From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A room box is a display box used for three-dimensional miniature scale environments. Although the name would suggest room boxes generally only represent rooms such as those found in houses or other buildings (bedrooms, kitchens, offices, etc.), room boxes are used for all sorts of environments – exterior views as well as interior ones, realistic ones as well as fantastical ones. While some miniaturists concentrate their efforts specifically on room boxes, many others use them to take a break from larger projects, such as dollhouses or miniature villages, to create a smaller environment on a different theme. Finished room boxes are popular as gifts as they can be tailored to the recipient’s interests or mirror an important step in life - for example, a bakery or restaurant scene might be created for a cook, and a wedding dress storefront could be created for a bride to be.

Room boxes are an affordable way to make miniature settings without investing in a larger structure such as a dollhouse or train set. Commercially bought room boxes tend to be made of wood or pressed wood products, with the front window made of removable clear acrylic, and the dimensions reflecting standard dollhouse dimensions ("1:12 scale" in dollhouse speak means 1" in the dollhouse world represents 1' in the real world), but anyone can make a room box from a leftover shoebox, orange crate, etc. and adapt an idea to suit the box's scale. As evidenced in craft books and magazines, interest in making room boxes and other miniature environments has dramatically grown since the 1990s.

• The Art Institute of Chicago's Thorne Miniature Rooms, at http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne/index.php
• Victorian Room Box Project, For Dolls at http://victorianwoodshop.com/box.html

About.com articles:

• What Is Your Little House Made Of?, at http://miniatures.about.com/od/dollhousekits/a/kitmaterials.htm
• Build a 12" by 16" Room Box, at http://miniatures.about.com/od/creatingminiatures/ss/roombox.htm