Rebecca's Collections

I thought I'd take a photo of everything I acquired at the fair (and before) - and then realised as I was photographing them individually that I'd left out everything from one stand! So there's a little bit more than in this photo.

At last year's fair, I saw a magazine with an article about Dolly Mixture dolls houses. It wasn't by Marion Osborne, I'm pretty sure - it was by someone else who compared features of the various models known as "Dolly Mixtures" that they knew of. The magazine seemed a bit expensive - either $5 or $7, and my luggage was already overweight, so I didn't buy it. Stupidly, I didn't make a note of the magazine title or issue number, either! So this year I decided to look through the magazines offered at the fair, in the hope of finding it again. Of course, I didn't! I looked through magazines on at least 3 stalls, and bought quite a stack - including some I already have, as I didn't have my lists with me, and couldn't remember what I did and didn't have, but at least these were quite cheap - 1, 2 or 3 dollars, and only 50c for the small ones.

Before the fair, on the drive up to Bathurst, I stopped at Blackheath and did the rounds of the antiques gallery there. I didn't find lovely dolls house accessories like I did two years ago, but I did find some nice things, including a tapestry bag, with a brown background rather than the more usual black:

I intend to take this apart and use it for rugs, of course, which led my sister to comment on how upset I get when I see vintage and antique dolls houses changed! I pointed out that this is probably homemade, and has a couple of holes in it - but I wouldn't think much of those arguments applied to old dolls houses!! Double standards, I know ....

Also from Blackheath were two sets of miniature clogs, which will be furniture for a shoe house, and these three gorgeous miniature oil paintings:

They are signed A. Müller, 72. I will hang them in one of my 1970s or 80s houses. I don't want to keep the frames, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to find frames that fit, and are the kind I would like for these. I'm thinking I might try to cut off the curlicues (the frames are made in Hong Kong, and plastic, I think) to leave plain ovals, and then repaint them - or use the inner ovals as moulds.

So then, at the fair, soon after I arrived, Anna-Maria pointed out a stand which had good vintage miniatures. This was one I had bought items from both last year and the year before - Diana Simms' stall 'Diana's Gifts'. She had a box of Britain's lead pieces, and I bought several, mainly for my Walther & Stevenson farm (I haven't shown it yet, but you can see catalogue images here), and the roller and ladder for my Hobbies farmhouse:

I also bought a little Halfpenny girl, and a small bookcase or cabinet handpainted and signed (I think) SS in 1990:

I am not sure yet where the Halfpenny girl will live. The cabinet will probably go in a house by Armin Kod, which I haven't shown yet.

Diana had other vintage and some antique miniature dolls, too. Hers was about the only stall that had any vintage pieces - there were fewer than last year, when there were fewer than the year before ....

I am thinking that next year, I might try to do a display of one or two of my vintage dolls houses (from Bathurst; I don't plan to transport any but the smallest or lightest from Darwin to Sydney!) to increase awareness of the appeal of vintage. Of course, that can lead to more competition between collectors - but when fairs have no vintage dolls houses at all, and hardly any furnishings or dolls, it seems more a case of people just not being interested, or not realising their value. Anna-Maria bought a tub full of Europa and Jean furniture on the Sunday morning, from a stall which had had no vintage items at all displayed on Saturday. We think they probably had them to fill gaps as their main stock sold, rather than keeping the best for later .... She was very happy, though, as there were some great pieces in the tub (as well as quite a few that had been overpainted, probably to make the Jean and Europa match).

So, the rest of my buys are new, artisan-made miniatures. I bought more flowers, this time from Dianne Cottrell (I think she had the name Miniatures to Die For on her stand - not sure. You can see a picture of her stand, with two of the arrangements I bought, on Basketcase Miniatures blogpost.)

A beautiful bunch of anemones:

A gorgeous arrangement of blue irises and ranunculus (I think, although some look a bit like poppies? but she had some poppy arrangements too, with the characteristically kinked (and hairy) stems of poppies, so I don't think these are ...):

And nasturtiums in a swan, which will go on the balcony of Swan House:

Diana packed these all so carefully, each in a separate container, with the vase stuck to the underside of the lid, and a plastic container or drinking cup placed over it.

I bought some food - yummy pizza and macaroons, from a stall with a sign saying $3 each, or 4 for $10 - but I don't know the name, as it wasn't prominently displayed!

These will go in one of my contemporary houses - the Ikea, I think.

I visited the Miniature Supermarket again, and bought some modern groceries, again probably mostly for the Ikea house:

I discovered that Ann also has vintage groceries, although these are not yet shown on her website.

I was thinking of Diana's House when I bought these, but perhaps some of my other 1930s or 40s houses could use some of them - I don't think people living on a dairy farm would need powdered milk! I'm glad to find a source of period Australian groceries, and will contact Ann for a list of her vintage products.

I bought two more tea cosies by Win Garside (last year I bought a cottage cosy):

I think the koala cosy will go in my Hansa house - I'm not sure yet where the pedlar doll cosy will go.

Norma Bennet of Make Mine Mini was selling her own creations, and also Glenda Howell's hand-knotted rya rugs and hand woven mats. I bought several:

At the end of the fair, Norma offered me a reduced price on one of her sinks, the one I liked best, and I couldn't resist! I don't know where it will go, but I love the worn paint, the lining on the shelves, and the blue and white vintage French tea towels. Norma's photos are much better than mine, but here are mine anyway:

Norma was selling these with a dish drainer and some crockery, but as they alone cost $20, she kindly offered me the sink without them. I am sure I can find some plates in my stash, and perhaps a dish drainer too!

Right at the back of the photo of all my buys, at the beginning of this post, are a little kitchen cupboard and sink in bright yellow, red and blue plastic. These were a gift from Anna-Maria, who had received them as a gift herself (and was (perhaps?) feeling just slightly apologetic that she had had the good luck to buy the Europa stash ...)
I didn't know who had made them, but now I am thinking they might be Modella Mini pieces, as the sink seems to be identical to the one in diePuppenstubensammlerin's photo of a boxed Modella Mini Küche.

So, that's the fair for another year! Looking at other bloggers' photos of the fair, I see stands and displays I didn't notice when I was going round - too late to go back now, but perhaps some of the makers will be there next year too.

The second half of last year seemed to go by so quickly .... I have new dolls houses, furniture sets and dolls I intended to blog about, but somehow didn't find the time. Now I'm on holiday, staying with my sister in Bathurst, and I hope while I'm here to show some of my new dolls houses I had sent to this address, rather than all the way to Darwin.

First, though, I'd like to share photos of a wonderful gingerbread Christmas Village I saw at Adelaide Airport, on my way from Darwin to Sydney.

Isn't it wonderful? All the buildings are made of gingerbread, the snow and trees are made of icing, and the characters are icing or marzipan.

I don't know why I didn't photograph the sign at the front fully - all I can read is 'Welcome to our Gingerbread Village. Fun Facts.'

As it was in an airport, there are planes as well as railway tracks and chair lifts .... and despite all the snow, it looks as if the pond is not completely frozen!

I overheard a small boy saying to his mother, "Look! There are minions!" I was impressed that he knew the word - but my sister tells me that there is a movie with characters called minions, and indeed that's what those yellow creatures are .... there are probably other characters from recent kids' movies and TV shows that I don't recognise either.

The village has a school - and of course, Santa's Toy Factory!

The other side of the village - the sign here says who made this display:

Students and staff from TAFE SA. For those outside Australia, TAFE stands for 'Technical and Further Education', and it's a country-wide institution that offers vocational training in many areas, as well as high school courses for those who didn't finish school, and many other courses. Its funding is being cut by governments at the moment - I thought that this display, as well as giving enjoyment to passengers travelling through Adelaide airport, might be aiming to make the work of TAFE more visible, and gain public support.

Aren't the roof decorations pretty?

One of the trains runs into the tunnel through the mountain ...

The other enters the mountain in the other direction, on the lower track.

The top one has come out the other side - it's carrying lollies (sweets, candy ...)

The other train has lots of animal passengers.

I expect that the village has been taken down by now, as it's after Christmas and New Year (and would seem rather surreal to see this, when there are now bushfires destroying properties in the hills surrounding Adelaide). I wonder what happened to all the gingerbread houses and sugar characters - perhaps the students and staff took them home, or perhaps they were given away?

I hope you've enjoyed a peaceful, happy and healthy festive season - or survived it, if it's a difficult time of year for you. I hope you stay safe in this new year, wherever you are!

So much has happened since I last posted about my dolls houses, I don't know where to start!

In early December, I went to a conference in Newcastle, in New South Wales, for work. As Christine Jaeger lives near Newcastle, that gave us a chance to meet - for the first time, though it certainly didn't feel like it! I had a wonderful evening looking at all her dolls houses, furnishings and dolls, and we persuaded her husband Max to take a photo of us - here we are standing in front of her Princess house:

At the conference, a friend mentioned that he would be driving from Sydney through Bathurst the following weekend, and he offered transport if I had anything to go to Bathurst. I didn't exactly - but I had been thinking about a dolls house listed on Gumtree, that was in Ashfield, in Sydney .... things worked out, and the Ashfield dolls house is now mine, and in Bathurst!

What hasn't worked out is the photos of the front of the house, which I know I took while I was in Bathurst in January. (Being a Gumtree listing, it has now disappeared from the interwebs.) The front of the house has a central porch, with a false front door (which doesn't open), and false windows which all have opening shutters. That is probably hard to imagine, but unfortunately, photos will have to wait until I am next in Bathurst.

UPDATE: The friend who collected the dolls house from Ashfield and delivered it to Bathurst also very cleverly saved a photo from Google's cache soon afterwards. Thank you! Here is a thumbnail of one of the photos in the Gumtree listing:

The photos I do have show the paint stripping I did to reveal the original colours. It is currently painted dark brown on the porch, shutters and roof, and the exterior walls are white. The roof was originally green, scored to simulate tiles:

This is the back of the roof, where I started the stripping. I'll probably have to repaint it green - or at least even out the scrape marks. In the top right of the photo, you can see the base of one of the two chimneys. The other chimney is on the back left of the house:

The walls were originally painted a lovely honey colour:

Inside, there are four rooms. The top two were painted pink and apricot - a bit of stripping shows that the pink room was originally apricot too:

Here you can see the top left room, with the doorway through into the top right room. All the rooms have skirting boards, architraves around the doorways, and picture rails. There's no evidence of any doors. The wood trim was originally dark brown, as you can see here:

(After I took this photo, and realised that the apricot paint goes over the white paint on the architrave, I removed a wee bit and found that it's painted over earlier apricot paint. So both upper rooms were originally painted apricot.)

Above the picture rail is a buff colour under the white:

Downstairs, both rooms are painted a greeny blue colour. I don't have a good photo of that - that also seems to have disappeared with the photos of the front of the house. You can just see a bit of the blue in this photo of the kitchen floor:

This is the only room with interesting flooring - textured paper of some kind, I think (which has been overpainted with white, and then had something stuck over that, by the looks of it).

The other floors seem just to have brown paper. At first I thought it had the kind of spatter and smear pattern that some lino tiles had in the 40s and 50s, but I think it is actually paint spatter, smeared by being wiped off, from when the roof was painted brown:

You can see in this photo that the ground floor doorway is set further back than the upper doorway.

The white paint splashed messily on the wood trim, and spreading on to the walls, was presumably applied at some point when the walls were wallpapered. There were some remnants of paper which I have removed - none with any pattern remaining, just the back of some wallpaper. I also started removing the white paint from the walls - I will strip them back to apricot upstairs, and greeny blue downstairs, with brown wood trim and buff above the picture rail. I may find a similar paper for the kitchen, but will probably find rugs or carpet for the other rooms. Outside, I will strip it back to the lovely honey colour with a green roof and green trim on the windows, shutters and porch.

I'm so annoyed that I don't have a photo to show you of the front, as it's much the most interesting part of the dolls house! I don't know who made this house, or when. It does have some resemblances to the dolls houses shown in Walther & Stevenson catalogues - the line of the porch, and the style of the chimneys - but that may be coincidence. It is very well made, suggesting either a skilled home maker, or a commercially made house. The colours suggest the 1930s or 40s to me, but it could be from the 1950s, I suppose.

While I was in Bathurst, I also cleaned several houses by Bestoys, and another one by Woodtoys - I do have photos of them, and will show them in my next posts!

While I was staying with my sister in Bathurst, we spent a couple of days in Canberra. As well as catching up with friends, meeting a collector, and picking up a dolls house that Anna-Maria was holding for me, I was able to spend more time in the National Library of Australia, and go through four years of the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer journal, 1975-1978.
I found lots of ads or displays at fairs for dolls houses made both overseas (I'll show some of the them in another post) and in Australia - I now have several new names of dolls house makers, and have identified the makers of some of my new dolls houses.

This is one of the houses I have in Bathurst - I bought it on ebay from Sydney late last year, and the seller was happy to post it. I bought it because some features reminded me of other houses - though now I can't remember which, or by which maker.

Well, never mind - I now know that it was made by Woodtoys in 1977. You may remember that I bought a house nearly two years ago that is a dead spit for a Bodo Hennig model (1979-1987), but which has the name Woodtoys on the brick paper on the back of the house.

In the toy trade journal, I found information about Woodtoys dolls houses in 1975, 1976 and 1977.

"The four toys shown in the accompanying photo are the work of Woodtoys, PO Box 64, Lakemba, NSW 2195, which is a partnership of father and son, I J and A T Burden. Father is a former departmental buyer and the son is a former 'Knight Of The Road' with a large general toy wholesaler.

The Burdens make no apologies for the fact that they are in a modest way, and they have had some ups and downs. "In fact," says young Burden, "the respect we have for fellows like Jim Bonaretti [of Bestoys - RG] and, in the past, Keith Lovelock, has increased tenfold - paint dust in everything, no room to move; shoving equipment around to make room for something else; returns from customers through carriers' rough handling. I could go on for hours!"

However, the trauma has passed and now the duo operate in about 3,500 ft. of space, which still is not enough but is a big improvement on the original area. They now do all their own work since the installation of a table saw, band saw, docking saw, sander and other units and employ labour.

The items illustrated show a Georgian style Dolls' house, a pony rockaway, dolls cradle and a table and chair set. They propose several new lines in 1976 including a traditional type rocking horse on a stand similar to the one put out years ago by Roebuck."

Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer, December 1975, p 62.

Woodtoys' 1976 display at the toy fair shows the same Georgian-style dolls house, which seems to be painted in a range of colours. The caption reads:

"Woodtoys, Lakemba, NSW, displayed Georgian-style dolls houses, pony rocker, toy tidy; dolls wardrobe, rocking cradle, Ampol service station; kitchen dresser; table and chair set; rocking horse and box of blocks. Pictured is proprietor Ian Burden."

Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer, March 1976.

In 1977, there are photos of Woodtoys' displays at both the Sydney and Melbourne toy fairs, so we get several views of their new dolls house.

Yes! It's my new dolls house! Can you see the canopy over the downstairs window, and the poles supporting the roof of the carport?

The caption says:

"Australian-made range of wooden toys, including coloured table and chair set, a toy tidy which makes into a desk, pony rocker, dolls house, cradle, dropside cot, Mickey Mouse and Abba table and chair sets. All toys come unassembled and are individually cartoned with assembly instructions ... they are all NEW. Most popular item on display was the Deluxe Rocking Horse."

Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer, April 1977.

I can't read all the writing on the sign, but I can see that the address for Woodtoys is now Greenacre, NSW, a suburb next to Lakemba - so perhaps the Burdens had moved to new premises with more space.

Detail of the house from the photo above - it's on the right, in the centre.

Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer, July 1977.

The photos of the display at the Melbourne toy fair show the dolls house end-on - and it's a very distinctive view, with a doorway from the rooftop patio to the house cut out of the end wall of the house:

The other Woodtoys dolls house I have has printed paper wallpaper, brick paper and flooring. This dolls house has the wall and floor designs printed straight on to the plywood.

Note the fabric "hinge" which attaches the front door to the wall.

The interior, showing the floors.

Parquet tiling downstairs and hexagonal tiling upstairs.

A geometric design upstairs, and a blue houndstooth design downstairs.

Simple red tiling for the rooftop patio, and in the carport, grass around the edges, gravel in the centre, and clear plywood for the driveway and the parking space.

This house is 16th scale. I haven't furnished it yet - I will look out some of my 16th scale pieces to take down next time I go to Bathurst.

I've seen several houses listed on ebay in Victoria which had transfers - or decals - decorating the otherwise fairly plain front. I definitely wanted to add at least one to my collection, and when this popped up late last year, I was able to buy it.

The seller was able to tell me that her mother-in-law had bought the house in 1966, at Barwood Toy Shop in Stradbroke Park Shopping Centre, Bourke Road, Kew East, in Victoria, for her daughter's 4th birthday. I love being able to date dolls houses precisely!

Apart from the flower transfers - pansies and brown-eyed Susan daisies - and the balcony railing on the front, the house is quite plain. There are four window openings and one door opening - they don't look as if they have ever had 'glass' or a door attached to them. The house is open at the back, and each of the four rooms is painted a different colour - pink, blue, cream and olive green. I didn't ask if the house had been repainted at any stage, but I think not - the paint is very neat, with no sign of other colours underneath these. Perhaps it was bought cream, and the other colours were added before it was given to the little girl - either way, I think these are original 1966 colours.

The sides are very simple. You can see that there is foxing - spots of discolouration - on the paint. I have washed it - it's possible that a stronger cleaner would remove them, but I don't want to damage the paint, or repaint it.

The side walls continue up to the peak of the roof - there is no ceiling on the upper floor.

Here are some of the other dolls houses with transfers which I have seen listed in Victoria.

This one has a chimney, and is front opening. There is one transfer - an animal (a cat? missing its head) - above the front door. Inside, there are rather crudely cut stairs, and there seem to be arched doorways between the rooms.

Here's another one from the same maker:

I liked this one, with its kitten transfer - such a pity that the seller's son had broken the door :-(

I would still like to get one of these, but haven't seen one recently.

When I looked through the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer journal for 1975-1978 in Canberra last month, I found two makers of dolls houses decorated with transfers.

For one, I found only one photo, from the 1976 Toy and Games Manufacturers of Australia fair, in the July 1976 issue of the journal.

"The Winslow Marketing Co showed wooden toys from S. M. Collins, Bairnsdale, including blackboard, table and chair sets, dolls cradle, ironing board, dolls house and the popular unpainted bench set. Also from Patrick, NZ, Benson nursery, plastic and vinyl toys plus Patrick jigsaws, draught sets, wooden blocks and peg and hammer sets. On the stand is Garry Holzer."

These S M Collins dolls houses do not have chimneys, and appear to have two doorways cut into the ground floor, with two window openings in the upper floor. There is a line of colour - probably a strip of wood - across the front of the dolls house, but I don't know whether the it's just decorative, or serves as a grip to open the front. It's hard to tell for sure, but I think that the wooden panelling of the display stand can be seen through the window and door openings. If that is the case, it indicates that the houses have open backs.

There are two transfers on each house, placed in the centre of the ground and upper floors. The houses have different transfers, but on each house, the same image is used on both floors.

I have found a newspaper article from July 1975 with an interview with Stan Collins, timber miller, in which he explains that S M Collins Pty Ltd had turned to making wooden toys less than two years earlier (so in late 1973 or early 1974), partly because there was a demand for them, and partly because it was harder to get good quality timber for milling.

So although my transfer house resembles this S M Collins dolls house (which seems to have an open back, and the same rectangular shaped windows and doors as on mine, although placed differently), mine could not have been made by S M Collins, as it predates their first wooden toys by at least 7 years.

The other manufacturer of dolls houses with transfer decorations was Somerville Toy Traders. Despite the use of 'traders' in the name, both the sign on their stand, and the caption, indicate that they manufactured the toys shown. No information is given in these short write-ups about where they were based, but an online search revealed that they were based in Mount Eliza, in Victoria, incorporated in May 1975, and changed their name to Ten Progress Street Pty. Limited in 2000. They appear to be still active, so I may be able to find out more.

This photo is from the May 1975 issue of the toy trade journal. The caption reads:

"Somerville Toy Traders: Manufacturers of a wooden range of hookey boards, shuttle sets, hammer peg sets, etc., plus dolls' houses, garages, hobby horse, shoe flys and kiddies' furniture, table tennis and billiard tables. A brand new release was a Do-It-Yourself Pool Table assembly kit which comes in a cartoned pack and makes up to a 6 ft. x 3ft table."

Although there are transfers on the nursery furniture, there doesn't seem to be one on the dolls house.

This photos shows the display of Somerville Toy Traders' wares at the 1976 Toy and Games Manufacturers of Australia fair. The dolls house looks very like the one shown in 1975, although it does have a transfer between the two upper windows. Also, I don't see a chimney.

Somerville Toys were displayed that year by ABCED Trading, who also showed Australian-made Rainbow soft toys, and imported Ellegi remote control toys and Canova nursery items (both imported by ALLTOYS, so interesting that ABCED was showing dolls houses from a manufacturer other than Bestoys), and Beauty soft toys.

The 1977 display at the Melbourne Toy Fair.

"Somerville Toys: Displayed their own range of very stable wooden table and chair sets, nursery seats, pull-a-long toys, dolls houses, push/pull carts, billy carts, pull-a-longs, cradles and cots, plus an old favourite among the children, the wheelbarrow. Also showed snooker and table tennis tables, hookey boards, shuttle tennis and bobs."

(Yes, it does spell pull-alongs that way, and mentions them twice!)

There is definitely no chimney on the dolls house, and the transfer is clearer. Like the houses shown in 1975 and 1976, this house seems to have a central front door and four square-ish windows. It's impossible to tell if they are front-opening or have open backs.

It's unlikely that Somerville Toys made my dolls house, both because of their incorporation date of 1975, and because the windows are such a different shape. So it seems that there was probably another, earlier, manufacturer of dolls houses with transfers in Victoria, who made my dolls house.

Could either S M Collins or Somerville Toy Traders be the maker of the other transfer houses I've shown here? I don't know when these two front-opening transfer dolls houses were made. They have a chimney, as does the earliest Somerville dolls house, but on the back of the roof rather than the front. They also have windows which are more rectangular than square, so less like the Somerville squareish windows than the Collins rectangular ones, although not as long. They don't have clear similarities to either maker - perhaps they're from another manufacturer again?

Back to my flower transfer house - I was inspired by the pansy transfer to find furnishings with pansies for it. I don't have any furniture for it yet, but I have got some rugs, pictures (some downloaded and saved ready to be printed out) and bowls or pots of flowers!!

I may well change these around, or not end up using them, but I've had fun trying them out!

(I only have one horseshoe, but I tried it out inside, and where I think I will put it, on the balcony.)

I'll look for some furniture to try out, and show you again once I've found some. I'm not sure what scale will work best - the door is just under 5½" tall, which would suggest 16th scale, but the ceiling height of the ground floor is 9", and the floor size of the bedrooms is about 8 ½" by 11 ½" each, which would accommodate 12th scale furnishings. I'll see which dolls and furniture looks best!

I love cats, but don't qualify as a crazy cat lady - I only have one cat now, two until late last year ... but a crazy dolls house lady, yep, I definitely qualify for that!

I spent last weekend in Sydney with my sister. This is her car, packed for our trip from Sydney to Bathurst yesterday (Monday) morning. On the right is a dolls house I drove to Castle Hill to collect on Sunday morning, and on the left is a model house frame I bought on Saturday afternoon. My suitcase (brown) and carry-on (black) hold lots of dolls house furnishings I brought down from Darwin for the dolls houses I have in Bathurst.

I found the house frame at Recycling Works in Annandale, where I've previously found dolls houses. My visit this time coincided with a hail storm over Sydney and the Central Coast, which was accompanied by torrential rain. Recycling Works has a corrugated iron roof, so the hail was very noisy. I was out the back looking at this frame house, which one of the guys there had just lifted down for me, when the rain started coming in - I'd picked up a few small things as I went, and I grabbed another I'd been looking at and retreated to the front section of the shop. Just as well I did, as this is what the back section looked like after the storm:

My sister's photo

In Bathurst, I had another house waiting for me, which is so big I have no idea where I'm going to put it! For the moment, it's still in the garage on the pallet it was delivered on -

It's huge - 1.6 m wide, 80 cm high and 60 cm deep. I didn't realise how big it was when I bought it - and I stupidly hadn't asked until I was booking the freight. But I was intrigued by it - here's the best shot I could get of the front at the moment:

I bought it from someone on the South Coast of New South Wales, near Jervis Bay, who said that she had picked it up a few years ago from an elderly couple - the husband had made it for his grandchildren. I don't know when he would have made it - it sounds like it couldn't have been much earlier than the 80s. The design looks a bit older, with the dormer windows and small panes in the main windows - perhaps he modelled it on a real house?

The garage has a lift-up door:

The handles on the internal doors were placed quite high, as they were in the 1920s and 30s - and the dark stained wooden doors and architraves are reminiscent of that period, too.

The hallway

The landing upstairs

Upstairs right - like the hallway, this seems to be the original wallpaper

Upstairs left - there seems to be some wallpaper under the contact

Downstairs right, with a bay window and more original wallpaper

Downstairs left - the kitchen, behind the garage - more contact!

This house came with original dirt, spiders, etc, included. I probably won't clean it until I sort out somewhere to put it - which I think will mean some remodelling and reorganising in either the largest bedroom (now a spare room) or the garage.

Here is the house I picked up in Castle Hill, in Sydney:

I forgot to ask the seller what she knows about it. It does look genuinely old, ca 1920s or 30s, I would say. The roof lifts off:

It doesn't look as if it has been papered at any stage - if it has, it's been very cleanly removed. It came with homemade 1930s style furniture, some of which is also stained wood, and some which is painted. When I have cleaned it all up, I will take photos of the furniture in the rooms - first, though, I need to treat the termites which have been eating some of the base!

The left side

The back

The right side

Detail of the front porch

While I'm in Bathurst, I hope to spend some time on the other dolls houses I have here, cleaning or stripping some, and trying out the furniture I brought in others. Then next weekend I'll be in Sydney for the dolls house fair! I had hoped to display some vintage dolls houses (I was thinking about my cardboard houses, as being the easiest to transport from Darwin), but I didn't get organised with display cabinets etc, so that will have to wait for another year.
I'm still looking forward to seeing fellow collectors and bloggers there - if you're going too, I hope we can meet up!

I've been back from my holiday for a week, and I want to show you what I bought at the fair. Unfortunately, one of the things I picked up last weekend was a good dose of the flu, and I am still not up to taking new photos of everything - so here are the photos I took on my mobile phone, in my hotel room in the evenings.

After saying hello to Norma Bennett and Anna-Maria, I made my way to one of the few stalls that consistently has a few vintage pieces - Diana Simms'. She did have some vintage and antique dolls, but none that said 'buy me!' These are not really vintage, but I like them: plates hand painted by Judy Keena, and a plate of egg & toast soldiers by unknown.

When I went back the next day, I had a rummage through Diana's boxes - and she kindly provides an empty one, so you can take out things you've looked at as you go, and see what's right at the bottom. I found two lovely paintings by Turner, published as cigarette cards with gold borders, a Wills cigarette card of Beechworth in Victoria (where yummy apple juice comes from!), plus a jumper, two beanies and a scarf.

As I was leaving Diana's stall on the second day, I noticed these bevelled mirrors, so I went back towards the end of the fair and bought one of each of these three shapes: an oval, an octagon and a circle.

At the back of the hall I found Robyn's Minis, whom I've bought from at a previous fair. She said she had more old things in the morning, but had sold a lot. The food was marked as $1 each, but she reduced it to 50c!!!

I couldn't see at the fair who made the chair, but thought it would go well in my Armin Koch house. When I removed the sticker over the signature, guess whose it was - Armin Koch!

Actually, I thought the last name was spelled Kod, and the person I bought my dolls house made by him from thought he had been based in Brisbane - I was never able to find him in any online sources, though. I went back to Robyn's stall the second day, as she had sounded as if she knew of him - and yes, she told me that he was the toymaker at Nambucca Heads! Knowing that, I have been able to find him in the 1980 electoral roll - and discover that his last name is Koch, not Kod! I'll show my dolls house made by him soon.

Robyn was packing up her stall when I got there on the second day, so I looked through what was left and found these - 2 terracotta pots, a badge with 2 characters I don't recognize, some lemon and lime slices (or maybe the green and white ones are cucumber or zucchini?), a cushion, and jars with tiny shells and tiny paint tubes.

On the first day, I looked through the bargain boxes on several stalls - I'm afraid I didn't take note of which stalls they all were. I found these beach balls and tennis racquets:

And on Nora Lee Maingard's stall, these shoes (which she had bought in Mauritius) and a Japanese jug:

Nora Lee had brought in some vintage furniture, which she offered to Anna-Maria, who wasn't so interested and showed it to me. There were several Marx pieces - I do like this yellow sofa:

Also on the first day, I got these wonderful macrame hangers from Norma Blackburn (MinisbyTwinmum) - so I won't have to learn macrame!

I also found Margaret Crosswell's stall. She was there last year too, but I don't think I noticed her wonderful Clarice Cliff and other reproductions. I chose a number of vases, bowls and plates on the first day:

and went back on the second day for another look. I spent some time choosing what's almost a matching tea set of Cottage ware (the sugar bowl doesn't have a yellow door, but never mind), plus a model cottage, a jug with a rooster and a hollyhocks jug. I bought two more hollyhocks vases, too - one will be a prize for a Dolls Houses Past and Present giveaway competition. (Sorry, these really need better quality photos to appreciate them, but I hope you can make out the fine details.)

Just opposite Margaret Crosswell's stand was Wyn Garside, and I spent some time looking and wondering what to buy. When I chose this tea cosy, she said, oh, you've chosen the dowdy one! I said it was for a 1940s house.

The jumper in this photo is by Helen Palenski - it was my last purchase of the second day. Helen said that she had had 4 or 5 different cat designs this year, but by the time I saw them, there was just a Siamese and this cat.

I have bought flowers from this seller before - Dianne Cotterill, of Miniatures to Di For. I was almost going to buy nasturtiums, but a quick look at my blog post on last year's fair reminded me that I bought some then. Then I thought about a spider plant in a hanging bowl to go in Norma Blackburn's macrame hangers - the kind ladies at this stall suggested that I take it up to Norma's stall and try it. The pot was a bit small for the hanger. So I decided on some red geraniums!

These plates of pawpaw and mango were only 50c each! I probably should have got more - it seems appropriate that some of my dolls houses in Darwin should have tropical fruit. I don't know anything about the maker apart from that they're called Del & come from Queensland.

This is a 1970s book for kids, I think, on making dolls house furnishings from bits and pieces. Only the cover is in colour, but in all the illustrations of the rooms they are peopled by bears and chicks!

And finally, my second-last buy of the fair, cushions from Norma Bennett - my combinations of her designs. Norma very kindly gave me a lift both afternoons to Ashfield railway station - there was trackwork, so this saved me two bus rides to a station where the trains where still running. Thank you Norma and Gordon!

I had carefully measured the inside of my suitcase and taken a tape measure to the fair, in case of finding a vintage dolls house which appealed to me - but I didn't see any at all. Other years, there have been one or two at least - either there weren't any this year, or it/they sold before I got there.

I have photos of some of the displays to share, too - they were taken on my camera, so hopefully will be a bit better quality than these ones taken on my phone!

This cardboard dolls house caught my eye on Australian ebay:

Golden yellow is one of my favourite colours - and I love yellow roses! They have been "my" roses since, at our childhood home, I had a yellow rose outside my bedroom window, my sister had a pink rose outside hers - and Mum had deep red roses in the front yard!

The bowl of yellow roses is in the children's bedroom, upstairs right.

The parents' bedroom, upstairs left, has a dressing table with toiletries, an abstract rug - and lots of books! I like this house!

The clocks all say the same time, which is good - but they seem to be printed back to front! So it's back-to-front 3 o'clock.

This house is nearly complete - it's one of those where the bottom of the box it comes in forms the base of the house. Thankfully, the base is here - but the lid of the box is missing, so there is no information about the maker or the model, nor whether there would have been furniture included. There is one piece that suggests there might have been furnishings - a red and white striped cardboard rectangle, which I have placed in front of the kitchen sink, as a floor mat.

In the kitchen (downstairs right), the cupboards don't look very Australian to me - I thought perhaps it might be American?

But then in the living room (downstairs left):

there's a picture of a koala on the wall:

That doesn't mean it's Australian, of course - I could have a picture of elephants or tigers on my wall, without having to be in Africa or Asia ....

Here is the outside of the house - quite plain, a red brick base, yellow walls with brown timbering, and a tiled roof:

The doors and windows are attached only by one side, so they can open (some have actually torn off, but thankfully all are present).

The end with the kitchen and the children's bedroom has four opening windows (and the number 12, which a former owner has added!). The other end, with the living room and parents' bedroom, has a red brick chimney, with arched window openings on either side of the chimney, in the living room:

One additional feature I like - in both downstairs rooms, light fittings are printed on the ceilings!

This house came with plastic Blue-Box furniture, much of it broken. The red living room wing chairs are a good fit, so I may find others to use in it - and look through my plastic furniture for other suitable pieces.

Does anyone recognise this cardboard dolls house? I'm guessing it was made in the 1960s, largely because of the television, but would love to know a more exact date - and of course, the maker!

(I do still have photos of the displays at the Sydney Dolls House fair to show. I have been without a functioning phone/internet line since late last week, after reporting a crackly line - now it's working again (touch wood), and I was keen to show you this lovely house! The display photos will come soon :-) )

It's so long since I have posted anything on this blog that I feel I should be wishing you Happy Everything, not just Happy New Year! I do hope that this year brings us all health, happiness, peace of mind, and lots of mini enjoyment - and I hope to keep in touch more with my blogging friends!

I wish my summer holiday could have been longer - but I did manage to avoid the really hot weather that arrived just after I left, so I can't really complain. I had hoped to work on some of my dolls houses in Bathurst which need restoring, but didn't really have time. I did make a start on reorganising one of the rooms where some of my houses live - the former main bedroom of the house - so that they are easier to access, and so I could also fit a couple of new houses in (more about them in later posts).

My sister and I went to a few op shops (thrift stores / charity shops), which we always enjoy doing - and my haul of dolls house related things was better than it often is! Above you can see most of what I found in two op shops. Two things are from the art gallery shop - the little figurine may go in a house or a dolls house art gallery as a sculpture, and the postcard has lots of great mini portraits! The place mats have a nice woven pattern of green and red through them, and will make good flooring - and the silk tie will come in handy for bedding or cushions or curtains ....

My sister found the Blue-Box dolls house in one of the op shops - I have several other Blue-Box houses, but not this one, so I was thrilled to find it! It cost the princely amount of $4!!! (much less than its original price of $27.00, probably in the late 1970s - I have an ad for this dolls house from 1978, though I'm not sure when it was introduced or last available).

The mat is missing, but I think all the other pieces are there (plus a couple of extras) - hopefully I'll have time to photograph it all next time I'm there.

(The box does not have the Blue-Box name on it, strangely, but it is impressed on the bottom of the house.)

In another op shop, we had taken our finds (mainly books) to the front counter, and I had a look in the glass cabinet there, where small things are kept - and was amazed to see these two containers of miniature plastic plants!

The Britains flowers even have the planting tool (it's the long blue piece with a label about complaints attached to it). (These are two views of the same container here, by the way.)

Silver birch trees with moss foliage, and plastic conifers - are these also Britains?

In the op shop where I found the place mats, silk tie and Blue-Box dolls house, I also looked through the books. There were quite a few vintage carpentry manuals and children's annuals, both of which can be sources of plans for dolls houses or dolls house furniture, so I had a good look through them - and struck lucky with one, called The Handyman's Complete Carpentry Guide by Andrew Waugh, with furniture designed by William Greenwood. This was published by the former Australian newspaper company Consolidated Press - there's no date in the book, but it was advertised in newspapers in 1954 (and was a "privilege book" (ie offered at a discount) for purchasers of Consolidated Press's newspapers, including The Argus in Melbourne).

The inside covers show some of the items described in the book - including the dolls house (the small thing just to the left of the bed, with a green roof and red walls). (As you can see, this copy of the book was originally sold at Boans, a Perth department store, so it had made its way right to the other side of the country.)

The book gives instructions for building a house, as well as for making furniture, a slippery dip, an extension ladder (!), a sleep-out - and toys, including a dolls house:

The dolls house has a rather strange front, to my way of thinking. The roof is asymmetrically pitched, but the removable front has a "double-gable appearance" - a false roof line matching the steeper side of the roof, as well as the real roof line of the shallower side ... Perhaps they thought it looked better, as the false roof line would be parallel to the porch roof. I don't think that I've seen a dolls house made to this design, but I'll look out for it now - if this plan was followed faithfully, it would be quite distinctive.
The suggested colour scheme for the dolls house was cream coloured walls, apple green window sashes and frames, and a terracotta roof (quite different from the illustration on the inside cover!).

Most of the dolls house furniture is quite simple - it might be possible to identify pieces made to these plans, but some look quite similar to commercially made pieces. The book recommends that the dolls house furniture be "stained and finished with French polish or clear lacquer", with scraps of fabric for the settee, bed and dressing table).

I was very happy with these finds - and I hope to be back soon to show you the two dolls houses which were waiting for me in Bathurst.

This was one of the dolls houses waiting for me in Bathurst. I had bought it on ebay, and as it was in Sydney, it made more sense to have it freighted to Bathurst than all the way here to Darwin!

As well as having many similarities to the Lumberjack dolls house I had found in a toy store catalogue in the National Library:

- different coloured shutters (yellow instead of green), but the same front door - it has a label on the side which says Lumberjack BWG Screenprint:

so it's definitely a Lumberjack.

It's wider than the house in that catalogue, with three rooms up and down:

Unlike the house in the catalogue, the upper rooms don't have dormer windows - which will make placing furniture easier!

The interior is painted white - the traces of white on the floors, and the missing bit under the stairs, indicate that this was done by an owner, not in the factory.

A child has also added stickers in many rooms - I'll be keeping them, as they're a reminder of a former owner, and some, like this one on the back of the front door with kangaroos and a koala saying "HI!", are also reminders of the house's Australian origin:

The top left room has a sticker saying "Holidays", with people running with bags:

The top middle room must have been used as a bathroom, as it has a mirror and a towel rail attached to the walls:

The top right room has three stickers, including one of a lovely orange and white tabby cat:

This room has the opening to the stairs in it. The stairs are missing a couple of treads, but it shouldn't be too hard to replace them:

(That sticker says "Don't Forget:", with a pink space to write what you're not supposed to forget!)

Here's the bottom middle room, with the front door again:

And the bottom left room:

The sticker here has an Easter egg and a chick.

I haven't furnished this house yet, just cleaned it and photographed it. I'm thinking I might use my Europa furniture in it - I'll see.

Last year I found some more information about Lumberjack in issues of the Australian toy trade journal, the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer, from the late 1970s. Here's a full page ad from the October 1976 issue:

which gives the address then for the "Lumberjack Toy & Gift Company" as 13 Hills Street, Gosford, NSW 2250. It shows a couple of other items made by Lumberjack - a service station with carwash, and a magnetic chalk/paint board.

Here's a close up of the dolls house:

Like mine, it has three rooms across - but unlike mine, it has both dormer windows upstairs, and an inbuilt garage on one side of the ground floor, with a "fully operative tilting door". It's described as 12th scale, 28" x 18" x 18". I measured the rooms in my Lumberjack as 21cm (8 ¼") wide, 31 cm (12 ¼") deep and 19 cm (7 ½") high. So 12th scale furniture would work - I think I'll try out the vintage 16th scale Europa anyway, and see how it looks.

This ad mentions printed carpet, lino and stained floors in the bottom storey, so it does seem that they were sold with undecorated walls and upper floors and ceilings. Here's another Lumberjack I saw on ebay, which has not been painted inside:

Photos © ebay seller untide1

Another three bay model, with dormer windows but without a garage, and with the front door on one side, rather than in the middle. (It seems to have been given carpet upstairs.)

In 1979, Lumberjack had a stand at the Toys and Games Manufacturers of Australia fair, where they displayed three dolls houses:

The caption reads: "Lumberjack: Popular wooden toys including dolls houses with much interest in the limited edition 2-story colonial dolls house; chalk boards; garages; block wagons and blocks; cradles; nursery furniture; playcastle and playfort; stilts; billiard table; games table; table tennis table, dartboard cabinets, etc. Number of new releases inc. a Car Yard and Roadhouse in WOODY WOODPECKER items; Space Station with space buildings; Cape Cod house and single storey Colonial house." (I don't see a single storey dolls house in the photo, unless they mean the one on the right with dormer windows and rooms under the roof?)

Another photo shows a closeup of the limited edition colonial dolls house, with two people from Lumberjack: Frank Marsh on the left, and Don Windus standing on the right. (Seated on the right is John Bassingthwaighte, who had a sports and toy store in Dubbo.) (I think that, in the photo of the whole stand above, Don Windus is seated on the left, and Frank Marsh on the right.)

Late last year, I had a comment on my blog post about my possible Lumberjack dolls house from Adrian Windus, Don's brother, who said:

"The Toyworld dolls house was made by Lumberjack Toys in Gosford NSW. The company was owned by a Don and Del Windus. They were sold to toy shops in Qld, NSW and Victoria. This I know as I'm a brother to Don, I also owned Lumberjack Toy Wholesales in 1976 selling Don's products. Hope this enlightens you a little. Adrian Windus"

Wonderful information, as the photo caption doesn't say what Frank Marsh or Don Windus' roles at Lumberjack were.

I had found other information online, suggesting that Lumberjack later moved, and changed hands. A company called Lumberjack-Bestoys was registered with the address 25 Engadine Crt, Engadine, NSW 2233. The websites which hold that information don't give dates, but Lumberjack bought Bestoys at the end of 1984, so that address probably dates to 1984 or 85. Did Don Windus still own Lumberjack then? I don't know - I hope to find out more from Adrian or Don Windus, sometime.
Then later there's another company name and address: Lumberjack Toys Pty Ltd atThe Old Cheese Factory, Hoddle Street, Robertson, NSW 2577. The name associated with that company is Allan Jackson, who was a carpenter.
So it seems likely that Don Windus sold Lumberjack at some point, whether directly to Allan Jackson or to someone else in Engadine who then sold it on again later. Perhaps it was a later owner who made the other dolls house I have, which has the same front door, the same yellow window shutters, and the same screen-printed brick front wall as this labelled Lumberjack house, but which is otherwise made of polished pine, with a plain hardboard back?

This is the other dolls house which was waiting for me in Bathurst. I bought it from its original owner, who lives in Canberra, but the dolls house itself was made in Tasmania. Mary, the owner, told me:

It was made in the mid-1960's by my great uncle, Leonard Alfred Clippingdale (1886-1976) for my eldest daughter, and was subsequently loved by three more daughters. Len was then living with my family in Tasmania, having migrated from Somerset to live with them after his wife died. He had worked as a builder/carpenter in his early years and never lost the skill. Len made this dolls house in the old toolshed on the farm we had at Glengarry, West Tamar during the 1960's.

-->Mary even sent me a lovely photo of Len with Mary and three of her daughters in Canberra!

When I first saw photos of the dolls house, I was attracted by the verandah, and all the opening plexiglass windows and external doors.

The back of the house lifts off - it is held in place by hooks at either end, and metal tabs along the edge of the base.

The small box on the end is not a battery compartment - the house has never had lighting. Instead, it's the recess for the fireplace - there's one at each end, with a chimney above each.

I don't seem to have taken a photo of the whole interior - there are four rooms, which, looking at the back of the house, from left to right, are the living room, kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom. I didn't measure the rooms individually, but the whole length of the house is 114 cm (about 45", or 3' 9"). The height (including chimneys) is 39 cm (1' 3 3/8"), and the depth (including the verandah) is 44 cm (1 5 3/8").

The living room, with double plexiglass French doors opening on to the verandah. The house is fully furnished, with all the furnishings made by Len - another thing I love about it. (I think these chairs, sofa and stool have probably been recovered, as the fabric looks much more 90s than 60s.)

An internal door in the living room gives access to the kitchen ...

You can see a door at the back right which leads out to the verandah, and there's a short passageway from the kitchen to the bathroom and bedroom, too.

Most of the kitchen furniture is built in - the fridge and cupboard, seen open in this photo, are both attached to the wall.

This kitchen dresser is also attached. The table and chairs aren't fixed, however.

The bathroom has the same flooring as the kitchen. There's a bath, basin, toilet and towel rail, all fixed, and a stool and mirror which aren't fixed. Here's another shot showing the hollowed out interior of the toilet:

The door opens to the short passageway - the other door standing open there is the door into the bedroom:

The furniture in the bedroom is painted a gorgeous bright yellow:

Inside the wardrobe is a tiny coathanger:

The base of the dolls house has printing on it, showing that it was made from an old packing case:

Mary, the owner, told me that her brother John worked in Launceston (Tasmania) at about that time for the National Cash Register Company of Kingsway West (now part of Dundee), in Scotland. That is wonderful to know - I have other dolls houses made from teachests and packing cases, but (if the company names on them can be made out), I have never before known the relationship between the maker and/or owners of the dolls house, and the companies whose packing cases were recycled to make them.

Some of the furniture is also made from packing cases. The chest of drawers has part of the word 'United' on it:

and the wardrobe has part of the word 'Kingdom', with the base of letters from another word above it. This appears to have been a packing case from another company, as the National Cash Register Co's address on the base of the house does not include the words 'United Kingdom'.

There are a few other pieces of furniture which I haven't photographed yet - porch seats, and a black item which looks a bit like another fridge. There are also three sets of curtains. I didn't have time to clean this house while I was down - I'll do that on another trip, and also hang the curtains. Then I'll think about which dolls would like to live here, and find them kitchen utensils, pictures, and other accessories.

The roof, with red binding tape over the ridge. The red paint needs a bit of touching up.

Mary has mentioned that her great-uncle Len made three other dolls houses. One is no longer in existence, but the other two are. I hope to see them, through photos or in real life, one day.

-->

Two weeks ago, I was at the Sydney Miniatures and Dolls House Fair. I took quite a few photos of displays, and it's taking me a while to edit them for sharing, so here is a first look.

There were several displays with a garden theme.

Northside Miniatures (from the north shore of Sydney, I believe) had decided on a miniature gardens focus for their members' creations this year:

Displays by Elizabeth and David Allcroft (grey bowl) and Joan O'Connor (box with steps).

Displays by Pam Lyne (flowerpot at back left), Anne Lampe (glass bowl), Greta Gray (flowerpot in centre), Joan O'Connor (fenced roombox), Faye Ramsay (flowerpot on right).

Display by Pat Nowytager. Sorry, I don't know who made the garden in the bowl on the left.

As you can see, there are a lot of live plants in these displays. Another display with living plants was from Little Wonders of Wollongong - here, the maidenhair ferns make beautiful trees in this hilly landscape!

Displays by Barbara Jones, Sue White, Roslyn Hamilton and Noelene Freestone.

Another tiny cottage by Roslyn Hamilton. The snow globe at the back is by Dennis Hamilton.

I didn't see a name on the two displays below, just a note explaining that 'I' had been rather unpopular for giving members a flowerpot and asking them to make something within a short timeframe ... EDIT: I've now found photos of these on Chells Mini Corner on facebook, with a photo of the sign. It actually says "In July 2015 club members were each presented with a terracotta pot and told to "do something with that." My popularity soared to dizzy heights! Such was everyone's enthusiasm, work didn't begin until much later (Nov/Dec/Jan) and some members have yet to complete theirs. Amazing how different each one turned out."

Barb Loo: Pirates Ahoy!

A clever name - Hobpot Cottage, by Narelle Trembath! Out the front there are Pinecones For Sale.

Another display which used a container as the basis, in this case an Anzac biscuit tin:

I love how there are miniature Anzac biscuit tins in the display!

Anzacs by Maree Flaherty.

Div had gone down a scale this year. In past years, her creations have been in 12th scale, but as she is running out of space, she has started to work in 24th scale! Her display this year was the house of Lucian Gray, an illustrator. She hadn't been able to print out the backstory she usually has, but as you can see, the house and its furnishings are all in art deco style.

This is the only photo I took of the whole house open. It has the protective perspex, as Div wasn't there at the time to take it off. The other photos were taken without the perspex, just before Div packed it up - thanks, Div!

The left side, with studio, bathroom and kitchen.

Lucian Gray's studio

The central hall and stairs.

The upper landing.

The middle landing.

The ground floor hall - left side.

The ground floor hall - right side.

The right side of the house.

The balcony.

The bedroom.

The dining room, with a Bluebox sideboard on the right, and two of Margaret Crosswell's vases on the mantelpiece.

That's all for Part 1 - hopefully I'll sort the remaining photos of displays out soon for Part 2 - before or after I show what I bought at the fair!

This photo could have gone in Part 1, where I showed the two flowerpot creations. Here you see them next to a wonderful Venetian canal house was made by Lidi Stroud, (http://basketcase-miniatures.blogspot.com.au/) of Nambucca Heads. (Thanks, m1k1!)

This did have a decorated interior, though I believe it wasn't finished - but what I particularly loved is the 'water', green and semi-opaque ... and the discolouring of the stone near the water.

Another aged house, one of my favourite displays at this fair - this is from Mountain Miniatures, who did not give any individual names of members who created the displays:

The bedroom - a sagging mattress, and walls lined with old newspaper ...

Two views of the kitchen - notice the protruding spring in the chair

Lots of baked beans, some weetbix - and eggs from the chooks on the front verandah!

A broken window, chook poo and straw everywhere - and rusty corrugated iron under the verandah. This house got lots of admiring comments!

Here's the whole of Mountain Miniatures display:

The large house was another of my favourites - a calendar shows that it's set in 1973, and it has fantastic 1970s colours and designs!

Main bedroom

Upstairs landing (though the stairs are imaginary)

You can just see into the bathroom!

A teenager's bedroom, perhaps

The living room

Another view of the living room, and the wooden divider by the front door

The kitchen, with a calendar open to October 1973

Another Mountains Miniatures creation - a sandwich bar in a lunchbox!

There was a big display of Queenslanders - Warren Barnard makes kits of these houses in 1/48th scale, and he had run a workshop making them the weekend before the fair, resulting in a small town!

From Tamworth came a street of 12th scale tiny bungalows:

Margaret Webster's on the left - and a better view of the tank at the side:

The inside of Margaret's cottage:

Margaret had also made the tray of odds and ends - for her cottage and for other members, too. She wasn't really happy with the pot belly stove, which she said is not quite right for this kind of cottage - but it looks nice and cosy anyway!

Next to Margaret's was Diane Allwell's:

Then came one without a name:

Then a lovely cottage made by Annette Waters of Armidale. Sadly, Margaret told us that Annette had died not long before the fair, but they decided to bring her little house anyway. I'm glad they did - it's beautifully finished.

And finally, a little beach cottage - or the cottage of someone who loves the beach - by Sandra Betts.

There were lots of other displays, many that I didn't get photos of - here's one other I did take, a Japanese room in a tea box:

And finally, the amazing creations of Lewis Morley and Marilyn Pride. Lewis had a cinema this year, with a scene set just outside the foyer:

Lewis actually took out the box office so I could see inside it - but I didn't take a photo! The attendant's interrupted lunch is sitting on the bench ...

Some close-ups of the bright yellow Vespa, where hopefully you can see the stickers on it:

Marilyn's scene is a bit gorier - don't scroll down if you don't like blood and guts!

That's Marilyn behind the tree.

Marilyn started to explain that the priestess was an ancient Cretan. To me she is readily identifiable, but apparently, while everybody knows about ancient Egypt, Marilyn has found that hardly anyone knows about ancient Crete.

That's all my photos of the displays at this year's fair - I hope you've enjoyed them.

should really not have been much at all, as I had just won a rather expensive antique dolls house at an auction .... (I don't have any photos of it yet, as it arrived in Bathurst after I had left).
The main sources of vintage miniatures at the fair were two I had bought from at previous fairs, Robyn's Minis and Diana's Gifts, and one seller whom I hadn't seen before.

I went to Robyn's Minis first, and bought these two lovely sets:

(I apologise for the poor photos - I was trying to take them in a hurry in Bathurst, so I'd have a record of everything I bought - no time to arrange a good set up with good light.)

These are tiny - the chair is about 1 1/4 inches tall, and the table about 1 1/4 inches in diameter. The Kewpie in the bath is less than an inch long. The bath and the kewpie doll are hard metal; all the other pieces are soft metal. Only the sewing machine is marked - it has the word TOYODA on the bench part, so it's presumably Japanese.
Towards the end of the fair, as Robyn was packing to leave, I went back and looked at some pokerwork furniture she had put out on the second day. I had thought at first that it might have been the kind that was made in Japan, but on closer inspection, I think it might be homemade.

Look how the rails of the chair back are set into grooves in the cross piece (the rails on the bed head are the same):

I got to Diana's Gifts just as Anne Dowdall, from Victorian Miniatures in Canberra, was buying a lovely blue Codeg or Fairylite bathroom suite, and a little Britains table and chair and Taylor & Barrett fire for her Triang Princess dolls house. It would be lovely to see her Princess one day, with the vintage furnishings she's finding for it!
These are the things I bought from Diana's stall:

The Wedgewood style blue and white jug and basin are by Judy Keena - I bought a couple of plates by her last year. I also bought a little summer pudding from Diana's Gifts, at the end of the second day - it got photographed with something else, so it's shown below.

I can't remember the name of the lady who had the other stall I found some vintage pieces at - I think it might have been Nora. She was also selling some pieces she had made herself, before her hands got bad.

A nice bundle of plastic Britain's garden tools, a little vintage flower in a pot, and two rugs, two dusters and some dishwashing brushes made by Nora (?). I think the blue piece (rug/tablecloth) wasn't made by Nora, but I might be wrong.
Nora also had these lovely things:

The picture frame was made in Denmark - I'm not sure about the picture itself. The toiletry set says Made in Western Germany, so is post WWII. The mirror is unmarked, but made of quite heavy metal.

Also from Nora, a couple of wooden pieces - a Strombecker table, she thought, and a lamp, as well as an ARA poodle:

Nora also had some lovely geraniums in pots that she had made, with coloured reed matting around the pots. I would have liked to buy one of those, too!

From a stall with at least two women selling (I did not see their names, I'm afraid), I got these little bits and pieces:

The bunny chair and salad vegetable teapots (made of resin, I think) are for the bunnies in my Tree House. The fish teapot below is by Val Casson - there were four of her teapots on this stall, and it was quite hard to choose one!

Margaret Crosswell from Tasmania was at the fair again this year. I bought three bird figurines and another little vase:

I had gone to the fair thinking I would like some miniature knitting by Jennifer Howlett, but I didn't see any on her stall. However, when I was talking to Anna-Maria at the end of the first day, I noticed a fantastic Suffolk Puff quilt, and asked her about it. It turned out that it was made by Jennifer, and was for sale! Then, when I went back to buy the quilt the next day, I spotted some knitted rugs. Were they for sale? Well, partly to show what could be made with the fine wools Jennifer sells - but also for sale, yes. So I bought two - and know next year to ask to see what Jennifer has!

This is a really bad photo, especially of Judy Foster's beautiful embroidered slippers! I had looked at her embroidered tea cosies a couple of times, but then decided that I have some tea cosies already (though not embroidered), but don't have slippers! These go rather well with the cashmere lap rug from Jennifer - I don't yet know which lucky doll will get them.

This is not much better, but does show the fine embroidery a bit more.

Kim's Minis from New Zealand was back this year. I spoke to Kim about making a lamington preparation set for me - I need to email her with the details of the table I'd like it for. When she was last there (back in 2012, I think), I had greatly admired the marquetry pieces she sells, and I decided to buy one this time:

The summer pudding is not from Kim's Minis - it was from Diana's Gifts, and is marked SM 84 on the back. I did buy a bowl of sliced apricots from Kim's Minis - it will be great with some icecream in a 1960s or 70s dolls house:

The vase of chrysanthemums was a last minute purchase, from a stall I can't remember the name of. The canisters and bread with knife and board were made by a woman called, I think, Liz Hannaford or Hansford.

I bought soft furnishings from several stalls:

Minis by TwinMum (Norma Blackburn) had some 3D printed pieces on her stall. I bought this little esky, very useful for dolls house picnics and barbecues:

At the Miniature Supermarket, I bought lots of vintage supplies on the first day, as by the end of the fair last year, these had mostly sold out. I also took photos of the sample boards, so now I can see what is available!

1920s honey

1930s supplies, including soap, coffee with chicory, oats, fish and washing powder

1940s supplies, including cocoa powder and strawberry jam

1950s supplies, including WeetBix, Vita Brits, Rosella soup, Akta-Vite and Bushell's tea

A few bits for a 1960s house - a book, The Lost Koala (which features dolls called Jenny and Sue), Old Gold soap and Mortein fly spray.

Here's The Miniature Supermarket's vintage display board:

And the contemporary display board:

And the books available, from the 1870s to the 1970s:

I made other purchases I haven't photographed: some magazines and a book from various stalls, and two kinds of moulding for making picture frames, from Victorian Dollhouses. I haven't tried making frames before, but I have several paintings I've acquired in largeish frames, that I'd like to reframe - so, when I've bought a mitre box and saw, I'll have a go!

So, to finish, here are two views from my window at the hotel I stayed in, the Ibis Budget in Olympic Park itself. Previously, I have stayed in hotels in the city or Strathfield (after my sister moved from Sydney), but I thought I'd try staying close to the venue to avoid long trips back and forth. It was certainly easier, and now that the Ibis Budget has kettles in the rooms, very comfortable! I was lucky to get a corner room, so I had views in two directions.

While I was in Bathurst two weeks ago, I was able to take photos of some new dolls houses.
This one is my first made in the style commonly known as a Queenslander - built on stumps, with a verandah on at least one side. The stumps mean that air can flow under the house, and the house itself catches more breezes, being raised. It's also useful in areas that flood.

This one is quite simple - a single storey, with square verandah posts and solid brackets, and large-scale lattice on three sides of the underfloor space. It was made for a little girl who would have been born around 1920 - she is now 95. Unfortunately I don't know her name, but I bought the dolls house from her niece, who lives in an inner north-western suburb of Brisbane. The niece had also played with it as a child, and so did her (the niece's) daughter, so it had remained in one family since it was made.

The inside is also simple - just three rooms, with solid partitions between them, no doors. It's big - 134 cm long, 63 cm deep, and 88 cm high. (This dolls house is currently stored in a room with many others, and it's so big that I couldn't get far enough back to get the whole length in a shot, so the photos of the front and back of the house are the seller's.)

The front door doesn't open - it currently has an open upper part, but this may have had glass in it originally. As you can see from this photo of the middle room, some repainting has occurred. I haven't really thought about it much yet, but I do rather like the colour on the side wall here - and I wonder if the floor was originally a reddish colour.

This is the room on the right (as you look at it from the back), and as you can see, there is coloured, patterned glass in one window. Perhaps they all originally had glass - I'm glad it remains in one window. The detail of the glass can be seen better from the front of the house -

The room on the left (from the back) - both end rooms have two windows.

Here's a view of the ceiling - just simple planks:

I think the lattice and roof have been painted green fairly recently - I'd say the lattice was white at one point, at least on the outside:

Inside, it is still bare wood:

There's quite a large roof space, but it's not accessible.

I look forward to cleaning this house during another trip to Bathurst, and perhaps investigating if there are other paint colours underneath the current ones. I will also think about what larger scale furniture I have from the 1920s and 30s - perhaps the pokerwork set I bought at the Sydney fair might find a home here, and I have some wicker furniture which will probably go on the verandah.

Another new dolls house, which also has some features of the Queenslander style. Lots of houses in Darwin are built like this too, with the main part of the house set high off the ground, and stairs leading up to the back and front doors. In fact, I bought this house in western Sydney - the seller told me that it came to him from a mate of his, whose son had made it while an inmate in Long Bay Jail (a prison at Malabar, 12 km south-east of the city of Sydney). I don't know where the mate or his son were from, or what inspired the son to make a house in this style. I also don't know when it was made, only that the son was in jail for 20 years.

This dolls house is also large, though not quite as big as the one above - but again I'm using some of the seller's photos, as it was difficult for me to get the whole house in shot. I bought it at Easter, and drove with it to Bathurst. I had hired a sedan - larger than my usual car, but almost not big enough! However, we managed to squeeze the base into the back seats, the upper floor into the boot, and the roof came off its hinges and rested on the base!

The seller, who is a cabinet maker, had repaired and painted the house. It was not originally red and white - he told me that there were symbols of fruit on the outside walls, from the old cases it had been made from. (They might well help to date the house, but I don't know whether it would be worth trying to strip the paint to find them.)
The balcony on these two sides of the house was originally there - some of the balustrades were missing, and the seller had replaced them. He added the perspex in the double windows - there was just an open space there.

The doors were originally solid - the seller had cut the half-moon shapes into them. However, the posts and braces supporting this end of the balcony are original, he told me.

At the other end of the house is another door. I think this just opened to a small balcony - the seller certainly added the stairs, so there are now stairs to the front and back doors.

The roof is made to lift up on hinges along the back side of the house. As I haven't screwed the hinges back on yet, I was able to take a photo straight down into the upper floor:

The carpet is new, added by the seller. I don't like it, and I plan to remove it (though I'm sure it will leave a sticky mess - I'll probably have to cover it with other carpet or flooring of some kind). The lino in the two small rooms is new too, but I will keep it, I think, for the bathroom and laundry - or bathroom and toilet? not sure.
The wallpapers are unfortunately sticky-back plastic (Contact), but again I'll remove them - and probably also the remains of earlier wallpaper (from the 1960s or 70s?) and take it back to the original pale green paint, I think:

Although this floor lifts off the ground floor, I didn't take it off to take photos. From the outside, the ground floor is accessed by a small door under the stairs to the main balcony (which you can see above), and two large double doors on one side of the house:

as well as another small door on the opposite side of the house:

With these double doors, could one of these rooms have originally been intended as a garage? The carpet is new here too - and while the upper part of the base is original, a deeper base has been added, with castors on it - which makes moving the house much easier!
Here we can see the unfinished bottom of the hardboard which forms the floor of the upper level:

The walls of this lower level are also made of hardboard - the rough inner surface is still visible under the paint.

In many ways, I would love to have had this house without the new paint, carpet and wallpapers. However, the seller did a much better job than I ever could in repairing the stairs and balcony - and the house does look really good with stairs at the back too. So I'm happy to have acquired it as it now is - although I don't really look forward to removing the carpet and contact! I'm not sure whether I will leave all the doors and window frames painted red - I'll have to think about it. And furnishing it will be a long way down the track, as this house joins a long list of others in Bathurst needing work! I'd still be interested to hear your thoughts on what period I could furnish it in, though.

This is another of my new dolls houses in Bathurst. The house itself is fairly recent, and I don't know who made it, or even what it's made from (mdf? pine?). I bought it for the decorations - it has been painted inside and out by Australian artist Janine Daddo, and I love the details on it, especially all the cats!

There's a black and white cat on the front left, like my Harriet, and two white dogs with black spots on the front right.

On the inner left front, there's a ginger cat, like my sister's cat Treasure.

On one side there are two white cats:

and on the other side, there's another ginger cat, as well as several kennels:

The roof doesn't open, but the attics are accessible through the dormer windows and the round windows at each end, so the space is usable.

Three more dogs are on the back:

The house came with furniture, which is painted as brightly as the house itself:

The bedroom:

The bathroom - lots of fish!

The kitchen:

And the living room (not many chairs - I wonder if there were more once? I might have to add some):

Who will live here? I don't know yet, but they will certainly have lots of cats and dogs!

When an Australian-made dolls house is listed on Australian ebay or gumtree several times from the same area, it's a fair guess that it was made in that area. This type of dolls house on wheels has appeared many times in Victoria:

When I was looking through the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer at the beginning of last year, I was pleased to find this dolls house in a photo of a toy fair stand in 1975:

The caption says:

"RIGHT TOYS: Another new manufacturer, also featuring wooden toys, run by partners Peter Fortune and Gary Mellish. The range embraces some 21 items including doll's house on castors, table and chair set, walker wagons, blackboards, rope ladders, swings, go-kart, etc. Holding a truck is sales rep. Beverley Hall."

Right Toy Manf. Pty. Ltd. also had a display at the 1976 toy fair, sharing a stand with Sun Dip soft toys. The caption indicates that Right Toys displayed a '2-storey, 4 room unpainted dolls house on castors' - it is just visible at the front left, under a very large Pink Panther soft toy!

These entries don't give an address for Right Toys, but I have been able to find both partners in the Australian electoral rolls, and their addresses indicate that these dolls houses were indeed made in Victoria. In 1977 and 1980, Gary Mellish lived in Bentleigh, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne; he was self-employed. Peter Fortune lived in Dandenong, a bit further out than Bentleigh, in 1977, when his occupation is given as 'woodworker'. In 1980, his address was in Seaford, a beachfront suburb further south again. Peter Fortune's occupation in 1980 was stated as 'foreman' - was Right Toys still in operation, and if so, were Gary Mellish and Peter Fortune still partners in it? I don't know.

For some years, I had watched these dolls houses come up, and I was very pleased to be able to buy one earlier this year. I only have a couple of photos of it, which I took when I was in Bathurst in May:

If you've been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I love dolls houses with original wallpaper, so I was delighted to find this Right Toys house decorated with typical 1970s wallpapers! Why pink curtains, though? I suspect they are not from the same period as the wallpaper! I have not yet furnished this dolls house, so I haven't decided whether to keep the curtains or change them.

The layout, of two rooms upstairs and two downstairs, with the stairs on the left and fireplaces on the right, is the same as in two of the other Right Toys dolls houses I showed at the top of this post. One has only two rooms, but the same positioning of the stairs and fireplaces:

I have another dolls house on castors from Victoria, too. It also has four large window openings, although the bottom two have no bars, and the top two have sliding doors:

Left: front of dolls house, closed; right, inner front of dolls house.

The sliding doors, the balcony wall and the back wall of the dolls house are made of laminex on plywood. The main walls are made of chipwood. The curtains came with the house, and seem to date from the 1970s - there is a pair for the other downstairs window too, but they need new wire to hang on.

The front of this house opens from the other side - from the left side, rather than the right side as in the Right Toys dolls houses above. There are no stairs, and no fireplaces. (I haven't furnished this dolls house either yet, though I've had it longer than the one above. I have bought some pieces of furniture in hot pink and bright blue, to match the curtains, so I must try setting it up. It will need some flooring too, I think!)

This house does have a chimney, which is not only on the other side of the house - the left, rather than the right - but runs all the way up the side of the house, rather than sitting on the roof:

Is this also a Right Toys dolls house, despite the differences? I don't know.

I don't know, either, whether these other dolls houses on castors from Victoria were made by Right Toys or by another company:

This one in the three photos above, said by the seller to date from the 1970s, is made of pine wood, rather than chipboard, and has two opening fronts rather than a single large one. The windows are divided into 9, rather than 4, and the stairs and fireplaces are on opposite sides to the Right Toys dolls houses, with the chimney on the roof, but on the back left rather than the front right. (This dolls house has two fireplaces; I have also seen the same model with only one fireplace.)

This dolls house in the two photos below looks more recent, with a piano hinge instead of two smaller hinges. It does have one opening front, and the windows are divided into 4 panes - but there is a front door instead of a fourth window. Like my second dolls house, there are no stairs and no fireplaces. I can't see from the photos if there's a chimney; if there is, it's not on the front of the roof.

So, I definitely have one dolls house made by Right Toys, and the first three I showed here are also by Right Toys. For the moment, I can't say whether my second dolls house and the other two houses shown here are Right Toys variants, or similar models made by (an) other manufacturer(s). Hopefully, I will find more information in catalogues, toy trade journals, or even from the manufacturers themselves! Hopefully, too, I'll be able to show you my dolls houses furnished and inhabited before too long!

Eight years ago, I was excited to find my first dolls house furniture from the Sydney toy store Walther & Stevenson. I found more soon after that, and over the next couple of years found Walther & Stevenson catalogues showing the range available, and visited a fellow collector who owns more pieces. I published an article about the Walther & Stevenson dolls houses and dolls house furniture in the Dolls Houses Past & Present online magazine in 2015.

I think that I have now found the maker of this dolls house furniture! Searching digitised Australian newspapers on Trove for "dolls furniture", I came across a report in 1944, in several newspapers, about a government office adjusting the wholesale price of dolls house furniture made at home in Sydney by a Mr H G Molteno. Two papers included photos, and the furniture is recognisably Walther & Stevenson!

Compare the pieces in the photo above, from The Sun, Sydney, 18 May 1944, with Walther & Stevenson catalogue images which I have (rather clumsily) compiled below:

I haven't included a catalogue image of the stove (bottom right in the photo), as the catalogues don't show a stove of that design - but I do have one (photos of it can be seen towards the end of my Walther & Stevenson article).

The fullest report appeared in The Newcastle Sun, on the 18th May 1944, which wrote:

"BUREAUCRACY

AGED TOY MAKER GETS "THE WORKS"

SYDNEY— The Commonwealth Prices Branch has fixed prices for 79 articles of dolls' furniture, manufactured at home by Mr. H. G. Molteno, of Eastwood.

This achievement, Sir Frederick Stewart, MHR, said to-day, provided a fantastic example of bureaucracy run riot and of how interfering officialdom devotes time to unnecessary duties instead of matters of public importance.

Mr. Molteno first had to get approval of the Department of War Organisation of Industry to make dolls' furniture, though he had been doing so several years to occupy himself in his advancing age.

"He came to me about the delays and I wrote to the Minister (Mr. Dedman)," Sir Frederick said. 'The Minister communicated with the Minister for Trade and customs (Senator Keane).

"Mr. Molteno was instructed to submit a schedule to the Prices Commission setting out the list number and name of each article of furniture, the time and materials used for each article, the overhead cost, the value of the time and the cost selling price.

"He had to say whether a permit had been obtained from the War Organisation of Industry or Import Procurement or both, the date of issue of the permit, the makers of any similar articles and the prices at which they were sold.

Statutory Declaration

"This information had to be provided in the form of a witnessed statutory declaration and he had to give an estimate of his weekly output and provide a sample of each article, none of which measures more than a couple of inches.

"Letters from Mr. Molteno were ignored and for many months he was unable to make sales, though he and his wife were dependent on his work. At last, Senator Keane announced solemnly that the Commonwealth Prices Commissioner had been advised that the necessary investigation, 'although protracted' had been completed and Mr. Molteno was told by the Deputy Prices Commissioner in Sydney of the maximum price at which he might sell his productions.

"Perhaps it was these 'protracted investigations' that prevented the prices staff from looking into the matter of the Sydney milk supply," Sir Frederick Stewart said.

"Ridiculous Revisions"

He quoted these "ridiculous revisions" made in prices: A doll's ice chest, with hinged door, reduced from l0d to 7d, doll's verandah from 3 3/4d to 3 1/2d, a hallstand from 1s to 11 1/2d, a piano stool from 6d to 5 1/2d, an armchair from 5d to 3 1/2d, and a table from 5d to 4 1/2d.

"It is permissible to imagine the Commissioner and his staff having coopted a panel of joiners and carpenters, having communicated with the timber authorities in Canada, United States and Sweden, sitting hour after hour around a conference table debating solemnly whether a halfpenny or a farthing should come off the costs estimated by the maker."

I have not yet investigated archival depositories to see whether the documents submitted by Mr Molteno still exist. As well as the samples of each item, it would be very interesting to see the list of "makers of any similar articles and the prices at which they were sold".

Other newspapers carrying this report included the information that prices were reduced on 38 of the 79 articles of furniture made by Mr Molteno, including a "kitchen cabinet, with sliding doors and transparent panels, from 3/ to 2/6 (although it takes an hour to make)" (The Sun, Sydney, 18 May 1944); and"a grand piano with 11 separate pieces of wood to be cut and fitted, keys drawn and a considerable amount of finishing work done on it, the commission decided that the 3/6 sought was too much and that he should charge only 2/9." (The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 1944: 4)This paper, and others, described Molteno as "an elderly man in poor health".

So who was H.G. Molteno? He appears in electoral rolls and directories as Herbert George Molteno. His trade is variously described as cabinetmaker, wood cutter, marquetry cutter and furniture maker. He was quoted in a newspaper report in 1914 of a commission into duties on imported goods:

Herbert George Molteno manufacturer of inlays, said that the present duty on imported inlays was 30 percent on those arriving from Great Britain and 33 per cent on those imported from elsewhere. He asked that the rates should be 60 and 70 per cent respectively. Inlays which he could manufacture and sell at £1 a dozen could be bought in England at 9 6 a dozen

The Chief Commissioner-Then a 60 percent duty would be no good to you

Witness-It would help me considerably, even if it did not bring the cost right up. Australian woods would be suitable for my purpose if I could get them the right thickness. Cutters of these inlays in England receive 4d or 5d an hour, with 1/ an hour for special work

Mr Lockyer-Then could any possible duty help you to compete?-Yes At present cabinet makers have to take stock designs and sizes. I could make any size, and my own designs to suit any particular style of furniture.”

(The Argus, Melbourne, 25 April 1914, p17)

At that time, he was living in Melbourne, where he appeared in the electoral rolls from 1912 to 1924. A notice of his marriage in 1913 includes the information that he was "second son of the late F. J. Molteno of Ceylon" (Molteno ancestors and descendants are shown on a Molteno Family website). Herbert George Molteno was born on 26 December 1883 in Reigate, Surrey, England; his father was working as a photographer in London. I'm not sure when Herbert George left England for Australia (obviously before 1912).

By 1926, he appears in a Sydney directory, living first in Rockdale, then in Eastwood. His address from at least 1930 to 1937 was ‘Hauteville’, Gordon Crescent, Eastwood. From at least 1943 to 1963, he lived at 72 East Parade,Eastwood. This, then, was the address at which he made the dolls' furniture featured in the newspaper articles.

H. G. Molteno, as he appeared in the photo published in The Central Queensland Herald (Rockhampton, Qld.), 8 June 1944.

How long had he been making the furniture? The 1944 articles say "several years", so it's not clear whether he was the sole maker of the dolls house furniture shown in the Walther & Stevenson catalogues, or whether he took over the manufacture (and designs) of a previous maker. The earliest Walther & Stevenson catalogue I have seen dates from 1931, when 3 suites of approximately 10th scale furniture were available. By 1933, additional sets and individual pieces in a smaller scale were available, including several pieces of the furniture included in the 1944 photo. It seems to me likely that H. G. Molteno was producing this dolls house furniture by at least 1933, if not 1931. Some of the pieces were still available, in the same designs, in the 1953/54 Walther & Stevenson catalogue, so he probably produced it for at least 20 years. Molteno died in 1968.

If any descendants of Herbert George Molteno have any further information, I would love to hear from you!

While I was in Bathurst for the summer, I did some sorting of my dolls house miniatures. This set is one I bought last year, and it's a rarity among Australian-made dolls house furnishings: it has the brand name stamped on it, and I have been able to find the date the brand was registered, and the names of the makers!

The name is stamped on the back of the green dressing table:

Probably neither dressing table had a mirror originally - the mirror on the blue one is certainly not original, as it's the wrong shape and rather too thick.

It's plain and simply made furniture - not surprising, as it was made during World War II. The green table has what I believe is a wartime permit stamp on the base:

The name Peters Toys, toy manufacturers, was registered in September 1941 by Hazel M. and Frederick W. Meyer of 88 Milson Road, Cremorne, NSW. The entry states that they had commenced production on 1 April 1941.

Dun's Gazette for New South Wales, Vol 66 No 11 p 5 (12 Sep 1941) (accessed through trove.nla.gov.au)

This is the only entry I can find for Peters Toys or for the Meyers as toy manufacturers, so I don't know how long they continued.

Interestingly, I can't find the Meyers in Cremorne in the electoral rolls. In 1943, a couple named Frederick William and Hazel May Meyer are listed in St John's Park (where Frederick was a poultry farmer). In 1949, couples named Frederick William and Hazel May Meyer are listed in both Picnic Point (that Frederick is a bus driver) and Oatley (that Frederick is a metal machinist). Cremorne is on Sydney's lower North Shore, while the other suburbs are in the south or west of Sydney, 30 - 40 km away from Cremorne.

If anyone has any other pieces made by Peters Toys, whether dolls house furniture or other toys, I would love to hear about it.

Late last year, Canberra collector Wendy Benson's dolls houses came up for sale. I was able to buy several, including some of the Australian dolls houses shown in the exhibition (and book) Dolls' Houses in Australia 1870-1950. One of the houses I bought is called Dunroamin, made in Sydney in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

"Dunroamin" (Photo Benson family)

I saw the Australian dolls house exhibition in 1999-2000, and also visited Wendy and saw some of her dolls houses 8 years ago. So I knew that Dunroamin had some original pieces of metal furniture, probably made in Arncliffe (a suburb of Sydney), in the 1940s. It also has some Walther & Stevenson wooden furniture.

What I hadn't realised until I unpacked it was that it also has two pieces made by an Australian toy maker I had not previously heard of!

This chair has the name E. Tebbutt, Sydney, moulded into the base. The other piece is a bath, which also has a name moulded into the base. It says "Made by E. Tebbutt, Hurstville, NSW."

With that information, it was quite easy to find out more about the maker, through Ancestry and the National Library of Australia's digitised collection, Trove.

Eric Eldridge Tebbutt appears in the Australian electoral rolls in Hurstville in 1930 and 1933. In 1930, he lived at Whinhill, Stoney Creek Road, Hurstville, and his occupation is listed as estate agent. In 1933, he lived at Morgan Street, Hurstville, and his occupation is listed as manufacturer. By 1934, he had moved to 25 Shackel Avenue, Belmore, and gave his occupation as toy manufacturer. He remained at 25 Shackel (or Schackel) Avenue until the late 1940s, although the boundaries of suburbs seem to have changed around him - Shackel Avenue was in Campsie in 1936 and 1937, in Earlwood in 1941, and in Kingsgrove in 1942 and 1943!

As the bath shows the Hurstville address, it seems possible that it dates to the early 1930s. The chair is harder to date, as all of these places are suburbs of Sydney, south-west of the city centre.

Tebbutt registered his toy manufacturing company on 2 July 1937, under the name "Strong Toy Co". The registration entry states that he had started making toys in 1930.

Dun's Gazette for New South Wales, Vol 58 No 3 (19 July 1937), page 8 (accessed through trove.nla.gov.au)

I'm glad that the bath and the chair show the name Tebbutt, rather than the name Strong Toy Co. There was also a maker called Strong - FW Strong & Co, of Melbourne, who marked their toys "Strong Product" (late last year, I unsuccessfully bid on a miniature diecast pram made by Strong). Tebbutt is a much more distinctive name!

You're probably wondering what these pieces are made from. So was I, as I handled them! They are solid, heavy pieces, but they didn't look or feel like wood or metal. I found a possible answer in a trade directory and a Wanted ad: they are probably manufactured from a type of clay mixture.

Strong Toy Co entry in the Seven Hills suburb section of the Universal Business Directories' Sydney City & Suburban Trade and Business Directory, 1948-49, page 644 (accessed through trove.nla.gov.au)

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 14 Sep 1949, page 26 (accessed through trove.nla.gov.au)

By the late 1940s, Eric Tebbutt had moved to Seven Hills, in Sydney's west. He is still listed there as a manufacturer in 1958. By 1963, however, he had moved to Rouse Hill, where he was farming. By 1980, he had retired from that too, and moved to the lower Blue Mountains. He died in Wentworth Falls in 1990, aged 91.

If anyone knows more about Eric Tebbutt and the Strong Toy Co, or has other pieces made by him, I would love to hear from you!

Addendum: here is a photo of the interior of Dunroamin, taken by the Benson family. I have not yet set this dolls house up, and the furniture is still in boxes, so it will be a while before I can take photos myself. The Tebbutt bath can just be seen in the bathroom next to the stairs, behind a Walther & Stevenson basin. I think the Tebbutt easy chair is hidden at the back left of the living room, where it is almost invisible.

Interior of Dunroamin, with some original pieces and other furnishings and dolls added by Wendy Benson. Photo: Benson family.

My buys at (and before) the Sydney Miniatures Fair 2014

Season's Greetings!

Definitely shutters, if only I could show you!

Woodtoys - another house and more info

A flower transfer house from Victoria

A Crazy House Lady

My buys at the Sydney Miniatures and Dolls House Fair 2015

Yellow roses and a koala in a cardboard dolls house

A New Year, a summer holiday, and op-shopping!

A Lumberjack dolls house, without doubt!

My first Tasmanian dolls house

Sydney Fair Displays - Part 1

Sydney Fair Displays, Part 2

What I bought at the Sydney 2016 fair

A Queenslander - or two ...

Something a bit different!

A Right Toys dolls house - or two?

H. G. Molteno, maker of Walther & Stevenson dolls house furniture

Peters Toys - Australian wooden dolls house furniture from the 1940s

Tebbutt's Strong Toy Co: 1930s dolls house furnishings made in Sydney