$1 Baggie Dollhouse Find

At a recent antique show, rooting around in a dealer's box of bargain-priced "junque," I found this baggie full of broken dollhouse furniture, priced at just one dollar. (It doesn't look like much here, but just wait...)

The pieces were clearly very old, German-made circa the 1890s-1910. On a closer, surreptitious inspection, I discovered all the bits were there, and they weren't really broken, just unglued. Over the past century, the animal-based glue dried out and gave way.

It was the work of a couple of minutes for the pieces to be reassembled, and ta-da: here they are!

The 4 inch tall chair is made of red stained, gold gilt trimmed wood and pressed cardboard, while the faux wood grained sideboard  is in a much smaller scale at 3 1/2 inches, and fits perfectly into my hard-to-furnish 10 inch tall dollhouse.

Not a bad find for a buck!

Antique Dollhouse Doll and Friend

A recent find was this little German all-bisque dollhouse doll, circa the 1890s-early 1900s. Just 4 1/4 inches tall, she has an unruly blond mohair wig and one tiny eye slightly offset, which gives her a quirky charm. I think she looks like a Victorian child who's gotten away from her nanny, escaped the nursery, and been running wild through the house, throwing temper tantrums all the way.

Here she is with her new best friend, a 1920s Schuco miniature bear. Hopefully he can convince her to tidy up her hair and sit down quietly for a nice cup of tea:

Flagg Family Dollhouse Dolls in Original Box

It's funny how antiquing is sometimes: you can look for something for years without finding it, and then when you do finally find one, you seem to find them all over.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a family of vintage dollhouse dolls made by the Flagg Company that I found at an outdoor antique show, buried in a box of junque. At the time, I had never come across any of these highly-sought Flagg dolls in all my years of collecting. Then, a couple of weeks later, I found two more (which I haven't yet posted, sorry), and then, last week, I hit the jackpot with this unplayed-with set still in its original package!

The box, cleverly designed to look like a house with the dolls peeking out the windows, measures 11 by 7 inches. The parents are about 4 inches tall, while the kids are 2 3/4 inches and the itty bitty baby (it's a boy!) is only 1 1/2 inches long.

The naively styled dolls are molded of a flexible vinyl and dressed in clothing made mostly of felt. The simply painted eyes give them a rather stunned expression, but that's part of their charm, I think. These date from the 1950s.

From the packaging:

Vintage Dollhouse Groceries

I have a large collection of antique and vintage dollhouse shops, so I'm always on the lookout for products to stock them with. At an antique show last weekend, I spotted these 1940s-50s American-made groceries. Constructed of paper-wrapped wooden blocks, the tallest is 1 1/2 inches tall.

Here they are on the shelves of a 10 inch tall dollhouse grocery store from the same period:

Antique German Dollhouse Dishes in Original Box

A tiny treasure turned up at a local antique show this past weekend. An unassuming 4 1/2 inch long cardboard box half-buried in a pile of miscellanea caught my eye. Upon opening it, a tiny teaset, serving dish, utensils, and itty bitty napkins in rings were revealed, all stamped Germany, circa the 19teens-20s. Even the strings that originally held the items in place were still attached to the base of the box. It's always a thrill finding things like this!

The box featured silhouette decorations of a young couple, as if this was meant to be a dollhouse wedding gift:

Inside, tiny treasures!

For a sense of scale, the serving dish (still with its spoon!) measures just under 2 1/2 inches wide, including its handles; the teapot is 1 1/4 inches to the tip of its lid; and the napkins are 1 inch long.

Everything the new lady of the (doll)house needs for a tea party:

Teddy Bears' Halloween

My miniature Schuco and Steiff teddy bears have agreed to pose for a Halloween photo, carving their pumpkin. The large scale antique dollhouse table and chairs are just the right size, and featured in last summer's birthday photo, too. The bears date from 1910-1950s; the furniture is early 1900s American; and the backdrop is by Edward Gorey, from his Dracula Toy Theatre.

"We love pumpkin carving!"

"Ewww...I don't think I want to stick my paw in there...do you?"

Mushroom Dollhouse

The largest piece in my collection of mushroom homes is this, a wooden mushroom dollhouse. It stands about 14 inches tall and was probably made in Germany. I found it years ago on display in a dollhouse shop, and I've never seen another quite like it.

 The house has open sides and two floors, which I've loaded up with a tiny gnome family and their furniture.

Downstairs is the kitchen and dining area:

In the dining room, supper has been laid out on the mushroom table:

In the kitchen, mom gnome has just taken a cake out of the oven:

Upstairs, a brother and sister gnome hang out. They've got mushroom and leaf furniture, snacks, and a cozy fireplace:

My favorite part of the house is the fireplace corner, with its leaf sofa:

It's windy and cold here today; wish I could sit by this fire with the gnomies!

Flagg Flexible Dollhouse Dolls

These homely little dolls may not look like much compared to the oh-so-chic mod Barbies of the previous post, but they have a charm all their own, as well as a wonderful history. (I learned most of this history from the fantastic book Dollhouse and Miniature Dolls, 1840-1990, by Marcie and Bob Tubbs.)

The little dollhouse family of four includes a mom and dad, just over 4 inches each, and a boy and girl, just under 3 inches. They're made of a solid, flexible vinyl over a wire armature, and feature naively handpainted features, hair, and shoes with felt and cotton clothing. The tiny dolls were made by the Flagg Doll Company in the 1950s.

The firm began in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, just after WWII. The founders, Sheila and Charles Flagg, met during the war while she worked in a factory and he served at the Navy ship yard. Sheila was the artistically creative side of the partnership, sculpting the dolls from soap, designing and sewing their clothes, and painting their hair and faces. Charles was the mechanically creative partner. He made the molds, created the special casting oven, designed a hydraulic press to cut out the clothing, and invented a stapler to affix the clothing to the dolls. He also handled the advertising and business end of things.

The family's children sometimes helped in the factory as well. The Tubbs report in their book that "daughters, Leslie and Penny, first painted toenails and fingernails on dolls before graduating to painting faces. Neither daughter was allowed to be a 'costumer' after Leslie stapled her finger on the foot powered machine. One person in the factory boxed dolls, a thankless and unpopular task, as it was difficult to place the feet in the pre-cut tab openings. The Flagg's youngest child, Charles III, was often the nominated 'boxer.'"

The Flagg's first dolls came out around 1947, and appealed not only to children but also to child psychologists, who used them in diagnostic play with their young patients. As dollhouse play declined in the 1970s and '80s, this clinical market became the Flagg's biggest customer.

Besides the standard dollhouse family, the Flagg Company offered a vast range of creatively themed dolls, such as storybook characters, professions (nurses, doctors, police officers, teachers), a wedding party, nuns, Pilgrims, household domestic staff, and countless more.

Profitability became an issue as cheap import toys began flooding the American market in the 1970s and '80s, and the company, after being sold following Charles' death, finally closed in 1985.

The charming little dolls, with their rich history as part of one of the last American family-owned and run toy companies, are a precious addition to any collection. I was thrilled to find my set in a box of bargain priced "junque" at a local sale. Even in their well loved and played with condition, they're still tiny treasures.

Antique Dollhouse Doll

I'm always happy to add another antique dollhouse doll to my collection. They're rather addictive, and their diminutive size makes them easily (though not cheaply!) collectible. My latest find was this 5 inch tall china head, wearing her original, and very lovely, Turkey Red embroidered dress. The tiny German-made doll dates from the late 1800s.

Her simple face painting still manages to convey a gentle, bemused expression, and her rosy cheeks make her look as if she's blushing. What is she thinking about, I wonder?

Here she is in front of her new home, a circa 1900 lithographed paper dollhouse:

She loves to cook, but she should really have an apron on over that beautiful dress!

Antique Dollhouse Toast Rack

Last week I scored an antique dollhouse miniature that I've coveted for a long time, but I could never bring myself to pay its hefty asking prices. It's a tiny toast rack, complete with four slices of toast, made in Germany by Gerlach from 1915 through the 1920s.

 My 5 inch china doll has added the toast rack to her breakfast table.

The rack is made of a soft metal and the toast is a composition-type material. It's incredibly fragile and very beautiful.

It's an irony of miniature collecting that sometimes the smallest things have the highest prices. This tiny object, only an inch and a quarter tall, usually comes with a three-figure price tag! The only examples I've seen in the two years I've been looking were priced at $135 and $110, which are typical for this piece. I resisted these offerings, firmly telling myself there was no way I was going to spend $135 on an inch tall toast rack, and am I ever glad I did, because the one I found last week was somehow unknowingly priced at only $14.99! Sometimes, the toy collecting gods smile upon us, and things like this happen...thank you, toy gods, thank you.

Fisher Price Play Family A Frame House

The Fisher Price people in the previous post (1960s Nifty Station Wagon) might be traveling to this lovely vacation resort, the Play Family A Frame house, made in 1974. These kitschy structures were all the rage as holiday homes across the United States in the 1960s and '70s, and Fisher Price's 11 inch tall version is absolutely adorable. From the aqua green roof tiles to the faux-Bavarian balcony, built-in kitchen, cozy fireplace, and comfortable patio, they got all the details just right.

The roof opens to form a patio, revealing the two story rustic interior:

The patio includes a picnic table and barbecue grill, and I've added an umbrella table from a different FP set:

Inside, the built-in kitchen is done in classic '70s orange, and there's a cozy fire and braided rug (well, sticker versions, anyway):

Outside, there's a balcony and a deck on each end. You can see bunk beds through the doorway on the top floor. I've added a FP checker table and a couple of visiting cousins to the deck.

 It all looks so inviting, it makes me wish I could visit!

To see more (real-life) a frame homes and learn about their fascinating history, take a look at the book A-frame, by  architectural historian Chad Randl: 

Little Women

Yesterday I found this set of five little late 1800s Frozen Charlotte dolls at an antique store. They're wearing very old dresses, handmade by a young owner long ago.

They're each just 2 3/4 inches tall, which makes them the perfect size for my latest dollhouse. Here they are, loitering on the front porch:

For a sense of scale, here they are nestled in a child's antique teacup:

Antique Dollhouse and Miniature Bear

Recently, I posted about my first antique American lithographed wooden dollhouse. Last weekend, I was thrilled to acquire another one at an outdoor antique show, along with a miniature Steiff bear who is just the right size to live inside.

Here is the new house (on the right) with its predecessor:

They were both made by the same unknown company in the very early 1900s, and feature fronts that swing open to reveal two simple rooms papered with their original oversized wall coverings. These houses are sometimes referred to as "Gutter Houses" by dollhouse collectors because of the prominent piece of molding that runs along their roofline, resembling a gutter. They were probably made in imitation of the more expensive Bliss houses available at the same time. They originally had red-stained roofs that tend to fade badly with time; my first house has a roof that was repainted green, probably around the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, when it may have been refurbished and gifted to a needy child. This new house is all original, and even smaller than the first, being only about 10 1/2 inches high.

Two tiny antique Steiff bears have moved in to the first floor, where they are presently having tea.

Antique Dollhouse Food

My very favorite type of dollhouse miniature is antique dollhouse food. I actually collected dollhouse food long before I collected dollhouses, dolls, or furniture.

I think my interest in miniature foods goes back to seeing the illustrations in Beatrix Potter's 1904 book, The Tale of Two Bad Mice. In the story, two mice break into a dollhouse and attempt to eat the scrumptious looking dinner laid out on the table. When they discover the food is made of plaster and glued to the plates, they smash it to bits in frustration and then go on a destructive rampage as they burglarize the house. The dollies, upon returning home, immediately engage a Steiff policeman doll to watch over their residence.

I've always found the illustrations of the dollhouse food in The Tale of Two Bad Mice to be charming and captivating:

and I was thrilled last year to find an antique dollhouse ham very like the one in the illustration (German, circa the 1900s):

My oldest piece of dollhouse food is this tiny ham shown below, about 1 1/4 inch wide, made of a papier-mache-like substance on a pressed paper plate. It came from Germany in the mid 1800s. It's not pretty, but it's old, and it's amazing to me how something so small and fragile has survived:

 My very best sets of antique miniature food are these two, made in France in the 1880s. The items are painted plaster, in a scale a bit larger than 1" to 1 foot; I think they may have been meant for dolls rather than dollhouses. They are unplayed with; in fact, most of the pieces are still tied down with their original twine. The boxes feature beautifully lithographed labels with scenes of little bakers cooking (and drinking!) and children dining.

 

I love the old stove in this image, and the

oversized frying pan on the burner.

That's some giant omelet they're making!

And this image has so much to appreciate: the lovely cupboard on the right; the gorgeously upholstered chairs; the children's clothing; the finely detailed dishes and embroidered tablecloth...

And here's what's inside: beautiful miniature play food, some recognizable to me (those hams again!) some not (that flat pink and white thing in the upper left corner. Maybe it's some sort of French regional specialty):

Here are the items in profile, to give a sense of their proportions. The pieces average between 2 and 3 inches long:

And some detail close-ups:

A very fancy ham.

A fishy entree.

A ham (again), lobster, what looks like eggs in a salad....but I'm not sure what that is in the upper right. Maybe a fruitcake?

For some reason (perhaps the Beatrix Potter influence again) I prefer the primitive style of these old pieces to our modern hyper-realistic dollhouse food. Even though today's amazingly crafted pieces look so authentic, these crude-by comparison miniatures have a special charm of their own. And, after all, they fooled the mice in the story, so they must look real enough!