The Mott's Miniatures Museum began as a collection of work by The Mott Family in Des Moines, Iowa in 1911. Allegra Mott (then Allegra Mitchell) was just 8 years old when she purchased her first box and fell in love with her first miniature. She would later transfer her interests to her husband, De Witt Mott, who also picked a carving knife and went on to deal in miniatures.

The Motts Miniatures Museum has an array of various miniature exhibits derived from the Mott Family Collection. The museum has two main categories in the exhibit: History of American Life and History of the American business. The American life sequence is constituted of six American episode abodes from the prehistoric Pilgrim cottage through to the contemporary home with an operational miniature television. Interestingly, three of the abodes in this series are exact models of homes that once belonged to the Mott Family, which include a civil conflict epoch home of around 1865; a Victorian epoch dwelling of approximately 1900; and the famous Des Moines cottage where the couple, Allegra and DeWitt brought up their three children in the 1930s. By analyzing the American business series, one can get a broad idea of the improvement of free business venture in America right from the time of first Indian merchants to the growth of the contemporary supermarket.

So dedicated were the Motts that by the 1940's, they already had several miniature displays set up in their living room in Des Moines, Iowa. No sooner had the Motts accomplished this than the local Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) learned of the makeshift museum and asked the local schoolchildren to study the history of America from it. However, some notoriety was later realized, causing on and off closure of the museum. For instance, subsequent to an instance of a long period of closure (from 1992), the museum was reopened in 1996.

The museum contains inter alia, storybook displays, flights of fancy trips that give phenomenal flashbacks in history. In addition, it has exhibits of miniatures that are so tiny that they must be observed under magnifying lenses. It is also important to note that some of these miniatures are highlighted under the Guinness Records. Among the memorable miniatures are preserved fleas, hand-painted pictures of United States presidents made on pinheads, ivory hand carvings made on bean shells, carvings on rice grains, the world's tiniest foldable pocketknife and so on. For one to perceive the uniqueness of this collection, one has to actually see it to accept it as true.

Apart from the tiny miniatures, other items that have elevated Motts Miniature Museum to fame include dolls made of resin, porcelain German dollhouse dolls and dollhouse scale furniture. From this point, it is worth noting that even though the Motts may not have intentionally required a museum to be named after them, the Motts Miniature Museum is a name that will forever persist in history as a model in the preservation of American artifacts, particularly miniatures.

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