'You'll Have to Use Your Imagination' With This Elaborate Holiday Dollhouse

The tree is decorated in the parlor, wreaths are hung on every window, and Santa and his reindeer can be seen on the roof amidst a dusting of snow at "The Octagon House," the museum-quality dollhouse now on display at on Main Street in East Hampton.

"Each room is decorated with some sort of Christmas theme," said Jean Rickenbach, Chair of the LVIS Dollhouse Committee. "We have handwritten Christmas cards in each of the rooms and doilies on the couches and chairs. This room here with the creche, I think that's the most phenomenal piece. It's bone china."

Deborah Ann Light, a LVIS member since 1970 whose mother, Ann Jones Light, served as LVIS President in 1974, commissioned Noel Thomas of Seaview, Wash., to build the three-story, eight-sided late Victorian "Exotic Revival" house for her personal enjoyment in 1980. In 1998, Light donated the house to LVIS for "safe keeping and public enjoyment."

According to Thomas' website, he built his first dollhouse for his daughter. Since 1974, he has completed more than fifty structures. Completed in 1983, The Octagon House took three years to build. Built at 1/12th scale, the house rests on a 43" square landscaped base. Fully electrified, it is filled with period furnishings also donated by Light.

"We decorate it for the holidays," said Lynn Cotter, who along with Mary Busch, Joan Denny, India Northrop Pratt, and Jean Rickenbach make up the committee that maintains and decorates the house. "We do Christmas, spring, Halloween, and the Fourth of July."

"This is a labor of love," said Rickenbach, who has chaired the committee for ten years.

Touring the house, Rickenback points out the stained glass windows, Staffordshire china, elaborate woodwork in the cupola, and an upstairs closet filled with hat boxes and period dresses.

"We play little games with it," she said, explaining a more subtle seasonal nuance. "You'll see in the bedroom, there's a box on the bed from Tiffany, there's champagne, and there's a rose. What it is...you'll have to use your imagination."

Rickenbach enthusiatically notes the basement filled with garden hoses, boots, and flower pots put away for winter as well as the dress patterns, rocking horse, easel, and other treasures stored in the attic.

"It's got everything up there," she said, "wheelchairs, rocking chairs, and cribs. This is a house in movement."

Along with the Christmas trees, candles, and roping, the house has other intricate signs of life. In the kitchen, there is a mouse creeping perilously towards a trap, an egg toppled on the floor, and muffins cooling on the stove.

"Our members look forward to the changes," said Rickenbach, "as do the visitors who come into our shops. Many are repeat visitors who just love to see this spectacular house and maybe dream a little?"

The Octagon Dollhouse is on view in the lobby of the LVIS House at 95 Main St., Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.