Long Island 54

ROOM WI TH A VI EW

THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE OF MISS SARAH ELIZABETH BIRDSALL OTIS, AGED TWELVE by Eric Boman

I n 1884, a remarkable twelve-year-old girl made a paper doll’s house. While these were fashionable enough at the time, they were usually drawn and painted. However, Miss Sarah Elizabeth Birdsall Otis (nicknamed Birdie) chose the atypical medium of collage: scraps of wall-paper, gilded trim, colored-in cut-outs of fur- niture, and engravings from mail-order catalogues, all glued down unselfconsciously in book form with no regard for scale or realism. What makes this particular album so special is its creator’s stunning, innate artistry. Throughout THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE , Boman’s photo- graphs capture Birdie’s vivid fantasy world in all its quirky splendor. Exploring the household, from the conservatory, parlor, and library to the dining room and bedrooms, the images portray a domain of astonishing color and aesthetic daring. Birdie also populated her house with paper dolls, their delightful cut-out costumes preserved in envelopes marked with the names of characters and their accesso- ries stored in paper squares marked “House and Bonnets” or “Um- brellas and Parasols.” Period photographs depicting the era of Birdie and her family’s privileged Long Island life provide context for the creation of her charming paper doll’s house. Photographer and writer Eric Boman, who has lived for the last thirty-three years in a house on Long Island that once belonged to Birdie’s aunt and who had previously researched the family and their houses in and around Bellport, discovered images from the paper doll’s house at an exhibition at the local historical society in 2011. Working with the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, which had been bequeathed the album, along with other materials from the family, he decided to bring “this token of the twelve-year- old Birdie’s creativity before a larger audience.” Eric Boman is a photographer and writer, whose work has appeared in V ogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and The World of Inte- riors. Swedish-born, he has worked in London, Paris, and New York. He currently divides his time between New York and Long Island. His previous publications include Blahnik by Boman, (2005) and Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel (2007).

EXCERPTED FROM THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE OF MISS SARAH ELIZABETH BIRDSALL OTIS, AGED TWELVE, BY ERIC BOMAN. © 2014 ERIC BOMAN. PHOTOGRAPHY © 2014 ERIC BOMAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THAMES & HUDSON, INC. WWW.THAMESANDHUDSONUSA.COM

36 WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM

Made with FlippingBook Annual report