Photo This couch, which is a miniature model of an Ikea design, was created by Annina Günther for her “Brighton shared house, ” one of four dollhouses she stages for photographs that she posts on her blog. Credit David Azia for The New York Times

CHRISTINE FERRARA, a 39-year-old public affairs director for the Institute for Advanced Study, a research center in Princeton, N.J., has a passion for modern architecture and design. It began in 2008, when her husband, Steven Birnbaum, a technology consultant, bought her an airy modern home with floor-to-ceiling windows.

It was to be her own little place, to decorate as she pleased without regard for his more traditional tastes or worrying that their three children might break something. “I had seen the house on Craigslist and thought it was too frivolous to buy for myself, ” she said. “But he gave it to me for Christmas, probably not realizing what he would unleash.”

Since then, she has bought six more modern houses and filled them with appropriately modern furnishings — streamlined upholstered sofas, leather loungers, molded plastic chairs, glass tables, Pop Art and steel lamps — which she is constantly rearranging and staging for photographs worthy of the cover of Dwell or Architectural Digest. Except for one thing: the size of the rooms. An inch in Ms. Ferrara’s modernist world is equivalent to a foot in the real world.

Ms. Ferrara, who posts the pictures on her blog, Call of the Small, is one of a growing number of devotees of miniature modern design. With their love of clean lines and sleek interiors, mini-modernists are unlike the vast majority of dollhouse hobbyists, who tend to favor more ornate Victorian and Tudor styles.

As recently as three years ago, an Internet search for “miniature modern” or “mini modern” would have yielded few, if any, results. But today there are a number of blogs like Ms. Ferrara’s showcasing tiny modern interiors. There is also a Flickr group called Modern Miniatures, with 370 members — many from the United States, but also from Australia, England, Germany and Japan. And an increasing number of manufacturers are producing mini-modern homes and furnishings for people to create fantasy spaces that, at full size, would be too impractical or expensive to own.

In real life, Ms. Ferrara lives in a typical suburban Colonial-style home, furnished with antiques she and her husband inherited, and various pieces from Pottery Barn and Ikea.

“With three kids, my house is fine, it’s comfortable, it works, ” said Ms. Ferrara, who keeps her mini-modern houses and accessories in the basement. “But with my mini houses, I get to be creative and take risks, ” like hanging bold geometric-patterned wallpaper in a sitting room or putting a white faux-fur rug on the floor.

She can also buy miniature replicas of modern furniture she loves by designers like Le Corbusier or Charles Eames for less than $30 apiece — a fraction of what the full-size versions would cost.

Even so, she said, the little things are adding up, and she’s had to cut back elsewhere: “I don’t buy clothes anymore.”

Ms. Ferrara haunts Internet auction sites and online toy sellers for vintage and new mini-modern items made by companies like Reac in Japan and Elf Miniatures in England, as well as Minimodernistas, Brinca Dada and PRD Miniatures in the United States.

Particularly sought after by serious collectors is the Kaleidoscope House, designed by the artist Laurie Simmons and Peter Wheelright, an architect, in 2001. Back then, the colorful modernist dollhouse with its $250 price tag wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. Indeed, the company that made it, Bozart Toys, went out of business two years later. But today, even a used and tattered Kaleidoscope House can sell for as much as $2, 000.

Christy Schmidt, 30, a data analyst for an insurance company in Louisville, Ky., has two modern dollhouses — one of them a Kaleidoscope — that she writes about on the blog Petite Nouveau. And because “the supply of modern miniatures is pretty limited, ” she said, “I am quick to buy anything as soon as I find it.”

Like other mini-modernists, Ms. Schmidt often resorts to making furnishings herself — lamps out of beads, tables out of Lucite pillboxes and rugs out of place mats.

“It’s my creative outlet, ” she said. “It combines interior design and crafting.”

To some, she acknowledged, it might seem like a childish pursuit, but “it somehow seems warranted because it’s cool midcentury modern.”

Mini-modern enthusiasts are usually quick to distance themselves from other adult dollhouse collectors, who have a reputation for being somewhat eccentric.

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