Antique Doll Kitchen

One of this year's most extravagant Christmas gifts, this unusual antique doll kitchen came with interesting provenance.

From the collection of Evelyn Ackerman, an authority on antique dollhouses (particularly those of the German firm, Gottschalk) it is pictured in one of the books she authored, The Genius of Moritz Gottschalk. 

It's lost a few bits since that photo was taken some years ago, but still has enough items for a doll to do her holiday cooking. Measuring 10.5 inches high by 14 inches wide, the wooden kitchen features lithographed paper in patterns of brick and tile, an opening stove door, a towel rack, a tin sink, lattice work trim, and its original pot and wash boiler.

Inscribed on the bottom of the kitchen is its model number and a message: "Janie from Uncle Charlie 1917." The play wear on this kitchen shows how much Janie enjoyed it, but it's also clear she treasured it carefully for many years. Uncle Charlie, wherever you are now, thank you for the doll kitchen: it's a beautiful toy!

Antique toys for Christmas, 2013.

1930s Playskool Pullman

Two years ago, I finally found one of my most longed for toys: the Playskool Pullman, made for a very brief period in the early 1930s. You can read the original post about it here. Recently I found another one, in much better condition, with many of the accessories and details that were missing from my first find.

The pressed steel Pullman playset measures 11 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches, and was designed to resemble both a Pullman train car and a little suitcase. The leather handle made it easy to carry on a real train trip.

Two clear windows allow the little passengers to look outside, while a third window is covered with a decal printed to give the look of frosted glass.

The Pullman opens from the back, revealing  a compartment tucked behind green curtains.

Behind the curtains, a cozy compartment is unveiled, complete with benches and a fold away table. I've fitted it out with a tablecloth and some refreshments for the miniature French doll and Steiff bear travelling inside.

Above the passengers' heads, the sleeping berth is tucked away, ready to be pulled down in the evening.

Here's the berth pulled down, complete with sheets, pillows, and blankets.

To the left of the compartment is a small closet holding a porcelain sink, perfect for freshening up after a long journey.

I also found some old dollhouse sized luggage, perfectly scaled for the Pullman playset. The largest is a cardboard candy container, made in Germany in the early 1900s. The tiny red hat box is also German, while the black tin trunk was made by the Marx company.




All aboard the Playskool Pullman!

Antique Dollhouse Candy Store

After years of collecting, I've learned that the best toys sometimes come in the plainest of boxes. The simple cardboard container below gives no hint of the beautiful antique toy within. It measures 5 inches tall by 9 1/2 inches wide.

When the lid is lifted back, the front panel drops, revealing Pets Candy Store, a miniature shop made in England circa the 1890s.

To set up the shop, a pink candy counter slides out of the base. Then the counter can be set with its accessories, including tin candy and biscuit containers; glass bottles of faux candies; a tin scale, scoop, and dish; and cardboard coins.

All the accessories are original to the store. The doll was added later but suits it perfectly, a close match to the little girl depicted on the shop's lithographed sign in the box lid.

Some of the containers originally held real candies and biscuits, fossilized remnants of which were still intact when I opened them. The tiny Peek Frean & Company biscuit tins are two inches tall.

The Pets Candy tins are a bit bigger at 3 1/2 inches tall, and feature colorfully lithographed labels.

A little glass bottle holds faux candies made of gilded wood.

Completing the set are tiny tin accessories including a scale, molded dish, and scoop, along with cardboard coins.

The shop is the perfect size for miniature teddy bears in search of sweets.

Antique Easter Egg Full of Toys

Found in a local antique shop just in time for Easter was this egg. An old but rather nondescript egg made of red stained pressed paper, it measures about 4 1/4 inches tall, and has a cord at the top so it can be hung as a decoration.

Here's the egg with an Easter postcard from the same time period (1900s) for a sense of size.

Upon closer inspection, a seam was revealed along the side, and when the egg was opened, toy treasures were discovered within, still sewn down to their original backing cards.

 

The little bisque doll is a mere 2 1/2 inches tall, and lies nestled in a bed of paper lace. On the other side of the egg, a set of four carved wooden Erzgebirge toy figures wait to be played with.

These toy filled eggs were made in Germany from the late 1800s up to about 1920. They were popular in France as Easter gifts, and were exported there in great quantities. Few remain today however, since the pressed paper was fragile, and children naturally would have removed the toys as soon as they opened the eggs.

When they are found today it is usually as unsold stock that never made it into children's hands, and such eggs typically have the toys still sewn in place, as with this example. These eggs usually had a jointed bisque doll on one side, and tiny toys, doll clothes, or doll accessories on the other. The toys inside varied in quality from the very fancy to the rather primitive, enabling parents with a wide range of budgets to purchase them for their children's Easter baskets.

Keep an eye out for eggs today! Happy Easter!



Vintage Playtown Luncheonette

Welcome back to Playtown: I've posted before about this line of miniature shops and accessories made in New York from the 1940s - 1950s. The sets ranged from a small, simple grocery store to a deluxe diner called the Playtown Luncheonette, while other items included a bakery and a meat market. Sold separately, together they made up a miniature municipality able to meet the shopping and dining needs of most small doll and teddy bear inhabitants.

The Playtown pieces have a devoted fan base, spurred both by nostalgia and the considerable charm of the toys' design.

Here's the luncheonette, which I found unplayed with in its original box, its accessories still sealed in a brittle cellophane bag. (Which is not the case any longer...)

The luncheonette measures 10 inches wide by 6 high, and came packed in this cardboard box.

The diner came with wooden stools, bowls, plates, cups, and bottles; an assortment of plaster food items; a plastic Renwal radio; and metal accessories including a cash register, toaster, and waffle iron. I added the pastry case, coffee pot, soda dispenser, and plate of donuts (a diner has to have donuts.)

The diner features very authentic stencilled signage advertising its specials, including grilled cheese, pancakes, and a banana split (only 25 cents!) along with very vintage images of a waitress and chef. The Coca-Cola logo is original to the luncheonette, and makes this Playtown set also sought by Coke collectors.

The plastic Renwal radio is the same one used in dollhouses of the period.

What's to eat? Hot dogs and hamburgers, of course! These examples are of molded and painted plaster.

The plaster desserts in the display case are also original to the set, but a bit mystifying. Are they Jellos? Cakes? A Jello and a cake? I suspect the yellow one on the left may be an apple dumpling.

While the Playtown shops are fantastic toys on their own, and loads of fun to set up and accessorize, they also make great display props for miniature dolls and bears. The little dolls made in this same era by the Flagg company are perfectly sized to staff the luncheonette.

Order up!  A slider and two dogs on a bun.

Bears get hungry too. This miniature Steiff is just the right height to eye the pastry case.

Antique Photographs of Children and Toys

Like many toy collectors, I'm always on the lookout for old photographs of children with toys. Such photos add character and life to a toy collection; they remind us that the toys were originally made for and owned by real children, who played with them, loved them, and eventually grew up, leaving their toys behind for us to find and treasure.

I found two such photos just before Christmas. The first is this posed studio portrait of a little girl with her doll. The doll looks like she might be an Alabama Baby, a cloth doll with a painted face in a primitive style.

The little girl and her doll share strangely similar expressions. Are they anxious? Alarmed? Needing to use the bathroom? If only they could tell us...

While this photo has a homely charm, the second photograph I found is very different, capturing the image of a wealthy Victorian child surrounded by expensive toys, including a platform horse, a train, blocks, a musical push toy, bowling pins, a horn, and a small horse drawn cart.

The skin covered horse on its wheeled platform would have been a German import and a pricey toy. In the foreground is a cast iron train.

It's a bit difficult to see, but in the right foreground is a little horse drawn cart, with an alphabet block in the open seat.

Here's a closeup of the lithographed tin musical push toy. What a lot of beautiful toys! This child must have been very good all year.

"Black Friday" Finds

As much as I love hunting for treasures, I don't really go in for the day-after-Thanksgiving "Black Friday" shopfest. TVs, video games, appliances, and all the other electronic gadgets that seem to be the focus for shoppers that day don't really appeal to me much, and you couldn't pay me enough to be in those crowds. Instead I sleep in, then eat breakfast while watching the news stories of riots at the local Walmart. Fueled by Captain Crunch cereal and self-righteousness, I then go the opposite direction, visiting my favorite little independently owned shops in small towns.  My goals are chiefly: 1) supporting them, in an effort to avoid nothing but Walmarts in our future; and 2) seeing how they've decorated for the holidays.

So yesterday found me in a little "County Store" in a remote area, as far from the malls and big box places as I could get. This particular store, housed in several old farm buildings, specializes in holiday decorations along with some local crafts and baked goods. Occasionally, an antique toy can be found in its densely packed display cases, too.

And this trip didn't disappoint: I spotted this little doll's legs sticking out from under a pile of tinsel. Just a tiny 3 1/2 inches tall, this dollhouse doll was made in Germany between the 1890s-1900s, and is still wearing her original clothes.

Other finds included these old Christmas ornaments. The 3 inch snowman is made of cotton batting, and dates from around the 1930s-40s, while the chenille Santa is likely a bit older.

Who needs Best Buy's "door buster" deals when there are things like this out there, just waiting to be discovered?

Antique Doll Kitchen

 

Found recently in a far back corner of an antique mall was this small doll kitchen, American made circa the early 1900s. The peg wooden dolls, while rather out of scale, seem very at home inside. 

 

 

The kitchen is one of the smallest I've ever seen, just 6 3/4 inches tall by 9 inches wide. (My largest doll kitchen can be seen by clicking here.) The open, wooden room features an impressed printed design on the sides and base, including windows, shutters, and a "stone" foundation.

The contents include a wee little cast iron stove, just 3 1/2 inches wide, and an assortment of kitchen apparatus: an earthenware pitcher and bowl; tin plates, pails, and molds (note the lobster shaped mold mounted on the wall); and a cast iron frying pan.

The peg wooden dolls are German, and the larger of the two is probably late 1800s. They, and the kitchen itself, show a lot of play wear, but I think that only adds to their charm. Some little girl over 100 years ago really loved this toy. I wonder what she pretended to cook on its tiny stove?