Miniatures Museum of Taiwan

In his largely autobiographical work Fusheng Liu Ji (published by Penguin as Six Chapters of a Floating Life), Qing-dynasty author Shen Sanbai (1763-1808) recalls fondly his flights of fancy as a child in his father's garden in Suzhou: "I used to like to crouch down-in little hollows in the garden wall, for example, or perhaps between the big brick planters-and imagine that I had melted into the scenery. Each stalk of grass became a tree, each clump a forest. The bugs transmogrified into ferocious beasts. Random bumps served as hills, while small impressions were my valleys. I traveled the length and breadth of my world effortlessly." Miniature worlds also make appearances in Western literature, most notably on the isle of Lilliput in Gulliver's Travels. This story has been a favorite among children around the world for nearly 200 years.

The idea of an imaginary miniature world become real is one that seemingly everyone has entertained at one time or another, and it has been represented in art in many ways. China has its bonsai, miniature rock gardens, calligraphy on grains of rice, and jewelry boxes. The West has its eggshell sculpture and model cars. And what could be more representative of miniaturized art than the dollhouses that are so popular in Europe, North America, and Japan? Although not too many people in Taiwan have dollhouse miniatures, you can find the world's second-largest miniatures museum (and the first of its kind in Asia) right here in Taipei.

Just like the real McCoy

The museum features stunningly detailed miniatures along an aisle that winds its way through nearly 1,000 square meters of floor space on level B1 of an office building on Chienkuo North Road. In addition to many replicas of actual structures, there are also imaginary street scenes, high-class New York apartments, and whimsical works inspired by fairytales. In all, there are more than 200 dollhouses and roomboxes, as well as eggshell carvings, model cars, dolls, and much more.

The first thing you see upon entering is Rose Mansion, the reproduction of a Victorian residence that once stood in Los Angeles. The replica stands over a meter tall and two meters wide. You can't help but gasp in amazement at first sight of this amazingly realistic reproduction. Except for its scaled-down size and the fact that the people and the horse-drawn carriage out front are just models, the exhibit looks almost exactly like the actual residence. Your delight only grows when you circle around to the back, where the rear of the house is cut away to reveal the interior decor. A girl in billowing skirts sits chatting in the parlor. Each railing on the stairway banister has been crafted with loving attention to detail, and the oil paintings on the wall look as though they might very well have been executed by a Lilliputian master!

"Actually," says the museum's former public relations officer Lin Shih-yin, "There's a trick to appreciating the miniaturized art in our museum." There are two basic types of exhibits at the museum, dollhouses and roomboxes. A dollhouse is a miniature house in which the front offers a view of the exterior while the rear offers a cutaway view of the interior furnishings. A roombox, on the other hand, makes no attempt to represent the exterior. Instead, it is a box that has been partitioned into beautifully appointed quarters-living rooms, bedrooms, kitchen, etc.

Dollhouses and roomboxes differ from other miniatures principally in their strict adherence to accuracy in scale and materials. In making these works of art, one must use the exact same materials for the exterior and interior that would be used in making an actual architectural structure. The piano inside Rose Mansion is made of the same materials as a real piano, and the oil painting was carefully painted by an artist who made constant reference to the original painting. Even the trivets on the tabletops are made of real porcelain and stoneware!

Similar pains are taken to ensure that objects are scaled down accurately. Whether done in the traditional 1:12 scale or at half-scale (1:24), the rule is that everything in a single piece must be reduced to the same scale.

The kid's rooms

These two characteristics can be seen especially clearly in three roomboxes-Gentleman's Heaven, Ting-Ting's Room, and Yung-Yung's Playroom.

Gentleman's Heaven is set in the room of a luxurious resort of the sort built on the outskirts of town for vacationers. Apart from a beautiful carpet and comfortable sofa, the most intriguing part of the exhibit is the world's smallest working television set, which actually shows the Japanese cartoon Chibi Maruko on a 1.8-inch screen several times per day.

Ting-Ting's Room is just the sort of room every little girl dreams of having. A teddy bear sits on the sofa, a beautiful garden can be seen through the window, and Barbie Doll boxes sit on a shelf in the closet. The key feature of the exhibit is its miniature within a miniature-the little girl has three roomboxes of her own. The girl's roomboxes are thus reduced on a scale of 1:144. You have to use a magnifying glass to see them clearly.

Ting-Ting's Room takes its name from the granddaughter of Lin Wen-jen, the museum's founder. When Ting-ting's younger brother Yung-yung saw what his sister had gotten, he clamored for one of his own, so Lin commissioned the same artist to make a little boy's room.

Yung-Yung's Playroom is full of all kinds of toys. On a platform on the left side of the room is a train set where a locomotive less than one centimeter long continually circles the track.

A loving couple

The museum first opened its doors to the public three years ago, and just like Ting-ting and Yung-yung, there is a story behind every exhibit.

Lin Wen-jen, former chairman of the board at the Taiwan Fluorescent Lamp Company, recounts that he used to always buy souvenirs for his children while away on business trips. While in Amsterdam over ten years ago he and his wife Chin-mei fell in love with miniatures, and after his retirement five years ago the couple began pouring all their energies into them. Besides collecting works by artists from throughout Europe and North America, the two also began making pieces of their own.

The loving couple have enshrined many of their favorite memories in their miniaturized art work. Says Lin, "In our travels around the world we've discovered that almost all miniatures are done by couples working together. They just chip away at them bit by bit, as if they were working on their own homes." No wonder every single work is infused with a realism and warmth that tell us of the creators' dreams.

Three of the museum's exhibits (A Street Scene, The Butcher's Shop, and Christmas in Norway) are especially near and dear to the hearts of Wen-jen and Chin-mei, for the two of them personally designed and assembled these works from scratch. Boasting fine detail and a clever concept, not a one is outshone in any way by the other exhibits in the museum.

The origin of miniatures is very much rooted in everyday life. The earliest miniatures belonged to children in the imperial court of Germany in the 16th century. Because they were intended to teach children how to take care of their own affairs in the home, they tended to focus on the kitchen and the bedroom, and little attention was paid to ensuring that everything was miniaturized to a uniform scale. The miniatures were extremely popular, however, and soon became a favorite gift item among the nobility. Thereafter the quality of workmanship went way up.

Miniatures then spread to Britain, where they became popular among the common folk. Great progress began to be made in design, building techniques, and materials in the 19th century, and the idea of reduction to a uniform scale gradually caught on. The two world wars left Europe's power greatly diminished, and the United States took over as the hotbed of development in this art form. Up until that time, those concerned with the preservation of historic architecture took the space-gobbling approach of full-scale preservation, but the development of miniatures made of authentic materials and reduced to a rigorously exact scale now presented a new option for the preservation of historic structures. The space-saving miniatures made it easier to preserve and restore buildings. When experts in historic preservation got involved, they spurred tremendous technical advances.

The growing market for miniatures in the United States has led to the founding of factories that specialize in the production of miniature parts. Mini collectors can now shop for building materials and furniture for their miniatures in the same way one might visit the home improvement center or the furniture store.

Art or craft?

Anyone who has seen miniatures, so intricately crafted to such rigorous standards of precision, may have nagging doubts about their artistic value. They're beautiful, to be sure, but can something that goes so heavy on the craftsmanship really be called art? After all, the established art world pays so little attention. . . .

In the view of Wang Yi-jan, an art professor at Tunghai University, the distinction between art and craft has always been fuzzy. Miniatures provide their creators with a vehicle to express their hopes, tastes, and historic sensitivity, and to the extent that the creators let their imaginations run free, the miniatures are indeed works of art.

Indeed, just as in the more established arts, each artist has a unique individual style. When you first enter the Miniatures Museum, for example, on the right you find a series of works by the American artist Brooke Tucker, who is well known for an emphasis on warm, cheery scenes. Mixed in amidst Tucker's works are Ting-Ting's Room and Yung-Yung's Playroom, which exhibit a delight in elegant depictions of scenes from everyday life. On the left-hand side, by way of contrast, stand the works of Steve Hilbert. While most miniatures show a predilection for ornate splendor, Hilbert focuses on the gritty reality of society's lower rungs. In Low Lodging House, for example, he shows the shabby living conditions and lack of privacy suffered by the homeless people living in a British dosshouse. Torn and tattered clothing hangs from an indoor clothesline, while an unkempt child sits on a table. Similar themes are explored in such works as No Room Without Paying and Opium Smoker.

Gulliver's Travels

The museum has also benefited from a close association with Bill Lankford, an artist whose works often focus on themes of interest to children. When the museum put on an exhibit last year based on fairytales, Lankford came to Taiwan and worked together with Lin Wen-jen to create some pieces for the exhibit. The two came up with some very creative presentations based on Jack and the Beanstalk, Alice in Wonderland, Gulliver's Travels and a number of other children's tales. In the Alice in Wonderland exhibit, Alice's adventures are depicted in a series of scenes that spiral their way around a big tree trunk. In the meantime, the spectacle of Gulliver gazing at pint-sized Lilliputians on the palm of his hand seems to remind the visitors: Aren't you gazing at me in the very same way just now?

Lankford also poured his finely honed skills into the creation of Thunder River, a huge representation (3.5 x 1.3 meters) of small-town life in the Colorado mountains during the 1920s. This deliciously humorous piece occupies a prominent spot in the museum. Lankford uses a special resin to portray the feeling of water running down windows and streets in a Rocky Mountain downpour. The skillful use of lamplight and shadow gives an extraordinarily lifelike effect.

This sets the stage for several different stories that take place all at once. A billboard painter, his clothes stained with paint, accidentally kicks over a bucket of paint as he ducks under the eaves to take cover from the rain. To the left, a sheepdog is keeping a herd of sheep to one side of the street to avoid an oncoming car. On the back side of the exhibit, a cat in the general store, startled by thunder, has just jumped up and upset its milk bowl. Meanwhile, a tailor living in the basement below the general store takes advantage of the storm to dig a tunnel into the basement of the bank next door!

Miniatures catch on in Taiwan

Besides serving as a vehicle for artistic expression, miniatures are also used for the preservation and reconstruction of historical architecture. Reginald Twigg, creator of Rose Mansion, undertook his project in order to reconstruct a 19th-century mansion that had been torn down in Los Angeles to make way for urban renewal. Working with painstaking care on the basis of various historical documents, Twigg got halfway into his project before running out of money. He posted a request for financial assistance in Nutshell News, a periodical specializing in miniatures. Lin Wen-jen saw the announcement and provided Twigg with the necessary funds to finish his project. Rose Mansion was later listed by Nutshell News as one of the ten best dollhouse miniatures of the previous quarter-century. The work is now the flagship exhibit of the Miniatures Museum.

It takes a lot of money to get this type of museum off the ground. One of the museum's most noted pieces, a scale-model reproduction of Buckingham Palace, is worth over NT$10 million, which would be enough to buy a luxury apartment in downtown Taipei. According to Lin Shih-yin, every single exhibit in the museum comes from Lin Wen-jen's private collection, but the museum runs comfortably in the black, a measure of just how popular it is with the local community. The museum takes great pride in this fact, because no other private museum in Taiwan generates enough revenue to meet its own expenses.

The museum's only flaw is a paucity of exhibits with a local flavor. The only Chinese-style work is Gazebo by the Bridge, by Peng Kuan-lin, a wood sculptor who specializes in traditional Chinese architecture. This piece, however, fails to achieve the same rigorous use of authentic materials that is seen in the Western-style exhibits, nor has everything been reduced to a single uniform scale. According to museum director Tsao Wen-jui, the assistance of overseas masters will be needed if the art of miniatures is to be developed seriously in Taiwan. Once the necessary technical skills have been mastered, however, given the level of artistic achievement in Taiwan we should be able to do great things. Such a development would be great news for those interested in the preservation of Taiwan's vanishing cultural heritage.

p.120

Besides using authentic materials and adhering to a uniform scale of miniaturization, the makers of dollhouse miniatures also seek to achieve a high level of creativity. In Venetian Scene (right), Bill Lankford uses a special resin and lamplight to create the effect of rippling waves. Raccoon's Home (lower left) is made from a broken porcelain basin, while walnuts have been pieced together into a miniature car. This exhibit is a big hit with children. (courtesy of the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan)

p.122

Dollhouse miniatures typically feature a cutaway rear wall (left) that exposes the interior to view. The interior furnishings in this piece are very realistic. The wicker furniture (right) is made of real rattan, and the cups and saucers on the table are genuine porcelain.

p.123

In addition to dollhouse miniatures, the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan also has a small number of egg carvings, model cars, dolls, and the like. This egg carving features an especially intricate design, and even has a winged sprite inside!

p.124

Gentleman's Heaven (left) is one of the most popular exhibits in the museum. It boasts the world's smallest working television, with a 1.8-inch screen!

p.124

Those with a fondness for miniatures can let their imaginations run wild in creating roomboxes. Museum founder Lin Wen-jen's wife Chin-mei created The Butcher's Shop (right) by building a shop and filling it with miniaturized cuts of meat.

p.124

The Miniatures Museum of Taiwan was founded by Lin Wen-jen, former chairman of the board at the Taiwan Fluorescent Lamp Company. He and his wife Chin-mei are two of the few collectors of dollhouse miniatures in Taiwan. (courtesy of the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan)

p.125

Ting-Ting's Room (left) features a set of roomboxes reduced to a scale of 1:144 in the lower right-hand corner. These roomboxes and the extraordinarily small-scale electric locomotive in the lower left-hand corner of Yung-Yung's Playroom (right) are among the rarest miniatures in the world.

p.126

Thunder River gives a faithful depiction of frontier life in the American west. The realistic figures in this exhibit (upper right) make for an especially entertaining scene. (courtesty of Miniatures Museum of Taiwan)

p.127

Perhaps the museum visitor will understand how Gulliver felt as he gazed at the tiny Lilliputians.