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 Such photos add character and life to a toy collection; they remind us that the toys were originally made for and owned by real children, who played with them, loved them, and eventually grew up, leaving their toys behind for us to find and treasure.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.

Antique Teddy Bear & Photographs

The first antique toys I began collecting years ago were teddy bears, and although my toy collection has become much more varied since then, I am still always in perpetual bear hunt mode. It's especially exciting to find an antique bear that comes with some provenance, like the photographs in this lot.

The bear is an unusual 10 inch American made ted, circa 1906-1908, with a handmade sweater coat. It came for Christmas along with a beautiful photograph of the little girls who originally owned it, and a picture of the house they all lived in, somewhere in Michigan long ago.

These three little sisters were the bear's first owners. Although the bear isn't in this cabinet photo, a doll and picture book are prominently featured.

 

And here's the house where they all lived. Can't you just picture them playing together on the front porch?

 

 

 

 



It's Only a Paper Moon Postcard

Old postcards and photographs comprise some of the Other Stuff I collect besides toys. This is a real photo postcard from 1912, sent by a woman named Fannie to her younger sister on September 5. It's one of a type known as "Paper Moon Photo Postcards." These were real photos taken of people using a paper moon backdrop, usually done at fairs or carnivals and sold as souvenirs.

Some fabulous examples of paper moon postcards as well as the lyrics and music to the contemporary song, "It's Only a Paper Moon," can be found at the Daily Postcard site, here.

For some reason, the sender felt it was important to write this woman's weight across the top of the card: 158 1/2 pounds. At least, I'm assuming that's her weight, and not that of her little dog.

Yard Sale Find: Vintage Hasbro Inchworm

My favorite yard sale find of this summer was a vintage 1970s Hasbro Inchworm ride-on toy. I had one of these as a child, and it was one of my most loved toys. As the rider propels it along, the Inchworm bounces up and down on its accordion-style body...eventually producing the sort of damage seen in this example.

(Click here to watch the original Inchworm TV commercial: it's adorable, and you'll get to see the Inchworm in action.)

Their fragility makes vintage Inchworms scarce, and they are much sought after. I've seen them reach prices of $300+ on eBay during particularly desperate bidding wars. Glad I held out: this one was just $5 at a Yard Sale Trail flea market!

 How cute is he? Super-cute.

Speaking of cute things: here's a picture of me with my brand-new Inchworm, on a Christmas morning sometime in the 1970s. (I'm also holding a just-opened Viewmaster, effectively multi-tasking as I motor around the living room.)

Coming up tomorrow: my final, and oldest, yard sale toy find of the summer... 

Antique Teddy Bear and Photo

The value of an antique teddy bear, both financial and sentimental, increases substantially when it comes with a photo of the original owner. If the photo is of the original owner and the bear, the value is even greater.
Such duos are difficult to find, as bears and photos tend to go their separate ways over time. I was very fortunate to find a pair that remained together for almost 90 years.

The hand-colored photo of the little girl, circa the 1920s, is 15 1/2 inches tall, and still in its original frame. 

 

Her 13 inch teddy bear companion wears a rather serious expression. As I look at him, I wonder what experiences he shared with his owner over their long life together.

The two came to me from a dealer who got them at the original family's estate sale. Astoundingly, she didn't get the little girl's name: that would have been a wonderful thing to know, and may have enabled genealogical research. Whoever she was, I hope she would be happy to know that her treasured teddy is now safely settled into my sanctuary for orphaned bears.

Antique Photo: Boy with Bear on Wheels

An anxious looking little boy and his bear-on-wheels, early 1900s. 

Antique Photo Post Card: Boy with Dog Cart

I'm always on the lookout for old photos of children with toys, to complement my toy collections. My most recent find was this, a real photo postcard from 1910, of a little boy posed in a dog cart.

The poor doggy looks very unhappy, but the boy is adorable, as is the message from him on the back of the postcard. Sent to a Mr. John Rurth of Jefferson, Wisconsin on April 28 1910, it reads:  

"What do you think of me now. I grow bigger every day. I have a pony now clear white with brown eyes. I take dinner to Papa with him when Papa is very busy and won't come home for dinner. Harold (last name illegible)."

The Addams Family Goes On A Sleigh Ride

We experienced our biggest snowfall of the season yesterday evening, just in time for rush hour. As I sat completely stopped in traffic on the expressway, stuck in the snow for an hour and 15 minutes, I looked through a box of old photographs and postcards I'd found at the local antique mall on my lunch hour earlier in the day. I thought, well, this is rather unpleasant, but it could be worse: at least I'm not stuck in a sleigh behind a taxidermied deer with these people:

Early 1900s studio portrait with prop sleigh and taxidermy deer.

(Click to enlarge)

I really try not to be judgmental, but this antique photograph broke my resolve. These people remind me of the Addams Family. Especially the giant guy on the far right with the Frankenstein shoulderpads and the stunned expression. He could easily be Lurch's cousin, while the equally tall man second from left has the largest chin I've ever seen outside of a Dick Tracy comic. And the two men in the back just have something...unsettling...about their expressions. The one on the left in particular looks like he has some dark secret, doesn't he? The two ladies squashed in the middle of the sleigh remind me of the siamese twin sisters who once dated Gomez, before he married Morticia. 

(Actually, the more I look at this odd photo, the more I wonder if the ladies are, in fact, siamese twins; the big guy on the right and the man with the huge chin are, in fact, giants; and these might be circus performers???)

Antique Photo: Tea Party with Mother (and Dollies)

I'm constantly on the lookout for old photos of children with toys, and it's always exciting to discover another one. I found this one last week in a box of rather forlorn scrapbook pages at an antique mall. Two sisters have been invited into mother's parlor for a little tea party, and they've brought their dollies:

The photo looks to be from the late 19teens to the early '20s, and has lots of interesting details: the mother's vintage dress and shoes, the girls' giant hair bows, the Arts & Crafts/Mission style furniture, the silver tea set, and, in the lower right corner, a miniature baby carriage full of dolls. Plus, if you look closely under the table, you'll see a crate that was set on end for the littlest girl's feet!

Vintage Carousel Photo

I found this wonderful vintage photograph at an antique show last weekend. Stamped "July 30 1940" on the back, it shows several women in their "Sunday best" gleefully riding an American traveling carousel at a fair.

What a joyful moment this photographer captured, during what were difficult and fearful times for so many.

1950s Halloween Photograph

Here's hoping you have a Halloween as happily exhausting 

as this little boy's!

Original b&w photo, 1958: found at an antique yard sale.

A Haunted Portrait

Well, I don't know if it's really haunted, but it seems a distinct possibility...

My favorite antique dealer decided this year that she was ready to part with this portrait of her family ancestor. (I know what you're thinking: how could she bear to give up such an heirloom?! I wondered too.)

The tinted photograph is in its original, 21 inch tall domed-glass frame, and dates from the early 1900s. The green miasma in the background really heightens the spooky mood, I think. I'm not sure what effect the photo tinters were going for there, but I can't imagine they intended the "ghoulish vapour" look they unwittingly achieved.

Isn't he a delightfully creepy looking kid?

Several observers have said he looks rather like a young Uncle Fester, of Addams Family fame. I haven't mentioned this to the antique dealer, as I believe the little boy was actually a relative of her husband's, and I'm not sure how flattered she'd be by that comparison....

Souvenir Spirit Photograph from the Johnstown Flood

I discovered this photograph in an old album we rescued from an abandoned house a few years ago. (That's a long story in itself, for another day...) I was thrilled to realize I had found my first "spirit photo." These images of "ghosts" created through various tricky means were all the rage during the heyday of Spiritualism in the Victorian period, and again in the 1920s.

In the photo, the young woman with the upraised arm and the old man on the left are real, while the two large, transparent figures are the "ghosts." One of the most remarkable things about this photo is that it accidentally reveals the process of making the "spirit" effect. The old man on the left simply stepped to the side before the lengthy exposure process was complete, which left his ghostly imprint in the center. The "real" old man shouldn't be in the finished photograph at all, but the photographer didn't crop the picture properly. This was a pretty sloppy spirit photo, clearly churned out at a fast clip for the tourist trade.

Original, antique spirit photos are highly collectible, and several books have been written about them.  This one is extra-special, in that it is also a souvenir photo. The back of the picture bears a stamp which reads:

"Steven Studio 318 Broad St. Johnstown PA." Pencilled on the back is the caption, "Anna and Spirit pechirt (picture?) April 1924".

This photo proves there is no event too terrible for a shameless huckster to profit from. Johnstown, Pennsylvania is famous as the site of a horrific flood that killed 2, 209 of its citizens on May 31, 1889. A dam broke during a tremendous storm, and the resulting torrent all but swept Johnstown away. The disaster was so heart-wrenching, it was commemorated country-wide in lithographs, poetry, sheet music, books, and stereograph cards all the way into the 1920s, when Hollywood released a major motion picture based on the event.

You can learn more about the Johnstown flood at the Johnstown Flood Museum, and see more spirit photographs at the American Museum of Photography.

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.

Antique Photo of Child with Stearns Automobile and Chauffeur

Over the summer, I found this antique photo of a child playing in a magnificent automobile while a tolerant chauffeur looks on. Usually I only collect old photos of children with toys, a natural extension of my antique toy collecting. But this picture was just too captivating to pass by. And after all, the child is playing in the car, so perhaps we can consider it a toy, albeit a very expensive one.

 It took me awhile to get the car identified, but I'm told by my local "car guy" that it's a Stearns, made by the luxury automobile manufacturer F.B. Stearns of Cleveland, Ohio. Stearns cars were originally in production from 1898-1925, when the company was sold to J.N. Willys of Willys Overland fame. Willys continued making Stearns models until 1929, when they liquidated the company. I'm not sure of this car's date: I've seen pictures online of similar Stearns ranging from 1908-1920s. (Any Stearns experts out there who can identify it, feel free to write me!) In 1906, a typical Stearns auto sold for an astronomical $5,200, which explains the presence of the chauffeur: if you could afford this car back then, you probably had an estate with a substantial domestic staff.

The picture has a label on the back saying it was framed at Crowley, Milner & Company, a Detroit department store that was founded in 1909, so it's a pretty safe bet that this photograph was taken in a posh area of Detroit like Indian Village or its luxurious neighbor, Grosse Pointe.

That's one happy, happy kid. I would be, too, if I had a chauffeur to drive me everywhere!

A Photogenic Family...Not.

Here's the last picture I saved from a stash of antique cabinet photos I came across this week. I don't know if there was something in the local water, the photographer was intoxicated/inept, inbreeding was rampant in the area, or there was a combination of all the above, but for some reason this cache of photos held an enormous number of odd-looking individuals (see the "Crazy-Eyed Baby" and "Funny-Looking Guy" previously posted below).

This example just begs for a retake: Little Brother, on the far left, has his eyes crossed; Big Brother, standing at the back, has a tragic, haunted expression; Big Sister, on the right, looks like she's about to cry; and the bear rug appears to be eating the Baby.

My apologies in advance if someone recognizes these 

as their ancestors.

Funny-Looking Guy Photo From the 1800s

Found recently in the same stash of antique cabinet photos as the Crazy Eyed Baby, this gentleman gave me pause. He's got a New Wave hairdo going on a century early, but even without that, there's just something odd-looking about him, no? He's definitely a keeper.

Antique Photo of Crazy-Eyed Baby

Some of the "Other Stuff" that I collect are antique photos of children with toys, a natural extension of my antique toy collecting, and an accessory line common to many toy collectors.

Today I found an old picture of a baby, and, even though it's toyless, I had to have it. It's the coolest Victorian baby photo I've ever come across. The baby, dressed in an immaculate white dress, bonnet, and cape, resting on a bearskin rug, has a stunned expression that I interpret as "Oh my goodness: I just crapped my pants!" (At least, that's what I remember this look signifying, back in my baby-sitting days...)

Antique Photo: Boy on a Riding Bear

As an accessory to antique toy collecting, I'm always on the lookout for interesting old photos of children with toys. I found this fabulous real photo postcard at an antique show last weekend. Dating from the early 1900s, it features a little boy in a sailor suit on a Steiff riding bear. The back of the photo has a penned note with the child's name (Frank) and the comment, "Pretty curls". And indeed they are.

Old Photographs: Children With Toys

I'm always on the lookout for old photos of children with toys. They make nice accessory pieces to a toy collection, plus they're just interesting items in their own right. I usually set up a display of several at Christmas time. Here are a few of my favorites. (Click on the pictures to see them in more detail.)


This first picture is of my friend Ron, who can be seen here in about 1939 - 1940 driving his pedal car down a street in his Detroit neighborhood.


I don't know who this little girl is, but I love her bobbed haircut, funky boots, and stuffed doggie. Circa the 1920s.


This last picture is considerably older, probably around 1900. Two sisters in fancy dresses posed for a studio portrait, with another stuffed dog.