Le Pavillon de la Lanterne was created by Jean and Marguerite van der Does in loving
memory of their daughter Joanna Alexis.

Joanna Alexis van der Does

On June 12, 1965, on a beautiful summer day, my sister Joanna Alexis lost her life in an automobile accident on a country road near our home in Flemington, New Jersey. She was only twenty years old. We had gone down to the country house for the weekend from New York City where we were living at that time. The house in the country was where we grew up and it was a source of great pride to my mother and father who had spent years designing and building it along with all its surrounding terraces, gazebos, gardens, orchards, studio and barn. It sat in the middle of 100 acres of land and was surrounded on all sides by fields that the local farmers tended. Our house was created from my parents deep love of art and architecure and European design and was reflected in many attributes of our home. When the dollhouse was created my parents wanted to bring into it as many of these features as they possibly could.

Because of Joanna’s great love and interest in the arts and her passion for dollhouses her parents decided to incorporate all the styles of furniture and paintings that she loved and had been brought up to appreciate.

There are seven rooms in the dollhouse and two main hallways. Each room depicts the
style of a specific country or period. Every piece of furniture, every painting, musical instrument, statue and every object d’art was handmade by my father. The wood that was used throughout the house all came from our property in the country. Each tile was fired in a friend’s kiln.

All of the paneling, parquet floors, chandeliers, bricks, tiles and architectural details were all created by my father as well as the exterior of the dollhouse including the hundreds of individual tiles in the roof and the stone blocks on the facade of the house. Every window, door, gable and chimney was handmade by him. The coat of arms that depicts Joanna’s initials grace the tops of the windows in her memory.

My mother made all the petite point needlepoint rugs, couches and chair covers. She also made the tiny little dinnerware sets, tea sets and baskets of food. With the exception of a few items that were added from our childhood, everything was made entirely by my parents.

A number of items are replicas of items from our house in the country and the Italian dining room is an exact replica of our dining room from that house.

Never before has a piece so extensive in scope been accomplished by one man. Usually the talents of individual experts are brought in to create those specific items but my father was determined to preserve the uniqueness of this extraordinary accomplishment by making it all by himself. The dollhouse took about fifteen years to complete but the majority of it was finished in about eight years. From that point my parents lovingly added pieces over the years which always gave them great joy and a sense of closeness to Joanna.

My father, Jean van der Does was an outstanding artist who started his own design studio with his four brothers in New York City in 1935 after immigrating from Holland. There they created original designs for all the well known fabric houses in New York City. He was also an accomplished sculptor, painter & pianist.	My mother, Marguerite was born and lived in New Jersey. Sheattended and graduated from Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts in 1936 and went to work with my father as a “repeat artist” at the studio. She would take the original design and repeat it over and over again for a layout, arranging the repeat in such a way so that it blended smoothly into the overall design.
It was at the studio where my father and mother met and fell in love. They married in 1938 and my sister Joanna was born in 1945 followed shortly thereafter by my birth in 1946.
Joanna Alexis	Nanine Elizabeth