in total disrepair.”
Sourcing and painting a whole (tiny) house renovation
The project was meant to be.
“I had been looking at it for a while, and it just kind of felt like an inevitable project that I needed to take on,” Campbell said. “I’ve been inspired by the dollhouse trend and all that people have done, and there’s just so many resources for getting miniature things now, especially with the internet, so I just utilized Etsy and Amazon and lots of little stores that I found and patched her back together.”
Dollhouse-Project-Halloween-fun
When Campbell and her sister were little, they exchanged furniture between their two dollhouses.
“The families would get together and have parties,” she said.
Campbell’s own art is among The Campbell Collective pieces sold online and at Cottage Grove Vintage Market. Her weekly visits to the market also turned into sourcing for her pint-sized renovation.
“I would find small little pots and things, and I’ve used whatever I could from there that just looked like it would work the right way,” she said.
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Dollhouse-Project-house-interior
Campbell bought a guitar for one of the children’s bedrooms from the gift shop at the Carl Sandburg Home in Flat Rock. Wallpaper was sourced from Teresa Roche, and original art fills the walls. The new dollhouse family was sourced from Germany via Heirloom Art Company in Utah. Each piece is thoughtful and carefully chosen, but the entire set is meant to be enjoyed. It’s a toy, after all, and Campbell loves that her own daughter now holds the title to this family home.
“My grandmother passed away in August, but she loved it,” Campbell said of the renovation. “I love that she got to see the dollhouse finalized, and I think she thought it was really funny how I was decorating it for all the holidays.”
A project born of patience and creativity
Since Campbell has shared photos of the seasonal decorations on social media, she said people have been sending her pieces to add. It’s all part of the fun of this special family memory that has been given new life.
“I didn’t give myself a timeline for it,” she said. “It took me about a year just to collect and install the things, and that really made it fun for me not to say I’ve got to get this done in a week. It was really nice just to go at my own pace and find things along the way and just be surprised by what I found and where I found it, because I found things for it truly all over the place. But it allowed me to live out some fantasies that I don’t have the budget for in my own home.”
Though this is a one-of-a-kind creation, Campbell said she always loved dollhouses – her family’s, a friend’s that she remembered from childhood, and even one from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History that she saw in elementary school.
Dollhouse Project Christmas
“I’ve always known I wanted to do some version of this,” she said. “I do think it goes back to showing children as many different things as you possibly can while they’re growing up, because those things stay with them and can inspire something much later. Taking your children to museums – you never know what can come out of that.”
Keep up with the dollhouse and Campbell’s art and creative pursuits at marquindesigns.com and instagram.com/marquincampbell.
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This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Four generations leave their mark on a dream dollhouse