Massachusetts is known for many things: its rich history, delicious seafood, gorgeous fall foliage — and according to one man, one of the largest dollhouse shops in the world. And this month, that shop is getting bigger.
That man is Nathaniel Ellis, owner of Flip This Dollhouse, a store that has called a former textile mill in New Bedford its home for over a decade, but moved west last month to Fall River’s Tower Mill to upsize its retail space.
Ellis has poured years of dedication into the store that officially reopened doors for its new location April 1. At the time of reporting, his Facebook boasts nearly 60,000 followers, 24,000 on TikTok, and 15,000 on Instagram. Dollhouses from Ellis’s shop have appeared as set pieces for ABC’s “The Fatal Flaw” and HBO’s “The Gilded Age.” Producers for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tapped the store to supply miniature furniture for a visual that plays during the song “Bad Blood.”
Ellis, an Orange native, started his business as an eBay store 15 years ago as a way to clear out his rapidly growing collection of dollhouses. He had been obsessed with old homes as a child, and fell in love with making and restoring dollhouses. However, it was a passion he felt he had to keep quiet for much of his adolescent life.
“Being a boy, growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I remember thinking, ‘If I get a dollhouse, I know I’m going to be teased for it.’ So I never got one until I was 18 and had my own money from working at Walmart,” Ellis explained. “I think I started hoarding them to fill that void from childhood because I wanted one from age 7 to age 18 more than anything.”
While he has been professionally designing miniature interiors for more than two decades, his dollhouse knowledge helped him land his first full-size interior design gig — and he has now worked across both scales for 15 years.
“I grew up loving old homes and loving decorating, and that’s why I wanted a dollhouse as a kid, because I wanted to start practicing that decorating, staging, and designing,” Ellis said.
Though Ellis is still settling into his new Fall River location, the specialty products and services that popularized the former Kilburn Mill store have come with him. From colonial style homes to nautical lighthouses to wooden cabins, Ellis prides himself on his range of houses. In addition to thematically and period-accurate exteriors, inside, they are fitted with functional lighting, wallpaper, and, in some cases, hardwood flooring to enhance the realism of the home. For buyers not looking to invest in an entire dollhouse — which can cost several hundred to thousands of dollars — Ellis also sells detailed room decor, furniture, and other mini trinkets.
“[Dollhouses were] always an escape from reality for me. It was therapeutic because when everything was going wrong in my life, I would just remove myself, work on a dollhouse, and then nothing exists except whatever you’re working on in the house,” Ellis said.
That therapeutic outlet became all the more important to Ellis, as a creator and a business owner, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s interesting because when COVID hit, I thought that was going to kill me, I thought: How am I going to survive in a niche hobby-based business?,” he recalled. “But COVID actually helped hobbies like mine, a lot of hobbies, crafts, and collectibles went through the roof because people were home and needed things to work on and needed distractions.”
Ellis says his clientele range in age, gender, and nationality, noting some have told him they’ve “planned a whole vacation around my shop,” which is open to the public.
“Our customers come from all over New England, all over the country, and all over the world. If I showed you my guestbook, I can’t believe the countries that are in there,” Ellis said.
Denise Tudino, a Rehoboth-based dollhouse enthusiast and one of Ellis’s regulars, has over 50 homes in her collection. Her crown jewel is a miniature replica of Queen Elizabeth’s castle, a project Ellis helped her with.
“He’s really taken the time to get to know me as a customer and as a friend,” Tudino said. “I tell him all the time he reminds me of the P.T. Barnum of the miniature world and P.T. Barnum always said that ‘The noblest art is that of making others happy,’ and you can’t help but be happy when you walk into that store.”
Ellis’s love for the craft is apparent to all his customers, and his passion is infectious, even to the biggest dollhouse skeptic.
“My job is so fun because I get to do what I love,” Ellis said. “And sometimes I don’t want to go home at night because I’m still working, but the lines between work and play kind of blur when you do something like this.”
Gitana Savage can be reached at gitana.savage@globe.com. Follow her on X @gitana_savage.