A Child's Dreams

About the exhibition

The exhibition is on display from 10.9.2023 to 26.5.2024 in the Museum Zeughaus, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim.

Doll's houses and shops fascinate everybody - young and old - with their richness of detail. These miniatures invite to exciting discoveries in idealised historical living worlds. There is more "reality" to spot than it appears at a first sight. Since the 19th century the dream of children to slip into the role of adults was in particular fulfilled by playing with doll’s houses and shops. And adults, in turn, used the toys to introduce the youngsters to their later tasks: including the traditional gender roles of "girl - housewife" and "boy - soldier" as well as stock-keeping, food preparation, handling kitchen utensils, trade or sales.

Doll shops and drugstores not only reveal a selection of goods typical of the time corresponding to the upscale needs of bourgeois households. Through brands and products on offer, they also provide information about social themes such as furnishing, hygiene, health, industrialisation and colonialism. The exhibition "Kinderträume" (A Child's Dreams) presents an extensive selection of historical doll's kitchens and shops from a top-class private collection. The exhibition reflects a versatile picture with numerous historical toy miniatures and original objects of playing, learning and living around 1900. A special focus is directed on the period from the 1870s to the 1920s.