Gnome Bowling Game

Vintage games are some of my favorite toys to collect. This one, circa the 1950s, features a 16 inch wide tin litho playing board with wooden balls. The object is to roll the balls into the corresponding colored cups. (It is much harder than it looks!) Delightful little gnomes point the way to high scores.

The little gnomes are adorable:

Steiff Gnome

This month's gnome-a-thon wraps up with a character from Steiff: "Pucki," one of their small gnome figures, made in Germany in the late 1940s-early '50s.

Pucki is 5 inches tall to the top of his hat, and is made of a rubbery composition material over a wire frame, with felt clothing and a mohair beard. The rubber compo material tends to deteriorate over time, resulting in drying, stiffening, cracking, and breaking. Steiff made many similar gnomes around this time period, and even with their condition issues, they're still charming little guys.

The Eugene Gnome Family

One of my favorite vintage gnome items is also the only one with links to my childhood. I can remember seeing this family of gnome dolls advertised in the big Sears Christmas Wish Book back in the 1970s. I believe I actually tore the page out, circled the gnomes in thick, red marker, and included it with my letter to Santa, just to be sure he knew exactly what I wanted.

I can still remember going to bed every night that December, anxiously worrying about the gnomes: did Santa get my letter? Would he have enough of the gnome dolls in stock for all the children who would undoubtedly be asking for them that year? Would I pass muster on Santa's list, and be deemed worthy of said gnomes? Well, I must have had a pretty good year, because Santa dutifully brought them, and I played with them incessantly. My childhood gnomes didn't survive, unfortunately, but thanks to eBay, I have them back today.

Designed by the Eugene Doll Company of Brookyln, New York in 1979 and manufactured in "The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong," the 5-7 inch tall jointed gnomes are made of plastic with clothes of rather cheap synthetic materials. The clothes were embellished with stickers (a mushroom on the mom, a strawberry on the girl) that quickly fell off and were invariably lost (one of my eBay sets miraculously retains them). The Eugene Gnome Family was definitely not a high-end toy, but there was, and remains, something very captivating about these dolls. As a little girl, I absolutely treasured them, and I still do today.

The Eugene Gnomes were packaged in two different ways, a fact I was unaware of until I began hunting for them as an adult. The first variation is this display box, which is how the gnomes were sold in stores. It has some gnome folklore on the back, and suggests: "Keep them with you to lend a hand, to talk to, to pretend with, to have as friends. Invite the whole Gnome family -- they'd love to come."

The second packaging variant is this much smaller mailing box, which is how I remember my gnomes coming on Christmas Day as a child. There was no display box inside: the dolls were simply packed, loose, into this carton. This is how the gnomes were packaged for catalog sales, which is how the bulk of midwestern American Christmas toy shopping was done back in the 1970s. This dual packaging, one for stores, one for catalogs, was typical of many toys back then, but it can be puzzling if you're not aware of it, as I wasn't when I began my gnome hunt.

 It was like Christmas 1979 all over again the day this came.
Thank you, eBay!

Heissner Gnome

Another vintage German gnome, this one is a bit later than those previously posted, made in West Germany in the 1950s or '60s. Manufactured in high quality vinyl by Heissner, one of the oldest German gnome makers, this reading gnome measures 13 inches tall to the tip of his hat.

This closeup shows the detail of his sculpted face:

He's very appropriately reading a gardening book.

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!

Green, Yellow, and Orange Smurfs? No, They're Empire Gnomes!

Smurf collectors, in their pursuit of rare variations of the little blue figurines, sometimes come across what appear to be anomalies: Smurf-like characters in odd shades of green, yellow, and orange.

For quite awhile, confusion reigned in toyland over these items: they were pretty clearly Smurf knock-offs, but what were they? I had no clue, but I knew I liked them. Finally, I somehow chanced across a vintage ad in an old monster movie magazine, and there they were, but with a name: The Gnome Family, made by an American company called Empire in the 1970s.

The ad, copyrighted 1978, reads: "Lovable, laughable GOOD LUCK little folks that get you where your heart is. Adorable as they frolic in their gnome-sized playworld. Collect them individually or in sets and take them gnhome. Sold wherever toys are sold."

"Take them gnhome"...hee hee...anyway, Empire Gnomes have lately become rather popular collectibles in their own right, and snippets of information about them have begun to appear online.

The vinyl figurines are the same size as vintage Smurfs, about 2 1/2 inches tall, but they lack the tiny little "button" tail. (Maybe Empire thought that would be enough to avoid a copyright lawsuit.) Their accessories are made from a rather cheap, brittle plastic, unlike the high quality European vinyl of the Smurf sets. While the gnomes turn up from time to time, the playset pieces are much more scarce, probably because of this fragility.

The playground set included a ferris wheel (9 inches tall), a merry go round, and a treehouse with a swing and a slide on the back.

The little guys with their hands over their mouths are meant to look like they're giggling (a clear infringement on Jokey Smurf), but placed in the whirling merry go round, it rather appears they're about to vomit instead, doesn't it?

Check out the guy on the top. Apparently, in Empire Gnome Land, you're allowed to take big frothy mugs of beer on the ferris wheel. (Also, toy standards were clearly different back in the '70s. Can you imagine the parental outrage over Beer Swilling Gnome if  he were released today?)

Crazy Eyes Gnome welcomes you to his treehouse. 

Vintage German Gnome Thingy

Another vintage German gnome from my collection is this ceramic piece, made in Germany circa the 1930s.

Measuring 5 inches long, the tiny, smoking gnome is flanked by two hollow "tree stumps." I'm not quite sure what purpose these served: perhaps they originally held salt and pepper shakers (I'm guessing mushroom shaped ones) or they're meant as planters for small flowers?

Mushroom Village

I have a thing for mushroom houses. It kind of goes hand in hand with my thing for gnomes.

These three pieces were made in different countries at different times, but together, they make a perfectly lovely mushroom village.

 

 

The littlest house, on the left, is only 3 3/4 inches tall. Made in the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s, it's actually a traditional German wooden novelty known as a "smoker". The mushroom lifts off the base, upon which a small cone of incense is set. When lit, the mushroom house is replaced, and the smoke drifts out through the tiny black chimney on the roof. The effect is totally charming, and makes everyone who sees it wish they could hang out in the cozy little mushroom.

The windmill in the middle was made in Japan circa the 1960s, and is actually a bank. There's a slot on the top for coins, and a trap door on the bottom to get them out again.

The last house is from Poland, and dates to the 1980s. It's a nesting item: the top of the mushroom lifts off, and inside are a set of tiny gnome ninepins and a ball, all made from wood.

 

One unlucky little gnome has to be stored upside down, or they won't all fit.

The little gnome ninepins are so super-cute, I can't bear to roll the ball at them.

Antique German Garden Gnomes

I love gnomes, and they comprise a major category of the "other stuff" I collect. The oldest gnomes in my collection are these miniature terracotta versions, made in Germany in the 1920s-30s.

They're an expressive bunch of little guys, measuring 6 inches tall.

 One of my favorites in this set is the smoking gnome. He reminds me of that photo of J.R.R. Tolkien that's on most of his books. He's holding his pipe in just the same way, and looks like he's about to say something both jovial and profound.

And then there's this gnome, lying about in a leisurely fashion, with rather a "come-hither" look on his face. His friend in the background is even more obviously "on the make": check out the open shirt and wanton expression. (He's also the only gnome I've ever seen with muttonchop sideburns instead of the traditional long gnome beard.)

 

Hard-working garden gnomes, these are not.

Antique Photo of Child With Garden Gnome

I've been wanting to do a little theme on garden gnomes for awhile (I adore gnomes), and I thought I'd start with this: a 1920s German photograph of a little boy with his gnome.

Kind of a creepy-looking gnome, no?

Garden gnomes got their start way back in the mid-1800s in Germany. The earliest were made of terracotta and were finely sculpted. Travelers to Germany took the gnomes back to France and England, where they became very popular with hobby gardeners. In America, these ornamental figures are often referred to as lawn, not garden, gnomes, perhaps reflecting the suburbanite obsession with their little plots of grass.

To learn more about gnomes, check out Garden Gnomes: a History, by the oddly yet aptly named garden historian Twigs Way.

Vintage Christmas Pine Cone Pixie

My friend Ron gave me this wonderful little pine cone pixie for Christmas last year.
Made in Japan in the 1950s, he's 3 inches of vintage holiday awesomeness!

1892 Palmer Cox Brownie Doll

Ooooh: how nifty is this: a Palmer Cox Brownie doll from 1892!
Palmer Cox was an illustrator who achieved fame with his cartoon creations, the Brownies, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Brownies appeared first in comics and books, then quickly spawned a range of merchandise that was extensive even by today's jaded standards. Brownies appeared on everything imaginable: handkerchiefs, china, toys, cookies, sheet music, household utensils, even a humidor! Their greatest marketing triumph occurred when an early Kodak camera, the legendary Brownie, was named after them. This 7-inch Brownie doll is from a line of printed cotton toys that purchasers cut out, stuffed, and sewed together themselves at home.

Here's a link to a great article about the Palmer Cox Brownies:
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=265&ai=46528&arch=y&ssd=7/24/2004%2012:01:00%20PM

Gardening Gnome

It's spring, which means it's time for the gardening gnome to get busy. This wooden cutout gnome was used in holiday window displays at the downtown Detroit Hudson's store in the 1930s. He's about a yard tall, and likes to hang out next to the mushroom dollhouse.