Grand German Dollhouse Castle with Elaborate Furnishings and Dolls, with Provenance

Live Auction

64" (163 cm.) w. x 22"d. x 42". The rococo style grand three-story dollhouse is centered by a wide dramatic two-story center staircase framed by four various boudoirs or salons. The third floor features a grand ballroom which sweeps across the entire floor. The staircase is decorated with balconies and a series of Fragonard style paintings. Other rooms feature musical themes with harp, grand piano and violinists. The grand ballroom sparkles to the lights of floor and wall candelabras, and the floor is inlay parquet wood. The house is peopled with 50 little dollhouse dolls dressed in aristocratic costumes in the late 18th century manner; the dolls are posed in story tale settings, while those in the ballroom actually spin and twist around and around to four different music minuets including Luigi Boccherini's "String Quintet in E, Op 11 No 5-Minuet". The house is furnished with more 50 pieces of furniture with original cream painted finish accented with gilt, many with original paper labels. Condition: generally excellent, dancing mechanism, music and lights function well. Comments: Germany, 1950s, the house and furnishings are the workmanship of Maria and Rudolf Szalasi, who patented the design in 1951, believed to be a miniature presentation of the Herrenchiemsee castle of the German King Ludwig XVI; the dolls are by Erna Meyer, German dollmaker of the same era. Value Points: very rare and wonderfully preserved miniature world with perfectly functioning mechanism and music. The house was originally commissioned by the wife of Conrad Hilton, along with a nearly identical second castle that was displayed for many years in the front windows of Hilton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It is believed that only four or five of the palatial castles were ever made, each on special commission. This particular example is the only known with complete third floor fitted as a grand ballroom.