LAKEWOOD • One recent morning at the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys, friends excitedly gathered around objects no larger than their pinky fingertips.

That’s about the size of the Stanley tumblers, Tupperware and air fryer. “We need to put french fries in there,” says Nancy Stein, who created this on her 3D printer back home.

The square light switch is closer to the size of a fingernail. The switches themselves appear like slender grains of rice.

There’s a bottle of lotion. “Look at the spout!” Stein remarks — like the tip of a blade of grass.

Nancy Martin remarks over a basket the size of a thumbtack. “Look at the weave!”

Martin is among these friends with 50-plus years of experience in the wonderful, whimsical world of miniatures. It is a world celebrated at this museum, hiding in a converted office space, hiding in plain sight off Kipling Street between a car wash and tattoo shop.

The Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys is a celebration beyond the niche hobby of dollhouses and their petite, precise furnishings. By the museum’s description: “It is a place of learning where history and art meet humanity.”

Here’s a mansion displaying Victorian elegance of the 1890s. Men in Q-tip-length coats and women in ornate, quarter-sized hats have rushed to admire the horseless carriage that has arrived — the first vehicle.

Here’s a 1940s farmhouse, where the eye wanders between scenes: a piglet escaping the pen; a dog chewing a slipper on the master bed; a cat pawing a goldfish bowl, as seen by the reflection of a mirror.

Here’s a Santa Fe home, complete with signature pottery and rugs the size of a credit card. An Indigenous master taught the miniaturist, the display reports, also asking a question: “Can you figure out what the faucet handles are made from?” Answer: the ball points of pins.

Here’s a dusty old mountain town, here’s a Depression-era home, and here’s a medieval castle. And here are friends gathered around modern, miniature amenities that might prove useful for their next creations.

Who would’ve thought of Stanleys, Tupperware and air fryers?

“Even those of us who’ve been in this hobby for decades, there’s always something new,” says Morjorie Smelt.

She is the museum’s treasurer who is better known for her woodturning skills. Woodworking is one skill of a miniaturist. Metalworking is another often-required skill, a few others being upholstery, embroidery and electrical.

Smelt stops to appreciate a miniature saloon in the museum, the wooden shelf lined with multi-colored bottles the size of peanuts. “There are crazy people who blow the glass and put the liquid inside,” Smelt says.

Yes, the ways are many to recreate the world around us and worlds beyond.

“Most of us may never get to Versailles, but people have recreated the Hall of Mirrors in miniature,” Smelt says. “The Amber Room from Russia was created in miniature.”

The list goes on, from the Taj Mahal to St. Peter’s Basilica to buildings from eras we’ll never know — the medieval castle here at the museum, for example. It was built by a local, Marcia Knight.

It’s not her favorite, though. That would be an A-frame cabin, where there’s a fireplace surrounded by books and cozy chairs, a cat up in the loft. “It’s my world,” Knight says. “It’s my sanctuary.”

It’s where she can escape — an opportunity the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys likes to sell. And just as one escapes into the multiroom dollhouses, they might also learn.

“Dollhouses, while often not taken seriously, are a really engaging and really great way to learn without knowing you’re learning,” says the museum’s director, Wendy Littlepage.

It’s not just dollhouses.

True to the museum’s name, dolls and toys are showcased here. Barbie factors prominently, along with the story of her creator. Ruth Handler was born in Denver, some visitors are surprised to learn.

They might learn of the Works Progress Administration initiative that saw women handmake dolls from scrap material. One is displayed here, close to a Chatty Cathy. She was a breakthrough for interactive dolls, capable of uttering 18 phrases by 1963.

Chatty Cathy looked like all dolls back then, white and blonde, before Black-owned Shindana Toys emerged. A Talking Temu from 1970 is displayed here. Went one of her phrases at the pull of a string: “I’m proud like you!”

Littlepage points elsewhere to what she calls “the most famous piece in the collection.” That’s Miss Hamako Yokohama, the doll gifted to the children of Colorado from the people of Yokohama, Japan. This was in 1928, a decade after World War I.

Toy soldiers in gas masks recall the horrors of that conflict. A visitor stopped by the soldiers to reflect once, Littlepage remembers. “We had a good conversation.”

The museum aims for good conversation. It’s been the aim since the late ’70s, when a group of Denver miniaturists organized to exhibit dollhouses at local malls, libraries and other public spaces. They’d eventually get a permanent space — a space that more than doubled with the move to Lakewood in recent years.

There would be more room for dolls and toys, including model trains to capture broader interests. But the elaborate dollhouses remain front and center. And the museum’s mission seems clear: to foster a hobby that has waned over the years.

“At one time Denver had four miniature shops,” says Knight, the local hobbyist going back to the ’70s.

Now the museum’s gift shop serves as the place for various necessities, from a tiny couch for one’s living room, to tiny chairs for the dining room, to very tiny food for the kitchen.

And there’s a classroom stocked with odds and ends: decorative wrap for wallpaper; linen for carpets and tile for other floors; cardboard that could be cut for a roof’s shingles; strips of wood that could be cut for a house’s exterior trim or interior baseboards.

The classroom is for regular workshops, for teaching the next generation. “If we’re not teaching, then it becomes a lost skill,” Littlepage says.

Lost amid a culture that has become increasingly busy, from Knight’s view. She credits women for dollhouses and the hobby that flourished in America after the Industrial Revolution.

“Women work now; they didn’t so much work 50 years ago,” Knight says. “Now by the time you work and come home to the kids, you don’t have as much time for hobbies.”

But there’s hope of a renaissance.

Social media audiences have swooned over a thumb-sized cake being baked by candlelight, or a toe-sized machine dripping espresso into a dainty mug, or a Starburst-sized lasagna being prepared. Those are just a few scenes from the social media account called My Miniature Life, with more than a million followers. “Be grateful for the little things,” reads the bio.

“Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have been great for miniature,” Littlepage says.

Technology has been great in other ways. Just ask Nancy Stein, the hobbyist and museum volunteer who made the Stanleys, Tupperware and air fryer from her 3D printer.

“I tried to think of things we didn’t have,” Stein says.

And she didn’t need to turn to her bag of things that people outside the hobby would throw away. Such as one of those creamer cups from a restaurant, Stein says. “That can be a trash can!”

The 3D-printed items would be good for the gift shop; artistic purists still appreciate the hunt for obscure material. Indeed, miniaturists were grateful for the little things long before today’s social media audiences.

The online trend is obvious: Tiny things are cute. But don’t tell that to longtime miniaturists.

“’Cute’ is a four-letter word,” Knight says.

“Cute” might describe much of the museum’s 20,000-plus objects, but it does not describe the gritty process of their creation.

Take, for example, the onion the size of a pencil’s eraser. One might need a magnifying glass to truly appreciate the inner layers.

Littlepage hopes all leave with new appreciation. For history and for the art.

But that’s not possible without a careful look.

There’s a story with every doll. Just as there’s a story with every dollhouse.

The Great Depression-era house appears less impressive until you read the story written beside it: It was built with whatever scraps a poor father could find, to be his little girl’s Christmas gift, before his death months later.

Beside the posh Victorian house, there’s a story about it taking 12 years to make. The artist had to find the perfect wallpaper and stained glass, the display reports: “For a miniaturist, no detail is too small.”

It’s easy to miss the knobs of a dining room chair that would be part of its life-sized design. It’s easy to miss the thin, carefully curled iron of a chandelier. It’s easy to miss the artistic detail in not just every flower but every flower petal. It’s easy to miss the remarkable in these everyday things you might consider unremarkable.

It is perhaps the greatest lesson from the museum: “You have to slow down,” Littlepage says.