A secret group of creatives from Malmö in southern Sweden is sneaking stunning miniature installations for mice into public spaces in the dead of night.
The clandestine collective ― called Anonymouse ― incorporates everyday objects into its painstaking recreations, using matchboxes for desks and postage stamps for paintings.
The group has installed 25 pieces, mostly in cellar windows, in its home city, across Sweden, in France and on the Isle of Man.
They include a tiny barbershop:
A record store:
An “Amousement Park”:
An antiques store:
A bookstore:
And a castle:
“There is no particular hidden meaning behind it,” members of the group, who all have day jobs and wish to remain unidentified, told HuffPost via email. “More than that we try to create something that we, ourselves, would all have loved to stumble upon as children.”
The project was founded in 2016 by two artists inspired by the stories of British author Beatrix Potter and Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, as well as the films of Walt Disney and Don Bluth. The collective soon grew.
“We have different people for different tasks, some are better at woodwork, some at painting and some at graphic design and so on,” the group explained. “If you really start to dig into it you might be able to tell which sceneries that have the same main creator.”
The time it takes to create each piece varies. The process has sped up “considerably” since the group’s first creation, which took three months from design to completion.
The group allows people to discover the installations’ exact locations for themselves. Fans use clues from social media photos, such as the surrounding bricks and other background details, to figure out where the pieces are.
“The nicest thing is always to see a crowd hunched down exploring what we’ve built,” the group said. “When strangers start talking to each other is really nice to see.”
Some critics, however, “find it ‘too cute’ and don’t see the point of why anyone would want to do what we do.”
One woman wrote to complain about “the commotion our shop had created on her street,” claiming it was forcing her to move. “We responded that our shops usually don’t last that long, so hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.”
Five pieces have been vandalized.
But the group remains undeterred: “We try not to focus on the one person who destroys but rather on the hundreds of people who enjoyed them and contributed to them.”
Check out more of Anonymouse’s work below and on Instagram.