Take a Virtual Tour of This Lavish Dollhouse, the Centerpiece of a New Exhibition on Everyday Life in the 17th Century

Helena Bonham Carter provides an English-language tour of the Rijksmuseum’s miniature masterpiece, which stands at about six and a half feet tall

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

October 24, 2025

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In one of Amsterdam’s most well-known art museums, where visitors from around the world flock to ogle at famous masterpieces, the quotidian is now taking center stage for a unique exhibition—and it isn’t nearly as mundane as it may sound.

“Those paintings were the Instagram of the 17th century—they sketched out the ideal image,” curator Sara van Dijk tells Dutch News’ Senay Boztas. “But of course it wasn’t like this in reality, and we focus on the actual objects like a broom, the normal things that everyone had at home.”

Now on view at the Rijksmuseum, “At Home in the 17th Century” is serious about celebrating myriad experiences of life in the Netherlands in the 1600s. According to the exhibition description, these range from “big families to single individuals; the rich and the poor; migrants and merchants; Protestants, Jews and Catholics.”

The 195 objects on display are a departure from typical museum artifacts. The exhibition features lice combs, bladder stones and corsets, according to FAD magazine’s Marta Bogna-Drew. Other artifacts shed light on intimate scenes: a bed warmer for women whose husbands were away, food and bone remains collected from a 17th-century cesspit, a cobweb brush used for daily chores, and a toothpick and ear spoon cleaner that doubles as a piece of jewelry.

Rather than white museum walls, the exhibition’s nine galleries make generous use of cardboard to present many of the items on view. According to the show’s designer, Steef De Jong, who has also used cardboard in stage design for the National Opera, the material helps visitors connect with those living 400 years ago.

“It’s a story from morning to night, a dialogue between historical domestic objects and humble cardboard,” De Jong tells FAD magazine. “I wanted visitors to feel they were walking through a house that still remembers the people who lived there.”

But the exhibition’s centerpiece is the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman, a wealthy Dutch woman who lived from 1656 to 1716. She commissioned the construction of the miniature mansion when she was 30. According to the New York Times’ Nina Siegal, the project was as expensive as building a real mansion on Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal.

The house—which stands more than six feet tall and is made from oak with a tortoiseshell veneer—was moved to the exhibition from the museum’s permanent display. It contains more than 700 items, bought from local silversmiths and designers in Africa, India, China and Japan.

The mansion was previously home to 27 tiny dolls, though only one remains today. Visitors to the exhibition can see a small baby doll sitting in the armchair in the house’s living room.

“You can tell that the women who assembled these cabinets of curiosities really paid as much attention to the laundry room, the kitchen, the attic—to make sure that they were completely stocked and equipped with everything necessary for running a home,” Alexander Dencher, a furniture curator at the Rijksmuseum, tells the Times. “So everything from dusters to brooms to buckets is present, and as much attention and care is lavished on these rooms as the more luxurious spaces.”

Those who can’t make their way to Amsterdam before the exhibition closes in January are in luck. Oortman’s dollhouse has been digitized, with an online tour presented in English by the actress Helena Bonham Carter.

“At Home in the 17th Century” is on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam through January 11, 2026.

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.