Art Fit for a Family of Dolls : Lifestyles: A retired husband and wife craft unique dollhouses in their basement. They do it for the fun, not the money.

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. —  Florence Pfeiffer is the first to admit that she and her husband, Richard, have never outgrown their attachment to toys.

Their love of play coexists with creative activity. In the basement of a house crowded with toy trains, dolls and model boats, they run an artistic enterprise: making dollhouses.

The Pfeiffers spend as long as two years crafting these miniatures, installing custom-designed moldings, gently gluing on gingerbread latticework, laying parquet floors, gingerly working each shingle roof, one tiny shingle at a time.

For the 70-year-old retired architecture professor and his designer wife, a hobby has evolved into a small business--Architecturally Designed Dollhouses.

Admirers seek the custom-made dollhouses not for their children or grandchildren but for themselves, as pieces of art. Impatient collectors need not apply; speed is not characteristic of the Pfeiffers’ work.

“The advantage of being retired,” says Florence Pfeiffer, “(is that) you work on something whenever you want.”

One cottage, which looks like a Victorian retreat from a “Masterpiece Theater” set, has been evolving for so many years that she doesn’t quite remember when she started it. She thinks she’ll never get it done.

The Pfeiffers won’t disclose their prices but estimate they earn about 25 cents an hour for their work.

“If we were really in business, you couldn’t sell this for less than $15,000,” says Florence Pfeiffer, showing off pictures of a Georgian house with maids’ quarters and backstairs. “You can’t make money if you sell this at $8,000.”

Some houses are done for display at no charge. Such a diorama in the works for the Stamford Historical Society this Christmas involves miniature farm implements and a specially designed hardware store.

Stamford Society spokeswoman Elizabeth Montgomery says the Pfeiffer houses “are very meticulously done. They use first-rate materials, such as real wood and real glass and real copper on their gutters and leaders.”

The Pfeiffers have also done pieces for the Somers Historical Society and a gallery in Hastings.

Their basement is cluttered with wood, tools and houses in various stages of completion. An assortment of miniature furniture, much of it commercially made, means that any house can span decades and oceans, from early America to Edwardian England.

One house is a dressmaker’s shop, complete with miniature sewing machine and dresses made by Florence Pfeiffer. Richard Pfeiffer’s love of clocks led to the conversion of another house into a clock shop, with a dozen miniature clocks crammed into a room. Some work; some don’t.

The houses are built to a scale of an inch to a foot and are designed for male figures of 6 inches and female figures of 5 inches.

Dollhouses have rules of their own, say the Pfeiffers.

The most basic rule is that every dollhouse is really half a house, because access to a room, for playing or decorating, is vital. That means, if access to the house is from the back, which the Pfeiffers say it should be, rooms can be adjacent to each other but not in front of each other.

The Pfeiffers use elements from commercial dollhouse kits in their own designs. Every house is different, even if the basic foundation is similar, and Richard Pfeiffer does all the construction himself. It’s the decorative trim that often makes the house: the moldings, the lintels, the hand-carved fluted columns, the latticework around the windows. The Pfeiffers say they shy away from building replicas of historic houses or a customer’s house because customers can become difficult about details.