The finished work, a 19th-century German-themed dollhouse or puppenstube decorated with miniature-scale furniture, fixtures, seasonal decorations, and a Sankt Nikolaus (Santa Claus) is on display until the winter holidays on the first floor of McMaster College.

“This evolved beyond a Ken and Barbie dollhouse and became what I like to call ‘rooms for the imagination,’” said Mack, a veteran art history professor. “For a month or two, this became an obsession—I couldn’t stop myself.”

Mack relied on his imagination and creativity to fashion the two-room dollhouse. At first, he photocopied images and pasted them to pieces of foam board for furniture. As his confidence grew, Mack began using bits of wood, tile, and other materials to construct replicas of antique German furniture and décor.

“My wife, Ilona, is a Berlin native, and my family roots go back to Germany,” he said. “This dollhouse will give our granddaughter, Gabriele Nicole Daniels, a sense of her heritage.”

Mack cleverly incorporated Gabi’s parents into the dollhouse by pasting images of their faces on two costumed figures walking through a doorway. The faces of Mack and his wife adorn 19th-century portraits hanging on one of the walls. The images of Gabi’s two great-grandmothers are seen walking into another doorway.

Peering into the cabinet-enclosed two-story dollhouse, one finds exquisite detail in every nook. A tiny brass lamp finial becomes a gas-burning light fixture. Mack molded beeswax into hams and sausages hung from the kitchen ceiling. He glued images of 19th-century German plates onto buttons and made chandeliers out of lamp finials and cup hooks.
In the windows, Mack placed German landscape views that he and his wife photographed on previous trips there. Wallboards and other decorative items were copied from several books of German antique décor. The piéce de résistance is a cradle with a German inscription, “Here lies one made in love.”

On the second floor is a replica of a vintage ceramic heater, which Mack fashioned from pill bottles. “The medication I take for my Parkinson’s Disease came in those bottles,” Mack said. “I like the irony.”

Will he continue to make more miniature worlds? “No, this is it,” Mack said, pointing out that he is increasingly aware that time is finite and that he still had much art historical research to do and to publish in the next few years. “This obsession is over,” he added.

It will be a several years until 9-month-old Gabriele Nicole can play with her dollhouse. Faculty, staff, students, and other visitors can see it on display until the holiday break. The Puppenstube is exhibited together with explanatory text, a German board chair from 1830 (also seen in miniaturized version in the doll house), and samples of some of the books and pamphlets Mack used in the project.