In the Rijks Museum are several models in miniature of old Amsterdam houses. The finest one is of tortoiseshell ornamented with white metal inlay. According to tradition, Christoffel Brandt, Peter the Great’s agent in Amsterdam, had this house made by order of the Czar, and it is said to have cost 20,000 guilders (£2,500), and to have required five years to produce. Dating from the latter part of the seventeenth or first part of the eighteenth century, it contains all the furniture that was to be found at that date in an aristocratic dwelling on the _Heerengracht_ or _Keizersgracht_. Every object in it was made by the proper artisan, so that it is correct in every detail. Another dates from the first half of the eighteenth century. Architecturally it is very interesting; but the interior furnishings are much simpler than the above. A third house, belonging to the family Ploos van Amstel, dates from the first half of the eighteenth century, and is supposed to be inhabited by a doctor. It is three storeys high, and has a wide door on the façade with the initials P.V.A. (Ploos Van Amstel) artistically interlaced. Of its twelve rooms, the most remarkable are the parlour and the physician’s study, containing a library, a collection of preparations and a collection of shells and artistic objects in ivory, every item of which is reproduced in miniature. According to Mr. E. W. Berg, who gives a minute description of this house in _De Oude Tyd_ (1872), it is said that by this doctor is meant Christoffel Ludeman, the well-known “wonder-doctor.” It was a fad with the wealthy to possess these curious silver toys, which passed from generation to generation. Sometimes the collection consisted of hundreds of pieces. Mrs. van Varick, of New Amsterdam (1696), had no less than eighty-three silver toys to divide among her children. These silver and gold toys were so artistically made that they attracted the attention of many travellers, who paid large sums for them. Many beautiful and quaint specimens are therefore to be seen in the European Museums and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. Sets of dolls’ porcelain were also collected in this century and preserved in show-cases or china-cabinets, with a collection of dolls’ clothes. These cabinets of dolls’ articles were even found in farmhouses, and sometimes jewellery and small articles of value were kept in them.