Please note, this is a historic overview of Stimson’s dioramas at the BPL. These rooms and pieces are currently inaccessible to the public, but this blog post provides a peek into the pieces as they were originally designed.
Dioramas are miniature works of art, built in three dimensions, scaled down to show tiny scenes, and populated by pocket-sized people. Local Massachusetts artist Louise Stimson (1891-1981) taught herself to build dioramas and became an expert at skillfully creating elaborate scenes, several of which have been on view at the Boston Public Library: Alice in Wonderland, Arabian Nights, and Charles Dickens' London.
To make her carefully constructed dioramas, Stimson used materials she found around her home, such as sponges, dust cloths, and buttons. She had a gift for improvising miniscule details:
She fashioned the “Drink Me” bottle in Alice in Wonderland from the tooth of a broken comb.
She cut leaves from window shades.
Sponges, tinted green, were used for hedges.
Crushed egg cartons became boulders and rocks.
Saucers were created using a paper punch.
She produced grass with fibers of hemp rope pruned to microscopic length.
Strips of sandpaper became stretches of beach.
Finally, she held everything together with crepe paper, putty, cardboard, glue, paint, and shellac.
Stimson mapped the landscapes of the dioramas onto large pieces of paper and then scaled the images down. First, she constructed a light wooden frame, then molded the ground and backdrops from cardboard.
She sculpted figures in plaster of Paris and glue, shaped with a nail file, and shellacked into place.
Finally, the dioramas were enclosed by professional cabinetmakers.
Some of the dioramas were wired to be lit from the back, providing them with a sense of movement and mystery. Altogether, the dioramas are striking illusions of air, space, and light.
Stimson completed Charles Dickens’ London for the Boston Book Fair at the BPL in 1938. She constructed Alice in Wonderland between 1941-48. Milton Lord, BPL President at the time, saw her work at the Book Fair and purchased both dioramas for the library. He asked Stimson to fabricate Arabian Nights, which was completed in 1959. Shortly after, Stimson worked on finishing the Ducal Palace, which found a home in the North End Branch of the BPL and can be seen there today.
Stimson was then commissioned by the Boston Public Library to build and install Printmakers at Work in 1960. You can read more about those dioramas here.
Alice and Dickens traveled throughout New England to libraries, book shops, book fairs, banks, and clubs, to Washington DC, and Alice even traveled internationally to a department store in Japan.
Alice in Wonderland (1941-1948)
The triptych diorama Alice in Wonderland is based on the drawings by John Tenniel from the first edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1865).
You can make an appointment in the Special Collections Reading Room to view the 1866 re-printed version from the BPL Rare Books Department: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Stimson's Alice in Wonderland diorama is meant to be read as a text, the 3 enclosed scenes from left to right. The first scene on the left shows Alice falling asleep in the English countryside, the rabbit close by, looking at his watch.
The middle scene of the diorama interweaves several narrative threads.
Rabbit’s House The Mad Tea Party, with the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse:
The Frog Footman receiving a letter from the Fish Footman:
In the murky background, formal gardens grow where the Queen of Hearts screams “Off with her head!” Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are hidden in the very back. The blue Caterpillar is in the distance, balanced on his mushroom, while the Cheshire cat perches on branches, grinning at the scenes below.
The scene to the furthest right, with its exuberant burst of cards, depicts the trial of the Knave for stealing tarts, while Alice, in the center, is beginning to grow to her normal size.
Arabian Nights (1959)
Stimson's Arabian Nights diorama depicts eleven stories from the Thousand and One Nights, a compilation of Middle Eastern folktales told by Queen Scheherazade to entertain King Shahriyar and prevent her execution, written between the 8th and 13th century, and translated into English in the early 1700s.
The scenes show stories such as "Sinbad of the Sea," "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "The Story of the Merchant and the Genie," "Aladdin and his Lamp," and the magic carpet discovered by the prince of India.
Stimson researched this project extensively, producing copious amounts of notes on subjects such as landscape, architecture, animals, local dress and adornments, hairstyles, cultural customs, activities, food, and drink. Her attention to pattern and decoration is extraordinary.
Dickens’ London (1938)
For this diorama, Stimson began by constructing background buildings out of cardboard. She kept adding structures until she had the idea to build a portion of London as the world of Victorian writer Charles Dickens.
Among eleven Dickens tales, Stimson built scenes from David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and Nicholas Nickleby.
The diorama was equipped with lighting that was set to change between daylight and evening, illuminating different figures and creating intriguing pockets of shadow and light.
Like the set of dioramas, Printmakers at Work, "Tiny Worlds: Dioramas at the Boston Public Library," all three of these dioramas are currently in storage and inaccessible to the public. However, these photographs capture the essence of their magic and the playfulness of their compositions. To see a Louise Stimson diorama in person, you can view the Ducal Palace in Venice located in the North End Branch of the BPL.
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