No spider, worm, nor caterpillar can hurt my trees;
My flowers are as green in winter as in summer,
My cherries always red, my apples and my pears
Always ripe and sound; they feed the eyes for ever.)
The dolls’ houses of the rich were always made of costly woods, and were frequently inlaid with ivory and tortoiseshell. At the exhibition of Amsterdam in 1858, among a number of these curiosities, was a notable one veneered with tortoiseshell and with painted glass doors—a present from the King of Denmark to Maarten Harpertz Tromp. Another was a typical Dutch house of walnut-root wood, furnished with silver furniture and wax dolls; there were also two of Italian make with tortoiseshell, ebony and brass ornaments, the doors of which were painted with Italian sea-towns; and one of ebony, the door-panels of which were painted by Peter Breughel.
In the Rijks Museum are several models in miniature of old Amsterdam houses. The finest one is of tortoiseshell ornamented with white metal inlay. According to tradition, Christoffel Brandt, Peter the Great’s agent in Amsterdam, had this house made by order of the Czar, and it is said to have cost 20,000 guilders (£2,500), and to have required five years to produce. Dating from the latter part of the seventeenth or first part of the eighteenth century, it contains all the furniture that was to be found at that date in an aristocratic dwelling on the Heerengracht or Keizersgracht. Every object in it was made by the proper artisan, so that it is correct in every detail.
Another dates from the first half of the eighteenth century. Architecturally it is very interesting; but the interior furnishings are much simpler than the above.
A third house, belonging to the family Ploos van Amstel, dates from the first half of the eighteenth century, and is supposed to be inhabited by a doctor. It is three storeys high, and has a wide door on the façade with the initials P.V.A. (Ploos Van Amstel) artistically interlaced. Of its twelve rooms, the most remarkable are the parlour and the physician’s study, containing a library, a collection of preparations and a collection of shells and artistic objects in ivory, every item of which is reproduced in miniature.
According to Mr. E. W. Berg, who gives a minute description of this house in De Oude Tyd (1872), it is said that by this doctor is meant Christoffel Ludeman, the well-known “wonder-doctor.”
It was a fad with the wealthy to possess these curious silver toys, which passed from generation to generation. Sometimes the collection consisted of hundreds of pieces. Mrs. van Varick, of New Amsterdam (1696), had no less than eighty-three silver toys to divide among her children.