Sister Mary Boyd

One of Sister Mary's dollhouses

“You could easily make a house like this, and even better,” my friend Sister Joelyn Hayes said, as she peered at a three-story pioneer type dollhouse in a Sturbridge, Connecticut, gift shop. At her invitation, I looked at it and thought of how I enjoy making things out of wood, and then the creative wheels started spinning. After returning home to St. Charles, IL, I got busy in the basement turning out my first one-of-a-kind dollhouse which was raffled off for charity on my 50th birthday. Thus began Mary’s Miniature Mansions, Ltd. !  The word got around after I made a few houses for friends. In the past 17 years, I’ve created dollhouse replicas of people’s homes, charming houses for children and some  Nativity stables – 29 small buildings in all. Number 30 is in process now.  

Each creation is special: all the dollhouses feature parquet floors of different designs, bookcases, dormers, porches, unique chimneys and fireplaces, paint and wallpaper, real cedar shingles that I cut from cedar boards, as well as my own doors and stairways.

Over the past 17 years, I’ve enjoyed the challenges each building has presented, and it’s been fun meeting different clients who commission me to make something. It can take six months to one year to make a dollhouse, depending on the time of year and what is desired by the client. I’m a teacher, so I have the summers to make faster progress. My basic tools are a band saw, a hand sander, a jig saw and a drill. Where needed, I use pegs instead of nails, and wood glue.

Along with creating dollhouses, I’m especially interested in all the aspects about them such as their history and their imaginative/psychological aspects. When time permits, I enjoy researching the backgrounds of dollhouses in my dollhouse history book collection. Like a multitude of others, I’m fascinated by the miniature world!   

As a child, I had a fiberboard four-room Tudor style dollhouse that my parents probably purchased through a Montgomery Ward or Sears catalog. It was my favorite pastime – I literally  lived in it!  It was furnished with colorful pieces from the Renewal and Ideal toy companies. In my own 14-room 1/2-inch scale dollhouse of today, I have 25 antiques from these two companies as well as furniture and dolls from the Playmobil Toy Company.  

When I retire from teaching, I plan on writing and illustrating a book for children. As my friend Joelyn observed, “Mary, creating your ‘mansions’ is for you a spiritual experience.”