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The excitement of finding a label

February 1, 2013, 4:15 am
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At first, I thought that all the furniture in the Toy Works dolls house was modern pine furniture. A few pieces have painted red and blue trim, like the stove, sink and kitchen corner unit (not a bread box, as Troy pointed out!) ....
But this bureau has books painted in more colours .... and the handle on the pull-down desk lid is a tiny metal nail, not a large wooden knob like on the corner unit ....

Bureau: roughly 5" tall, 2" wide, and 1 1/4" deep when closed.

So I looked more closely - and found that on the back, there is an old label and remnants of glue or paint:


953 - an old stock or catalogue number?

So I looked at the back of all the other pieces, and found - woohoo!


The remains of a Walther & Stevenson label!!!

This is on a stove, which also has little nails as knobs and handles:

Stove: roughly 2 1/2" high (to top of splashback), 2 1/2" wide and 1 3/8" deep when closed.


Walther & Stevenson was a toy shop in Sydney, at 395 George St. I have catalogues from 1933 and 1956/57 - both have dolls house furniture sets pictured in them, but not these pieces. I have found on another website that Walther & Stevenson closed in 1969, and I suspect that these pieces could date from the 1960s.
As far as I know, this is the first lot of dolls house furniture I have from Walther & Stevenson!! And Australian-made - and commercially-made - dolls houses and dolls house furniture is pretty rare, so it was very exciting to find it, especially in a fairly ordinary dolls house. (The 1933 catalogue states that the furniture is Australian-made, from plywood; the 1956/57 doesn't say whether the dolls house furniture is made in Australia or imported.)


Both the bureau and the stove are made of plywood, and fixed together with tiny nails.

None of the other pieces has a label or the yellow residue found on the stove and bureau, but the bed did have a label at one time, and it's made of the same kind of plywood:






Bed: roughly 5 1/4" long, head & foot 2 3/4" wide and 2" high.


So I think the bed is also from Walther & Stevenson. 

One other piece is made partly from plywood, and that's the dressing table - which also has the same kind of tiny nails for handles as the stove and bureau:

Dressing table: roughly 3 1/2" wide, 3 1/4" high and 1 1/2" deep when closed.
 
As you can see, the mirror has come off ...

This side-on view shows the plywood back and top clearly:


The opening doors, and non-opening drawers, are made from pieces of solid wood:




I'm thrilled to have one labelled piece of Walther & Stevenson furniture, and I think it's very likely that I have three other pieces, too. Finding any dolls house furniture in an antiques and collectables shop is rare - finding vintage, wooden, labelled, Australian dolls house furniture is amazing!!! So you can see why I had to buy the dolls house it was in! I'll keep these pieces of furniture with the house, as I think they date from the same period, and they may well have been together for over 40 years.
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The other house

February 8, 2013, 3:51 am
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I mentioned that I bought two vintage dolls houses from Recycling Works. As well as the hardboard house, there was a lithographed tin dolls house. Here are some quick photos of it - I haven't cleaned it at all yet.


The ground floor exterior is built of stone, while the upper floor is timber-clad.


I particularly like the wall frieze in the children's bedroom - there's a frog, a rabbit, a squirrel, a cat and ducklings.


The walls are in quite good condition, but the floors and roof are rather rusty.

I like the yellow-flowered curtains in the living room, and there are yellow curtains in the main bedroom too.




There's no maker's name on this house - does anyone recognise it? I think it's probably American - possibly made by Marx??


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Perhaps they're earlier than I thought!

February 11, 2013, 5:33 am
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Today I searched the digitised Australian newspapers on the National Library of Australia website for Walther & Stevenson. As well as many ads for model trains, surf boards, and saddles, I found this:


This advertisement appeared on 11 June 1947. The bookcase (no 6, lower left) is identical to the one I bought!


The stove (no 13, upper right) is almost identical, though the handles look a bit bigger in the ad:



The dressing table (no 5, above the bookcase, lower left) is similar to mine, but the one in the ad is not symmetrical like mine is:



So perhaps these pieces of furniture date from the late 1940s or early 1950s - as I mentioned, they are not in the 1956/57 Walther & Stevenson catalogue.

It's really interesting to see the other pieces of furniture, too. The bath is fairly basic, but I would love to find the bath heater (No 10) - so reminiscent of older Australian houses! Both the houses I grew up in had gas hot water tanks in the laundry, which piped hot water to the kitchen and bathroom as well as the laundry, but in older houses I lived in in Canberra as a student, there was a gas hot water heater over the bath. We had to remember to turn the water to the tank on before turning the tap on (I think - it's a long time ago!), so that it wouldn't overheat and blow up! At least it wasn't a chip heater - having to cut and light wood chips to heat the water for a bath or shower was not something I had to do, thank goodness!

I was also excited to see the Kitchen Set, 5 pieces in attractive box (lower middle of the ad), as I think I have it too!




It's the Tiny Town kitchen set (No 1), by Goodwood (Australia) Productions, which I was lucky enough to buy on ebay 2 1/2 years ago. So I'll be able to use it with the stove, which it suits, according to the ad!

I have cleaned the Toy Works house the furniture came in, and the pieces of furniture too. They look much better, but the house is still missing a door, some shutters, and all its clear plastic windows.




The lounge chairs are modern, I think, but more finely made than the other chunky recent pieces, so I think I'll keep them here too. It needs a bit more furniture - I'll probably use some Twigg and early, unstained Barton or Dol-toi pieces, to go with the Walther & Stevenson furnishings.
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Odessa's House

February 12, 2013, 8:23 pm
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I recently won this wonderful dolls house on ebay. It was in a Sydney suburb not far from where my sister lives, so it was only a short drive to go and pick it up.



The house is made largely of plywood, and there are some small areas of damage. But what an amazing facade! As you can see, there are two entrances at ground level - the arched opening in the centre, with a seat on each side of the arch, and tall (7") doors under a porch roof at the left. On the first floor above the central arch is a small balcony with double doors again  - and at the side, a single door opening to a large roof terrace.


Some features of this house - the arches, the circular fretwork windows, the roof terrace - make me think of Moorish or Middle Eastern architecture. The plywood stencils of a camel and a bear add to this impression. We think the two animals on either side of the arched entrance are goats - what do you think?



The whole front of the house lifts away. Inside the double doors is the hallway and stairs. On a small door to a cupboard under the stairs is another plywood animal - a donkey, I think. And leading in to the next room is a large archway, with little round tables at the base of the arch. (One of these is broken, but there are more between the other rooms.)

Above each room, at the front, the plywood is shaped to form something like a proscenium arch or drapery. I'm sorry I didn't take a photo of the whole house open, so you could see them in each room. You can see them clearly in some of the photos of individual rooms, including this one:



This is the room that the arched entryway leads into. I found it a bit hard to arrange furniture in here - it seems natural to make it a living room, but the lounge chairs and sofa, and the small kidney-shaped table, make it a bit full - and it would be hard to enter through the arch!


This room is on the right side of the ground floor, under the roof terrace. I have placed a dresser and table with matching chairs here - I think this is the kitchen, although no stove or fire came with the house.


Upstairs on the left, the stairs lead to this landing. The green bench is removable - it is built to fit around the balustrade.

As you can see, all the floors in the house are covered with the same lino. In fact, the green base at the front of the house is lino too, which has been painted green.


I have placed the wardrobe in this room, with a matching chair - but there is no bed! My sister said that the people who live here must be party animals - there's nowhere to sleep, and nowhere to cook, either, so they must always buy takeaway food!

Through the door on the right of this room is the roof terrace.

I mentioned that the walls of this house are made of plywood. The furniture is mostly solid wood, although two of the tables have formica tops. The windows have a hard kind of plastic, like the kind that used to be used in shirt boxes, fixed between inner and outer fretwood frames. The flooring is hardboard, covered with the lino - you can see the underside of the hardboard in this photo:


(I haven't cleaned the undersides of the roof or floors yet!)

The roof is made of plywood over wooden struts, and the coloured tiles on the roof top are plywood too.



The base is interesting - the ground floor, like the first floor, is hardboard, but the frame is made of planks of solid wood, one of which has printed on it SYDNEY NSW AUSTRALIA. The base of more letters can just be seen above this, but not enough of the letters is visible to work out what it says.



The ebay seller I bought this from had bought it for her daughter Odessa, probably about 10-15 years ago. I don't know who made it, or when. It is probably homemade, perhaps in about the 1950s (going by the presence of both the lino and the formica) - or perhaps earlier, as the architraves and arches also have an Arts and Crafts look about them.

I'm not sure yet who will live here. What do you think? What does this house make you think of?  What kind of dolls do you think would like to live here?
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Update: Dolls Houses Past & Present Down Again!

February 18, 2013, 1:32 pm
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As of 6 hours ago, Webs, our host for Dolls Houses Past and Present, reported that they are experiencing an outage as a result of a DDOS Attack on Webs. So if you can't access the site, it's not your computer or your browser, etc, it's the Webs host itself. They don't have an estimated time for fixing the problem yet.  

Update: we seem to be back up again, so hopefully they've fixed the problem.

Update #2: Webs is down again, and so Dolls Houses Past and Present is too. No info yet on Webs' facebook page about the cause or likely time it will be fixed :-(
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Sherry and Pepper have a party

April 9, 2013, 7:28 am
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Pepper and Sherry are having a party. Things look a bit strained, though, and Sunny and Mandy don't seem very comfortable ..... Are Pepper and Sherry arguing?

Or are they just talking to some of the girls in the other rooms?



Lacey is feeling a bit off colour, and is staying in bed.



Melly and Sandy have come to keep her company, but Sandy's idea of keeping her company was to play the radio very loudly. Melly turns it down, and tells Sandy off for being selfish and not thinking of Lacey ...



Heather and Libby are in the kitchen finding some food ... Perhaps some drinks would help make the party livelier, too?


Michaela is in the bathroom, despairing at the state of her hair.


"Why don't you get it cut short, like mine?" asks Susie. "It will be much easier to take care of then."


The girls are Dolly Darlings by Palitoy. Sunny and Susie have their original names, but who would want to be called Lounge Suit or Powder Puff?


 


I have just discovered that Dolly Darlings had their own playrooms - a bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. However, I don't have them - the rooms my Dolly Darlings live in are by Blue-Box.



They don't have a date on them, as some Blue-box dolls houses do. Many of the furnishings, and the colours, look quite retro ...




But that looks like a laptop computer in the bedroom, so they must be considerably later than the 1970s!


Never mind, I think the rooms suit the 1960s Dolly Darlings very well - who knows what they make of the laptop! I added some extra furniture - Fisher Price bunk beds and kitchen table and chairs, Linda from Hong Kong lounge chairs.


The buttons you can see at the front of each room turn on battery-powered lights and sounds in each room. Sometime I'll take videos of them, so you can get the full effect!




PS. I have turned on the Comment Verification again. I got tired of getting comments from spammers who said things like, "Great post, and by the way have you seen my website, house painting in Missouri?" I hope it won't be too hard for you to work out those pesky numbers - why are they such poor images here, when some other websites have quite clear verification numbers?!
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A Bodo Hennig in Australia?

May 2, 2013, 7:02 am
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I was quite excited when I saw this dolls house on Australian ebay earlier this year:



I recognised the design from diepuppenstubensammlerin's Update: Bodo Hennig Dolls Houses 1955-1981. In Germany, it was called the MIDI-Puppenhaus Allgäu. I had also seen it in the 1983 catalogue of a UK importer, Stephen Burghard. There, it was called Tina's House:


So perhaps it had been imported into Australia, too?

I could see, though, that the wallpapers in the Australian house were different from the ones used in Haus Allgäu / Tina's house, which I recognise from my Bodo Hennig Bodensee.


(I think the stairs got a bit bumped during the trip.)




The dolls house was in Canberra, and Anna-Maria (The Shopping Sherpa) very kindly collected it and held it for me, until I went to Canberra and picked it up from her last weekend.





I mentioned in an email to Anna-Maria how great it was to find a Bodo Hennig dolls house in Australia, and not have the expense of shipping it from overseas.

The rugs came with the house, and seem to have been made for it. Major trip hazards for dolls, though!



After she had picked it up, Anna-Maria replied,
 Except it’s not a Bodo Hennig L Sorry to break that to you, but unless BH manufactured under the name ‘Woodtoys Pty Ltd’ I think you’ve just bought an Australian licensed product. Which actually might be more interesting… J
The name Woodtoys is clearly printed on the back of the house:





I agree with Anna-Maria that it's even more interesting - I had not heard of Woodtoys Pty Ltd before, and I am always delighted to learn about Australian makers of dolls houses!

I still don't know much about Woodtoys - Anna-Maria found company information which showed that they were registered in 1977, and deregistered at the end of 2009. Apart from the wallpapers, the design of this dolls house appears identical to the Bodo Hennig Haus Allgäu / Tina's house, and the dimensions are the same as those given in the Burghard catalogue. So it would seem that it was made under license. I wonder if other Bodo Hennig models were also made here, or whether Woodtoys distributed Bodo Hennig dolls house furniture (smaller and lighter to import than dolls houses)?

If you know anything about Woodtoys, I'd love to hear from you! I hope one day, too, that I'll be able to look through issues of the Australian toy trade journal, and maybe I'll find some information about Woodtoys in that. I was able to visit the National Library of Australia while I was in Canberra, and skimmed through issues of the toy trade magazine from 1964-1969. I did discover some Australian-made dolls houses that were new to me, as well as some imported ones - I'll show some of my discoveries in another post. I didn't have time to look through later issues from the 1970s and 80s, so didn't find any mentions of Woodtoys.
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Another "book" house, this time from Sydney

May 10, 2013, 8:32 am
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I have posted about one of the dolls houses I picked up from Anna-Maria in Canberra. My sister in Sydney was also holding a dolls house for me - here it is on her spare bed, waiting for me:



This was listed on ebay as a "Gorgeous Vintage Wooden Children's Dolls House'. It was in western Sydney (near Penrith). The house is indeed gorgeous - or could be again - and I was especially excited to see that it came with lots of furniture which I can now recognise as from Walther & Stevenson!


This house is 18 1/2 inches wide, 2 feet tall to the top of the chimney, and 16 1/2 inches deep when closed (so the rooms are about 8 inches deep). The front "door", which doesn't open, is about 6" high to the top of the arched fanlight.



What looks like the front of the house is actually one of the side walls - the house opens in half, like a book, on the chimney side. The house I bought last year from Melbourne also opens like a book, though the chimney is at the other end on that one.




The end of the house with the hinges:


 The house seems to have had several generations of play, going by the layers of paint on it. Under the pink on the roof, there are traces of blue, and under that red:



And on the door and window frames, there's a layer of pink on top of blue again, and under that traces of green:





As you can see, there's some wonderful wallpaper inside:


The lower left room






The lower right room even has beautiful paper on the ceiling:


There's paper on the ceiling of the lower left room, but it has been painted over:



All the upstairs room have been painted pink, over the top of the wallpaper:



Can you see the texture of the wallpaper, and the strips around the windows and along the top of the walls? I'll get some paint stripper, and try to remove the paint from the wallpaper - if it's like the downstairs wallpaper, it will definitely be worth trying to save ...

It looks like there were pictures stuck onto the wallpaper, which were lifted before the wallpaper was painted over, and then stuck back down on the paint. Unfortunately, one of the pictures has torn (and so did the wallpaper it was stuck to):


Some of the dirty felt that came with the house as carpeting 



Most of the windows on this side of the house are broken - not sure how easy it will be to fix them.

I'll show the furniture that came with this house in my next post. Most of the furniture appears in catalogues of the Sydney toy store Walther & Stevenson. Maybe the house was bought from there too? I haven't yet seen it in a catalogue, but as I've only seen four catalogues, and one catalogue specifically states that they have dolls houses in styles other than those pictured, it certainly seems possible.

Whoever made it, they thriftily recycled a packing case. Here's the base:


It appears to say 'Magnetically clea[ned] by [W]alker & [G]reig Proc[....]'. I wonder what was in it?
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And here's the furniture!

May 11, 2013, 5:59 am
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I could see from the auction listing that the book house I showed in my last post was something special - I could also see that most of the furniture had come from the Sydney toy shop Walther & Stevenson!

There's a pink Walther & Stevenson bedroom set:


and a blue Walther & Stevenson bedroom set:


(I'm not sure if the blue bed is from Walther & Stevenson - I'm pretty sure the blue dressing table isn't.)

Both sets have been painted twice. Walther & Stevenson sold them as natural plywood, which could be painted by the buyer, or left plain. The pieces which I bought with the Toyworks dolls house were left plain. These have apricot paint under the pink (the same pink as the house has been painted!), and pale mint green under the blue.

There's also a blue Walther & Stevenson kitchen set:






The two layers of paint on these pieces meant that the doors wouldn't open. I used a Stanley knife (box cutter) to work through the paint in the cracks, and managed to get one of the cupboard doors on the sink open, and both wardrobes.

Guess what I found in the pink wardrobe?!


Clothes! which had been painted in!!!

Here they are:


A wee dress, a top for a baby, a table cloth, a knitted jumper, and a lace skirt. Four dolls came with the house, two little girls and two babies. The dress and top fit two of the dolls perfectly:



The other little girl does fit into the jumper, but as she has no legs, she is more comfortable in the pram:



The living room furniture doesn't come from Walther & Stevenson. There are two homemade matchbox chairs, which need recovering:


And I forgot to photograph a homemade table, made from the screw-on lids of two jars with a wooden cotton reel between them (all painted pink, naturally).

I'm not sure about the fireplace - it is wooden, but professionally painted, unlike most of pieces sold by Walther & Stevenson:



The other furniture looks more recent. It is painted with European folk designs. There's another bed, with some chairs and a bench:


And a grandfather clock, table and bench:



The bed is signed underneath:


It looks like 'A. Kody'. (The taped name is presumably a former owner of the piece?)
I think I've seen other furniture on Australian ebay, with similar painted designs and also signed with this name. Does anyone know more about it, or have any?
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Sydney Miniatures and Dolls' House Fair 2013

May 11, 2013, 11:45 pm
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I was able to go to the fair on both days again this year.

On the first day, I said hi to Anna-Maria (The Shopping Sherpa), and she took photos of me in my dolls house T-shirt made for me by my sister:


"Rebecca's Collections" on the front, with a photo of a mini me in a mini dolls house room/study. (I think I must have been saying something to Anna-Maria!)

And on the back, Dolls Houses Past and Present, of which I am the site owner and magazine editor:


On the left of my T-shirt is a Walther & Stevenson farm house, ca 1930s, and on the right a Blue-Box plastic kitchen. You can see The Shopping Sherpa's amazingly colourful stall behind me!

I wandered over to look at the exhibits, and was taken with this dolls house, made by 9 year old Ella Fraser:


Yes, that's a bucket. She writes:

I really love the book The Borrowers and this miniature house is inspired by it. My little people live in a forgotten bucket in the back of a laundry cupboard. No-one knows they are there. Their home is full of old things and packaging that humans have thrown away, but they don't give back so that is why I called them The Takers. But they are good because they recycle everything.

A closer look:





A little further on I noticed this striking roombox:


A Milly-Molly-Mandy room, set between two volumes of Milly-Molly-Mandy stories! Nearby was a group of people, and I recognised the name tag of one of them: Margaret Webster from Tamworth, who had sent photos of her mystery dolls house to Dolls Houses Past and Present a couple of years ago! I was delighted to meet her, and it turned out that she had made the Milly-Molly-Mandy room!


To one side is the entry, with wellies, scarves and overcoats. On the other side is a scullery:


Milly-Molly-Mandy, in her pink and white striped dress, stands by her grandmother near the range.


Just near Margaret's roombox was another one in book form:


The clock face swings open to show:


a long corridor through a library, which opens to show:


A young man sitting at a desk, by shelves of old, leather-covered books - but on the wall in front of him are ... posters - of Bob Dylan! I think Margaret said that the creator of this room was also from Tamworth. I would have liked to hear more about it.

Another striking exhibit:


Davidia Williams' new creation! This deserves a post of its own, so I'll show that, and my buys from the fair, in the next couple of posts.
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My Buys at the Fair, 2013

May 13, 2013, 7:23 am
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The first day of the fair, I looked at stalls but didn't buy anything. I did note that several stalls had bargain boxes, and I headed back to them the second day. The woman I had bought most vintage pieces from last year was not there this year, but there were some vintage items on a few stalls.



A woman named Joanne was selling her mother's collection, including the boxed Barrett's aquarium (she threw the empty toaster box in for free). Joanne also has a couple of boxes of 60s and 70s dolls house furnishings, from her mother, which I hope she will email me and Anna-Maria about when she's ready to sell them. The Jean roll-top desk was on another stall.

I loved the Scot Tissue toilet rolls in pastel wrapping paper - I remember similar wrapping from when I was a child. (I may even have some in a scrap book still - I remember pasting a piece in, as I thought the colour and design was beautiful!!!)

The little doll was on Diana Simms' stall, Diana's Gifts, where I found some vintage pieces last year too. She also had my best find of the fair, another doll:

 

All she could tell me about the doll was that it was from an old dolls house. Does anyone recognise her? She has a wooden head with painted features, metal hands and feet, and her legs and arms are made of plastic coated wire.  I like her expression, and her clothing! I don't know yet where she will live ...


The cutlery and jars of preserves shown on this table were also from Joanne. (The table itself is not from the fair.) I was delighted to buy an African violet in a pot - my grandmother kept a row of them on her bathroom windowsill. I have to admit I have forgotten who I bought it from, though!
The wonderful tea cosy was made by Win Garside, of Baulkham Hills (NSW). She also had Paddington Bear tea cosies, cosies with bees on them, rabbit-shaped cosies - it was quite hard to choose!
The wire mesh food and cake protectors were, I think, made by the woman from Victorian Dollhouses and Miniatures, from the ACT. She also had tiny boxes of Coats crochet cotton which she had made, handwinding the rolls of cotton.  I took a card so that I could look online, but their website features mainly their dolls houses and dolls house components. From that stall, I also bought some sheets of wallpaper - 3 embossed designs, and one that could be used for flooring or 50s/60s textured wallpaper:



3 more artisan-made pieces: a tiny knitted vest by Helen Palenski from New Zealand (Anna-Maria bought a tiny 1/48th scale tea cosy and a knitted 12th scale sock monkey of Helen's); a cloth doll by Marilyn Halcomb; and a beaded cover for a milk jug by Faery Fantasys:



More bargain buys, between 50c and $2:


I've included the cutlery here again, as it was only 50c! Joanne said she thought it looked rather crudely made, and it certainly is larger than 12th scale, as many dolls house items for children to play with were ...  
The little dolls (Liddle Kiddles?) could do with a wash, so I might experiment with using denture tablets to clean them, before I try on more valuable dolls (the Dolly Darlings, for example) ...

 

The purple table was from Anna-Maria's stall - a half-price offer I couldn't say no to (besides, I like the colour - it's the same purple as in the Kaleidoscope House!) The vases of carnations will go in 1960s or '70s houses, I think. The red, white and black vase was another of Joanne's mother's items, more recent than the cutlery and Barrett's accessories. I couldn't resist the box of Cluedo, complete with coloured game pieces - we had great fun playing Cluedo when I was growing up, and we still have our set, that looks just like this one!

Also from Anna-Maria are these two beautiful pieces:


A herb garden and a waterlily pond, both made by New Zealand miniaturists. I bought these when I visited Anna-Maria in Canberra, and saw her collection - and her stash! 


And from an old wares place near Bathurst, some more wallpaper:



The flowers on the middle pattern are too large for a dolls house, but I hope you can see the embossed columns in the white part, which I will be able to use.
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Davidia Williams' Lempicka Studio Apartment, Paris ca 1930

May 15, 2013, 11:04 pm
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I showed one photo of this house in my first post about the fair. It's such an amazing creation that it needs a post of its own to appreciate it, so here it is!

It's not exactly what most people would think of as a "studio apartment" these days - it has 3 storeys plus a penthouse studio and rooftop garden! It's built from the Dolls House Emporium Malibu Beach House kit.


Here is Tamara de Lempicka's story, as explained by Diva:


The entry:



Living room to the left of the entry, looking in from outside:



Inside:


The corner nook of the living room:


To the right of the entry, the dining room:


a card game is in progress ....



Upstairs, on the left is a well-appointed bar:



 On the right, the studio with the portrait of Madame Boucard:





Another flight of stairs:



to the bedroom on the left:





and the bathroom on the right:





Up again (I didn't manage to get a good photo of the landing and stairs here, I'm sorry), to the rooftop studio:




and a rooftop garden where you can relax with a drink:


Cheers!

You can see the two dolls houses Davidia exhibited at last year's fair in my post here. I didn't get to the fair in 2011, but Anna-Maria (The Shopping Sherpa) posted about Davidia's wonderful recreation of the 1950s Rose Seidler House on her blog. 
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Toy journals and catalogues at the National Library of Australia

May 17, 2013, 4:03 am
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While I was in Canberra recently, I was able to look through the collection of toy trade ephemera (catalogues, flyers, etc) and some issues of the Australian toy trade journal, at the National Library of Australia. Autumn is a lovely time in Canberra, as you can see!



The National Library holds issues of The Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer from 1964 (I will have to go to Melbourne to read issues from the 1950s). So I started with 1964 (the year that Barbie was new! Play-doh was new!), found that 1965 wasn't on the shelf, and went through 1966-1969. I really only had time to skim and look at the photos. Here are some of the dolls houses I spotted.


The East German export agency Demusa advertised regularly. Above, in December 1967, is a dolls house with an open front and arched doorways, shown fully furnished. Below, from August 1966, is a bungalow:


(Sorry about the curved photo - 12 issues of the journal were bound together, so getting them to lie flat wasn't easy!)

In December 1966, the Demusa ad showed more traditional furniture:


I was rather surprised to see that Demusa also advertised traditional German "Schultüten", paper bags full of goodies for children's first day at school. I imagine that their ads were prepared for international distribution, but I do wonder whether there were any orders for these from Australia:


Actually, with most of these manufacturers' and agents' advertisements, we don't know whether the items were actually ordered by Australian retailers, and stocked by Australian toy stores. I spotted some toy store ads which do show dolls houses - in some cases, I recognise the houses, as with these Triang dolls houses in the Melbourne toy shop Nathan Blight in July and September 1967:


The Triang U dolls house can be seen just to the left of the two women, while the Triang V is on an upper shelf on the right. (Is there another house in the corner to the left of the U? I can't quite make it out ...)

Other photos of toy shops show dolls houses I don't recognise, for example this house shown in November 1968:


It looks rather like what I remember of our childhood dolls house - white and two-storey!

I did discover at least one Australian dolls house maker I hadn't known about before. I had seen a few dolls houses by Bestoys on ebay, but hadn't realised they were Australian. Here are the photos I found:

Bestoys display at the Melbourne Toy Market, in July 1964
(The table and chairs in the foreground look very like the ones we had as kids!)

Bestoys display at the Melbourne Toy Fair, in the August 1967 issue
(Perhaps the house on the right here is the one behind the toy shop owners in the photo above??)

Bestoys was based at Botany, a suburb of Sydney. When I googled it, I found entries in recent business directories for Lumberjack-Bestoys, in Engadine, another Sydney suburb. Interesting, especially as I had found this dolls house in a Toyworld catalogue from Geoff Emerton Sports & Cycles, of Kingston in the ACT:


This looks rather like the design of the Bestoys dolls house on the right in the 1964 display above. I can't find a date on my photos of this Geoff Emerton catalogue - I think it is probably from the late 1970s or the early 1980s, as it also shows Matilda doll playsets, the Toltoys Family Tree House, Matchbox Play Boot, and Fisher Price Play Family School and Chime Ball. (Also, the phone number for the shop is 95 9741.)

And I think the dolls house on the left in this photo below, could be the dolls house on the left of the Bestoys 1964 display, above:


This photo dates from November 1966. The house on the left has the same alignment of doors and windows as the Bestoys house does, and when I zoom in on the 1964 display photo, I can see some markings above the door and windows. I didn't see a photo of a Bestoys display from 1966, but perhaps that's what this couple are standing in front of?

Mt Ainslie from the National Library

Other imported dolls houses I saw were Jenny's Home, from Triang, heavily promoted in 1967:



A Chad Valley tin lithograph dolls house, advertised in 1968 and 1969:

 

I think this Melbourne toy store (H W Rice of Fitzroy) has a Chad Valley dolls house on the floor in the centre of the photo in this ad from May 1969:


What's the taller dolls house behind it, I wonder?

Eagle Toys of Canada exhibited at the toy fair in 1968 - the write-up mentions "dolls house mounted on castors" - but I don't see any in the photo of their stand, though there are lots of tea sets:


The "Holly Lodge" Wooden Doll's House from the UK was displayed at a toy show at the Travel Lodge Motel, Sydney, in February 1968. There's no photo of it, but presumably this was the Chas. E. Methven "Foldaway" dolls house, which has the name Holly Lodge by the door?

Other Australian dolls houses included one from John Sands, a stationery and board games manufacturer, in June 1968:


and a craft set from Sally-Ann in August 1964:



The ephemera collection of toy catalogues included some earlier and some later than these trade journals. There were two Walther & Stevenson catalogues, one missing the cover, but going by the items shown and prices given, it's from the year before or the year after my 1933 catalogue. This catalogue shows four dolls houses:


I am very intrigued by these houses, especially as there's a note just underneath these descriptions saying "We also have English and Aust.-made dolls' houses in other styles than above". My "Italian Villa" style house, which I had thought was homemade from the 1950s, has a red roof, rough cast walls and fancy door and window frames - and the porch over the front door is identical to the porch on the No 3 and 4 "Wendy" two-storey houses here:


So perhaps it's not homemade after all! And perhaps it's earlier than the 1950s, too.

The other Walther & Stevenson toy catalogue held by the National Library dates from 1953/54, a couple of years earlier than my 1956/57 catalogue. It has a page of dolls houses:


A Triang No 50, No 60 and No 61, with one Australian-made dolls house shown, just above an Amersham house:


The Australian-made house (no 64) is described as "Beautifully made and coloured, opening doors and windows. Side also opens. Green and red. Size, 8in. high x 14in. x 15in. A fine house. Price, 46/3 each." It looks to me as if it has Romside windows?

Again, the catalogue says "Come in and see the largest range of dolls houses in Australia. A size and price house to suit "your" request. Here are a few of these Wonderful Houses." So, there were probably other Australian-made designs as well as other imported ones - if only there was a complete, fully illustrated catalogue of all of them!

Walther & Stevenson still sold Australian-made wooden dolls house furniture, and was also able to offer Kleeware furniture again, showing bathroom and dining room sets for 1953/54, and promising sets for other rooms by January 1954. I'm curious about the statement "These are now made in England" - where were they made before this?



Black Mountain with the Telstra Tower, from the National Library

Among the more recent catalogues, from the 1990s and 2000s, I saw familiar brands like the Sylvanian Families, in this November 1993 ad:


Blue-Box, with the Carry-Along Dream House from December 1995:


And a whole page of dolls houses, furniture and dolls in the 2000 Millennium edition of the Windmill Equipment and Good Toys Guide, for teachers, schools, kindergartens, childcare and parents:


I will, eventually, put all the images from the toy trade journal and catalogues onto flickr. There's a lot of food for research in the trade journal especially - I hope I'll be able to go back and read the 1960s issues more thoroughly, as well as go through later issues.




I hope you've enoyed this glimpse of Canberra, too!
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A-frame in New Zealand

May 18, 2013, 1:27 am
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An A-frame dolls house has been relisted on Trade Me, New Zealand's online auction forum:


Look! It has a sunken floor in the living room:


and a spiral staircase:


The dimensions are 65 cm x 59 cm x 52 cm high.


It's pick up from Rangiora, near Christchurch. I won't say I wish I lived close enough (too many earthquakes!) but I do love this house! Think how you could furnish it!

http://www.trademe.co.nz/a.asp?id=593572127
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Shutters or louvres?

May 19, 2013, 9:12 am
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Here's the other house which Anna-Maria was holding for me:


I have another of these houses, which has been overpainted and came without any furniture. So when I saw this one, I jumped at it:


The back slides off and inside - it's fully furnished! (And the house was in excellent condition until I walked into the door frame, carrying it - Anna-Maria picked up the pieces and put them in a tiny ziplock bag for me, so I can glue them back on.)

I also have a few pieces of this furniture, which I'd bought separately quite a while ago. Christine has an identical house with lots of furniture too.


So it seems clear that it was produced for sale - but where? and by whom?



It probably originates from Sydney - it's come up for sale there, in coastal areas north of Sydney, and as far north as Brisbane, as far south as Canberra - as far as I know ....



I haven't seen it in any catalogues from the Sydney toy store Walther & Stevenson - but as I've only seen four catalogues, two from the 30s and two from the 50s, that doesn't mean a great deal.


And thinking of dates, when do you think this house and furniture dates from?

Here's the furniture in more detail:




A piece is missing from the table - perhaps I'll be able to replace it, that might help keep it even ...





Also a foot missing on the green wardrobe - I've propped it up with a pebble ...




As you can see, the wardrobes come in two sizes - one has a drawer at the bottom, the other doesn't.


The round table is in pretty good condition, just a little warped:



The matching chairs are missing both cross-pieces from the back (and someone has painted the very top black??), and the rungs from the bottom:


Thankfully, Christine's chairs have the top piece, so I'll be able to copy it (they are also missing the other pieces, though - can't have been very firmly attached!)




I think this is a stove -


the round bits on top look like hot plates, perhaps?


The black paint looks a bit messy - I might investigate and see if there's something else under it ...


This is the bottom of the possible stove - none of it opens ...

And finally, the other set of living room chairs:


The separate set which I bought some time ago is green and purple - I'll see if I can dig it out!

I'd like to make some bedding and perhaps cushions for this house. I'm not sure what will suit it - florals? geometric patterns? I wish I knew when it was made!

The base doesn't look as old as some of my other houses:


I'm guessing that "#65" means it's been sold at auction sometime, but the other numbers - both the printed/stamped 24743 and the handwritten numbers - seem to go under original parts of the house, the front steps and the outer edging of the base. I'll check and see what the base of my other house like this looks like ...

Back to the question I posed in the title of this post - I have been thinking of this as the Shutter House. But shutters are not at all common on houses in Australia, even on older houses. Perhaps they're intended to be louvre windows, even though they open as a whole like shutters? Louvres are very common in hot and tropical areas like the Northern Territory and Queensland, and in old houses in Sydney too, louvres were often used on the sunroom. What do you think, louvre windows or shutters?
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Diana's House

May 24, 2013, 7:16 am
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Just before Easter, I received two dolls houses which I had bought from an Australian collector who lives in northern New South Wales. She is downsizing her real house, and therefore also downsizing her collection. Here is one of the houses.



It was made in the 1940s for a lady named Diana Mitchell. Anne, the collector I bought it from, told me that the dolls house was made by Diana's grandfather from New Zealand timber. They lived "out the back" of Kyogle, a small town in northern NSW, on the Richmond River. It's a big dairy-farming and timber-getting area, not far from the larger town of Casino, where my father grew up. My father's parents' families had both been involved in dairy-farming around Casino and Grafton, so I'm very happy to have a dolls house that comes from this area. (I do wonder why Diana's grandfather used New Zealand timber, when red cedar and hoop pine are logged locally ....)


The front of the house comes off - it's held in place by the two little clips at the top, the pieces of wood on the inside of the front, and a hook at one side. The curtains are all original - they were made by Diana's grandmother.


Inside, there are four rooms. The kitchen (in the photo above), the living room and the bedroom have original furniture made by Diana's grandfather, with the upholstery, bedding and mats also made by Diana's grandmother. (Anne has added pieces, as I shall too, but I'll show just the original furnishings here first.)


Anne has done some restoration work on this house - when she got it, there was a split in the wood right down the back, through the living room downstairs and the bedroom upstairs. She filled the crack, and repainted the rooms in the same colours but slightly lighter shades (she said that they had been terribly bright).
(I've just realised I left the Dol-toi table in the living room! Obviously, it wasn't made by Diana's grandfather!)


You can see the filled crack in the back wall of the rooms.

Anne told me that she had also painted the doors and the fireplace in timber colours, as they were all painted the same colour as the walls they were in/on. She sent me a photo of the dolls house before she fixed the crack and repainted it:


You can clearly see the crack running up the back, as well as the blue fireplace, blue door on the living room side and pink door on the bedroom side.


The house clearly had a bathroom, as the small room upstairs has the same white and green checked floor paper as the kitchen, and the same material (with small raised green spots) has been used for the curtains:


The bathroom curtains are on the left side of this photo; the other two windows are in the bedroom. The same fabric used for the bedroom curtains is used for the living room curtains downstairs, too.

However, the bathroom furniture is not original - none came with the house when Anne bought it. Anne provided it with the set you can see in the photo of the house before she worked on it, and the set she included when she sold it to me. (The first set had a low cistern; Anne had then found a set with a high cistern of the type real houses of the time would have had - if they didn't still have an outside dunny!)

Anne also included some Erna Meyer grandparents with the house - I'll show them when I post about it again. I have already been looking through my stash for things like pictures to hang, and thinking that this grandmother would be very likely to use the fly covers I bought at the fair, to protect the scones and other goodies she whips up when visitors call - so now I want to find some scones for the house!
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Some dolls for Odessa's house

June 3, 2013, 8:26 am
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Cleopatra, Rudolph Valentino as 'The Sheik', and an Indian Maharajah are having drinks on the terrace.


Admiring the view from the balcony .... 


while a maid stands outside the main door below ....


These ladies and gentlemen would need to bend their heads to pass through the doors, especially with their elaborate turbans. I hope they can stand up inside! However, I thought the bright colours of their costumes would go well with the decoration of Odessa's house.
Cleopatra and her companions are Rexard dolls; the others are souvenir dolls from Turkey (the couple) and Egypt (the woman in the green dress).

I will see how they like the inside of the house - perhaps they are just staying here briefly while they shoot some scenes from a film ... or perhaps they will make a longer stay here.
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June

June 30, 2013, 8:17 am
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June for me was busy with the Dolls Houses Past and Present online magazine. As well as editing and uploading other members' contributions, I wrote two articles myself. One article is about Kaybot Novelties and Kay Miniature, who made yummy plaster food:


 

and other things like fireplaces:


My other article is about the dolls houses made by the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops in London, during and just after World War I. They were set up to provide employment for soldiers and sailors who had lost hands or limbs in the war.





A while ago, I came across the catalogue from 1916/17. It's full of the toys made in the workshops - lots of battle toys, as well as dolls houses, farms, villages and shops:

A butcher's shop

A houseboat dolls house

I had read about one Lord Roberts' dolls house in the International Dolls House News, but I've never seen one anywhere else. Their toys would have their logo on them:


If you know of any, I'd love to hear about them!


Some Blogger ps and qs:

If anyone knows if it's still possible to place two photos in a row in this new blogger set-up, please let me know how! It used to be possible not to select either left, right or centre for the alignment of photos, and you could just add them across the page like text - and resize them by dragging the corner, not just by choosing a preset Small, Medium, Large or X-Large. I think we have been left with fewer options now.

I know that Google Reader is about to finish. My understanding is that the Blogger Dashboard and Google Friend Connect will continue, for the time being at least, so we can still follow each other as we have done, and see the most recent blog posts in the dashboard and on the side of our blogs. So I haven't set up an alternative like Bloglovin. However, I have saved a list of all the blogs I follow, so if I'm wrong and my dashboard reading list disappears, I can find you all and follow you again!
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Who made it? #1

July 14, 2013, 6:15 am
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I have finally photographed some of my boxed sets today. I have uploaded photos to flickr, but I thought you might like to have a go at guessing the brand of some of them.

First up is this sweet living room set:



What do you think?

If you're impatient for an answer, you'll find other photos showing the box and the base of the chairs on flickr.
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Fairylite!

July 17, 2013, 7:20 am
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Here is the box that Dolly's Living Room came in. On one end, it tells us to 'Just clip ends of flex to torch battery', and on the other end is the brand name:


 "Another Fairylite Regd Novelty"

As you can see, all the box states is that it is 'Empire Made' (that is - or rather was - the British Empire). The base of the seats gives a bit more information:


It's not very clear, but it says 'Made in Hong Kong'. So Callsmall and Redrickshaw's guesses of Blue-Box were very close! Actually, I don't know which Hong Kong company made these for Fairylite - and I don't know whether Blue-Box made any sets to be sold under another company's brand name, rather than their own. But these were definitely made in Hong Kong.

MyRealitty's guess of Spot-On was also spot-on, as the chairs, stool and bookcase are copies of Triang pieces. (The fireplace is a plastic copy of a plaster Dol-toi fireplace, and I think the lamp is a copy of a Lundby design.)

Fairylite in blue on the left, Tri-ang Spot-On in red on the right.


Fairylite bookcase on the left, Tri-ang Spot-On bookcase on the right.

The differences in the bookcases are clear - a very different colour, and no sliding doors on the Fairylite version. (I do have a better Spot-On bookcase, with books, but this came straight out of a boxed set.)


 The chairs are much more similar in appearance. The difference becomes apparent holding them - the Spot-On chair is much heavier, as its base and legs are metal, whereas the Fairylite chair is all plastic.




Here's the boxed Spot-On set the chair and bookcase came from:

 

More of it next time!
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