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!

Big Nosed Antique American Bear

My most recent antique teddy acquisition is this 14 inch 1908 American bear, maker unknown. He's got a fabulous face, with low set ears and a huge nose that give him a cute, comical appearance (even with a little bit of his nose missing).

 He came to me from one of my favorite dealers in England, dressed as shown. This is, of course, a generalization, but I've found that British teddy bear collectors seem to favor dressing and accessorizing their bears, while their American counterparts tend to prefer their teddies to be...well...bare. (Pun intended.) Almost every antique bear I've acquired from England has come dressed, often in clothes hand knit just for them. The difficult thing for me is deciding whether to leave them that way. I'm stumped with this one, because he looks rather charming in his little outfit, and it's clear that he's worn it for a long time. But his blond mohair is in great shape, and it seems a shame to hide it, and his spectacular, early American style conformation, underneath all those clothes...

1930s Converse Dollhouse

A recent find was this 1930s Converse dollhouse, made of lithographed wood (the design is printed directly onto the wood, not onto applied paper). It's missing its two front porch pillars, but it's still a lovely little cottage, I thought. It measures 12 inches square by 10 1/2 inches tall, and opens from the right side.

 Access to the single room inside is via the end wall which opens with a knob instead of the more frequently seen latch.

I've furnished it as a cottage for a little 3 inch dime store teddy bear of similar vintage, with pieces made by the Menasha Woodenware Corporation (fireplace excepted). Menasha was founded in 1849 in Wisconsin, and was originally a maker of wooden barrels, tubs, and related items. In the 1930s, they expanded their line to include wooden dollhouse furniture in the 1" to 1 foot scale. This toy furniture, trademarked "Tyke Toys," is hard to find now as it wasn't made for very long, but it kept the company in business through the Great Depression. Menasha pieces are often misidentified as Strombecker, as the two firm's products are rather similar.

A view of the inside from above, with the roof removed.

Two of my favorite Menasha pieces are the kitchen cupboard and the stove.

Looks like the little bear is getting ready to make a berry pie...

Odd Antique Teddy Bear

Last year I found this antique teddy like no bear I've ever seen. She's American and probably dates to the early 1920s, but other than that I'm stumped by her. She has the most unusual body construction:  her proportions are odd, with long, thick, perfectly straight arms and short, equally thick legs with very curved tops. Her torso is incredibly stout, and reminds me of a gorilla, or a wrestler. But her face is charming, with an inset cloth nose and a quirky smile, and I couldn't resist her.

Teddy Bear in a Tin

Antique toy collecting is, in many ways, a treasure hunt, and treasures can sometimes be hiding in the most unlikely of places...like this rusty five inch wide tin box. 

 Nasty looking, isn't it? I'm amazed it wasn't just 

thrown out long ago...

But I'm extremely grateful it wasn't, because inside, 

where she clearly has lived for a very long time, 

was this four inch tall c.1910 Steiff bear and her silver tea set, 

all nestled in an antique embroidered silk cloth:

 Her tea set is itty bitty: the tray is two and a half inches long, 

and the teapot is just an inch tall.

For a sense of the bear's smallness, here she is nestled in my hand:

I thought she might appreciate being out of her box after such a long time tucked away, so here she is all moved into my antique tin kitchen, where she can make as much tea as she likes: