I won’t give you step by step instructions on how to make your own Art Nouveau doll house, but I will give you guidelines.
First, glue shoe boxes together to form rooms. You can make your doll house many stories tall or one long floor. Use extra cardboard to make a roof at the top. Let the glue dry. When you look at the room I made, you’ll notice that I used the box top to lengthen the floor. You can do this to your rooms as well. Just make sure to glue everything together.
Go look at the furniture pictures in my post on Henry van de Velde. Then, do a google image search for “Art Nouveau furniture.” This should provide all the inspiration you need. To make my chair and lamp, I used pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are good materials for this because much of the Art Nouveau furniture has twisty, curvy lines that are easy to make with pipe cleaners. I made my desk out of card board, construction paper, and pipe cleaners. The lamp shade is little piece of tissue paper that I decorated with crayon. It’s supposed to look kind of like a Tiffany lamp.
You can spend as much time as you want on your doll house. Maybe design and create one room a day for a week. Don’t forget to make a kitchen, living room, dining room, and a few bedrooms. Also, staircases are a great way to make the room itself look “Art Nouveau.” If you really want to get creative, try wallpaper the insides of your rooms with decorative paper or wrapping paper. You could even paint the “walls” if you make sure to do it well in advance of gluing your boxes together and arranging your furniture.
Have fun with this! I would love to hear from anyone who tries this project.
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First, glue shoe boxes together to form rooms. You can make your doll house many stories tall or one long floor. Use extra cardboard to make a roof at the top. Let the glue dry. When you look at the room I made, you’ll notice that I used the box top to lengthen the floor. You can do this to your rooms as well. Just make sure to glue everything together.
Go look at the furniture pictures in my post on Henry van de Velde. Then, do a google image search for “Art Nouveau furniture.” This should provide all the inspiration you need. To make my chair and lamp, I used pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are good materials for this because much of the Art Nouveau furniture has twisty, curvy lines that are easy to make with pipe cleaners. I made my desk out of card board, construction paper, and pipe cleaners. The lamp shade is little piece of tissue paper that I decorated with crayon. It’s supposed to look kind of like a Tiffany lamp.You can spend as much time as you want on your doll house. Maybe design and create one room a day for a week. Don’t forget to make a kitchen, living room, dining room, and a few bedrooms. Also, staircases are a great way to make the room itself look “Art Nouveau.” If you really want to get creative, try wallpaper the insides of your rooms with decorative paper or wrapping paper. You could even paint the “walls” if you make sure to do it well in advance of gluing your boxes together and arranging your furniture.Have fun with this! I would love to hear from anyone who tries this project.
Return to main page.
Van de Velde was born in 1863. He studied painting from 1881 to 1884 and was influenced by such artists as Georges Seurat and 
He designed and built his own house and several more prominent buildings, including the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo. You can see pictures of many of these buildings by 
Van de Velde did not design in the Art Nouveau style for his whole life. Art Nouveau went out of fashion around 1910 and he lived for another 42 years. As he evolved, he taught art to others, thus spreading his vision to a new generation of artists.
The furniture shown throughout this post was designed by van de Velde. Notice the curving lines and the elements drawn from nature.
