Collector Has Her Own Little World : Display: Alice O’Neill Avery’s massive array of little things--dollhouses, dolls, furniture--is on exhibit in San Juan.

Right down to their tiny toothbrushes, the dollhouses of Alice O’Neill Avery are perfect in every detail except one: They have no bathrooms.

“Alice doesn’t like bathrooms,” says Eleanor La Vove, founder of Angels Attic in Santa Monica, a museum of antique miniatures which has shown part of Avery’s collection.

“All collectors have their own little idiosyncrasies,” La Vove says.

It’s the miniature collector’s prerogative to create his or her own little worlds, to play creator on a one-inch-to-the-foot scale.

Avery has a massive collection of little things. A fraction of her modern and antique dollhouses, dolls and miniature furniture fills three galleries of the Decorative Arts Study Center in San Juan Capistrano. The center is holding an exhibit of Avery’s private collection called “Christmas in a Dollhouse” through Feb. 1.

Because the pieces on view date back to the 18th Century and originate from around the world, the exhibit offers visitors a chance to see many styles of furnishings, architecture and even clothing. Author Shirley Glubok called dollhouses “history in miniature.”

“Their styles record the architecture of their time, and their furnishings reflect the decorative arts and social customs of the period,” she writes in “Dolls’ Houses: Life in Miniature.”

Yet these are not small, sterile environments. Avery’s dollhouses have that lived-in look. They’re full of activity.

“I love to make things look busy,” Avery says.

While some collectors won’t allow dolls in their picture-perfect miniature homes, Avery’s houses are full of them.

Children play in the sand and eat watermelon at a picnic outside a Brighton Beach cottage.

A baby plays with her doll in the upstairs play room of an 1870 Victorian mansion, while grandmother sits in her rocking chair balancing another child on her knee.

In the London hat shop, women peddle their charming chapeau.

“Dollhouses are fun,” says Avery, peeking through the window of her massive (by dollhouse measurements) Georgian mansion. “I love the little chairs and the little sofas.”

Those who appreciate architecture will enjoy seeing Avery’s rare 19th-Century Bliss dollhouses, which can cost thousands of dollars. Made by the R. Bliss Manufacturing Co. of Pawtucket, R.I., the dollhouses are realistic replicas of houses, Adirondack cottages, stables, grocery stores and fire stations.

Bliss dollhouses are noted for their profusion of porches, balconies, bulbous porch supports and other faithfully re-created design elements. The wooden dollhouses were designed by an architect and covered in lithographed paper to add to the structures’ architectural details.

Other dollhouse styles in the show include a rare 19th-Century three-story mansion in miniature by Wilfritz Gottschalk with a working elevator, an old (and undated) church from Guadalajara and two modern Victorian dollhouses Avery fell in love with when she saw them at Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar.

Avery’s collection of mercantile dollhouses shows how markets of yesterday looked. One of her most prized possessions is a 19th-Century miniature poultry shop, with dead ducks and other poultry hanging about.

“I saw it in Paris and nearly went out of my mind until I had it,” she says.

An assortment of box rooms, originally used to display valuable miniatures by such masters as Faberge, are on display. These were simply three-sided rooms that could be decorated in any style and therefore act as records of interior design.

Avery has two French parlor box rooms, one outfitted in green curtains and a black and gold-trimmed armoire and furnishings, a London hat shop, a school house with miniature maps and the alphabet hanging on the wall, and several German-made kitchens fully stocked with kettles, pots and pans. The kitchens taught young girls the names and proper place for as many as 175 utensils, according to La Vove.

Avery’s collection of antique miniature furniture offers a true representation of furnishings from interiors of the past. Miniature antique chairs, a vanity table adorned with paintings of cherubs and a collection of armoires are on view.

One miniature French armoire shows how a full-sized armoire might have looked when in use. An original list of all the linens that should be kept inside is attached to the door. Still piled on the shelves are the tiny linens, neatly folded and tied with ribbon.

There are also several pieces of apprentice furniture, replicas of full-scale furniture produced by furniture makers up to 250 years ago as samples to show potential customers.

“It was the only way to show furniture if you were traveling on horseback. In addition, apprentices had to prove they could make furniture” by first producing the miniatures, La Vove says.

Dollhouses were originally the play toys of wealthy adults, not children, according to La Vove.

“To a great extent they still are,” she says.

They were designed to house small treasures. Today the more elaborate Victorian dollhouses are still created mainly for collectors such as Avery, who furnish them in furniture that can cost as much as the real thing.

Avery, a sixth-generation Californian and Los Angeles resident, has always loved dolls and dollhouses. A few of the pre-World War II dolls she played with as a child are in the show.

She collects miniatures simply because she loves them.

“Everything I have I had fun buying,” she says. She bought her first dollhouse, a Queen Anne-style Victorian, in 1974. When she couldn’t find rugs to furnish it, she made them herself out of tiny needlepoint. She’s now focusing on miniature furniture, and she recently started acquiring teddy bears.

The show features a miniature replica of her own peach-colored bedroom and part of her extensive doll collection, including Kewpies, Lenci dolls made of pressed felt first produced in Italy during World War I, early 20th Century Chin-Chin dolls with Oriental features and bisque dolls with the entire doll or doll’s head made of tinted porcelain.

A docent-guided tour of the exhibit will be offered during the Decorative Arts Study Center’s regular hours, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The center will be closed Dec. 24 to Jan. 1. There is a suggested donation of $3 for non-members.

In conjunction with the “Christmas in a Dollhouse” display, the center is holding a children’s holiday tea from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4. Tickets to the tea are $15 per person.

The center is at 31431 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. For more details call (714) 496-2132.