I’ve been discovering a lot of interesting miniatures. so will start sharing them on Miniature Mondays. These displays are creative and inspiring – and sometimes surprising.

The Nutshell Studies were created by Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940’s. They’re dioramas of crime scenes, intended to help train detectives to solve homicides. Lee (1878-1962) was America’s first female police captain and a pioneer in developing forensic sciences. She worked with the Department of Legal Sciences at Harvard and created these miniatures to teach police investigators what to look for at a crime scene.

Here’s an article about an exhibit of the 19 dioramas at the Smithsonian a few years ago. The image above is from that article and clicking on it will take you there, too.

This article at the Smithsonian magazine has a slide show of images and more information about Lee (who sounds like a very interesting woman.)

Here’s the Wiki.