By Lisa Hix — PETA would never approve: This grisly 1840 doll-sized butcher shop with miniature animal carcasses and a floor covered in sawdust and blood would be shockingly graphic to our modern sensibilities. After all, here in the 21st century, we like to remain cheerfully oblivious about where our meat products come from. But in Victorian times, such detailed model butcher shops were not uncommon, says Sarah Louise Wood, a curator at the Museum of Childhood at the Victoria and Albert Museum in...

Antique Dolls, from Wood and Wax to Kewpie

By Maribeth Keane and Jessica Lewis — We have a very small team here at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, so we all have to do lots of different things. I don’t look after all the dolls, but I oversee the collections. I do the waxes and the woodens. I’ve got colleagues who are in charge of the cloth ones and the plastic ones and the porcelain ones and so on. I used to do all of it. When Caroline Goodfellow took early retirement about 10 or 11, years ago, I had to take on the whole doll collection as well as all my...