The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, Corinne May Botz

Frances Glessner Lee, Three Room Dwelling (detail)

(February 11) Miniaturization and unsolved deaths -- what an irresistible combination. The synopsis had me at hello, as it did everyone I told it to:

“The Nutshell Studies were a series of intricately designed dollhouse-style dioramas created by Frances Glessner Lee, a millionaire heiress with an interest in forensic science.

“She designed detailed -- almost obsessive -- scenarios, based on composites of real criminal acts, and presented them physically in miniature. Students were instructed to study the scene and draw conclusions from the evidence presented. Lee used her inheritance to set up Harvard's department of legal medicine, and donated the Nutshell dioramas in 1945 for use in her lectures on the subject of crime scene investigation. In 1966 the department was dissolved, and the dioramas went to the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office; there, Harvard Magazine reports that they are still used for forensic seminars.” (Wikipedia)

Some images of the dioramas are here and here.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’s really a book of photographs, since Corinne May Botz thinks of herself mainly as a photographer, but she does provide a biography of Lee, as well as analytical hints and anecdotes about each of the dioramas.

A major letdown to me right off the bat when I got the book was to learn that the “official solutions” for the unexplained deaths depicted are not available (because the dioramas are still being used as learning tools) -- so, after poring over the photographs and weighing the various forensic opinions offered, you don’t get the thrill of finding out if you drew the right conclusions. Unsporting, I say.

Other than that, the studies are an amazing wonderland to explore.

Lee apparently lavished loads of money and time on these creations, hiring a carpenter full-time to make scale furniture, rooms, moldings, working doors with keys, and so on, and keeping many commercial suppliers busy fabricating custom pieces, while she herself made and dressed the doll corpses. She knit miniature stockings using straight pins as needles, steamed felt into tiny hats, cobbled little shoes. She was supposed to have been very exacting about the 1:12 (inch=foot) scale she used; there are collections of correspondence between her and the suppliers, complaining that dimensions in their catalogues did not sound accurate and warning that she would return her orders if the scale was incorrect.

She never called the studies “dollhouses” nor allowed them to be called that, and wanted them taken very seriously.

Despite all this seriousness and attention to detail, and although they are wonderful, the models to my eyes do look like dollhouses, because of inconsistencies in scale. If her 1:12 scale is uniformly accurate, then apparently we have baseball-sized knobs on our dresser drawers, smoke cigarettes the size of paper-towel rolls, and drink from cups and glasses with inch-and-a-half-thick walls. When the things the “people” are supposed to handle look way too big or way too fine, you’ve got to think “dollhouse.”

Also, Lee used prefabricated bisque heads and limbs to make the corpses, and there is just no way, even if the faces are individually hand-painted, that that sort of creature is ever going to look other than doll-like. You wonder why Lee didn’t sculpt her own figures out of wax or cast her own bisque or something.

On the other hand, looking through all the little death scenes, I felt more vulnerable and mortal than I ever have looking at photos of real death scenes, or watching violent movies. God, if these terrible things could happen to sweet little dolls, what chance is there for us human beings?