Vintage Kitchen Playset

I have several of these vintage tin toy kitchen playsets: they line the counters and appliance tops in my real kitchen, which I never use. I think I've used my Easy Bake Oven more than I have my real oven, now that I think about it...It's futile to expect real food, or even coffee, at my house, but if you want to play kitchen, I can totally hook you up.

Anyway, here's my latest set, scored at an antique show last weekend. All made of lithographed tin in the late 1940s - early 1950s, the stove is by Marx while the fridge and sink are by Wolverine. For scale, the stove measures 12 1/2 inches high.

The fridge features great lithography on the inside door, revealing well-stocked shelves, and houses some unique pressed tin food items:

The stove has an opening oven door with a bright red rack inside:

And the sink actually works: a reservoir on the back can be filled with water, which then pours out through the tap!

A very retro kitchen set, indeed. Makes me want to go to Grandma's for some pie.

Antique Toy Stoves

I don't like to cook in real life (in fact, I don't cook at all), but for some reason I find toy stoves very appealing. They're charming toys, they reveal a lot of social history, and they're perfect teddy bear and doll accessories. Here are a few from my collection, dating from the mid-1800s
to the early 1900s.


The silver and green stove at the top is American made, and says "Novelty" on the door. It measures 8 1/2 inches wide by 6 inches tall. It's made of cast iron and some kind of metal that has oxidized to a greenish hue, and there appears to be a nickel finish on the doors. This was a wood-burning stove, and it really worked. A fire inside the stove heated the burners on top, and probably the entire stove as well!

The small red and black stove is made of tin, and I believe it's German. It measures 8 1/2 inches tall. This was a pretend-cooking-only stove. (My three china dollies and their cook are using it in another post.)

The last stove, also German, is made of sheet metal and is very large, measuring 12 inches wide by 7 inches tall, not counting the stovepipe. This was another working stove, but it heated via alcohol burners (yikes!) which slide out of the stove body . Children actually cooked in the little pans, which are original to this stove.

Book Review

Collector's Guide to Housekeeping Toys, 1870-1970, by Margaret Wright. Published by Collector Books, January 2007. ISBN 978-1574325409. $16.95. 285 pages.

While not a comprehensive reference source, this charming paperback provides a fun introduction to its topic, presented in full-color with great, crisp photography. Toys covered include American-made stoves, miniature cupboards, grocery stores, cookware, tea sets, wash day and housecleaning items, and much more. The author admirably conveys her delight in these objects as both simple toys and important sociological artifacts, writing in the introduction: "toys...are historical documents...American history can be taught with 20 items on a table, beginning with an 1880 cast-iron stove and ending with a plastic tea set, components of the Industrial Revolution and modern technology." Her love for these toys is infectious: you'll find yourself wanting to "play house" after you finish reading this wonderful little book!

1800s Tin Kitchen

This tin kitchen playset dates from the mid to late 1800s. It was made in America, and represents a much simpler version of the fabulous German Nuremberg kitchens of the time. The kitchen measures about 12 inches wide by 8 inches tall, and most of the accessories are original to the set. One of its most interesting features is the water pump on the right side. It could actually be filled with water and then pumped into the sink fixed to the wall. These kitchens were not meant to be true to scale; rather, the idea was for little girls to learn cooking by playing with them, and for that they needed larger utensils. These tin kitchens were used for "cold cooking" (pretend), but there were also woodburning and alcohol stoves made for "hot cooking" (real). I'll list some of these 19th century versions of the Easy Bake Oven soon!