Teddy Bear Mystery Solved

A while back, I posted an entry about an antique teddy bear that I had tentatively identified as American, from the early 1920s. Well, was I ever wrong! But I wouldn't have known without a recent teddy bear purchase and a tip from its helpful eBay seller.

Here are the two bears in question, side by side. The gold bear is the first one, which we guessed was American based on the inset cloth nose and happy expression. But it remained a puzzling bruin, with a very odd body structure, and I remained rather uncertain about it. A couple of weeks ago, I found the second bear, the white one on the right, and after studying it, realized they're both by the same maker. The wear present on the first bear makes them not as obviously identical as one might hope, but the type of eyes, size and placement of ears (which contain tiny squeakers!), inset cloth nose, crooked grins, tubby body shape, and the unusual limbs all match.

What really clinched the ID was the claw stitching, some of the most unusual I've ever seen. The feet feature odd, linked up stitches, while the paws have very long, thick claws.

The seller of the white bear suggested the British maker, Peacock, as the source, with a date of 1914, and using that information I finally found a reference to this bear in a guide book. Turns out it's a pretty rare bear, so I feel doubly lucky to now have two!

Victorian Alphabet Tiles

Found at an antique store last weekend was this great set of Victorian alphabet tiles, in their original box with sliding cover. The wooden box is 9 inches long, and each lithographed tile is 2 1/4 inches wide by 1/8 of an inch thick.

 A lovely old typeface on these...

Here are a few close-ups of some of the tiles:

"G" is for "girl", with a dolly, of course!

"Z" was a surprise: I expected it to be the typical zebra, but no:

it's actually, and unusually, an adjective!

"U" and "V" are a combined tile, with very sober subject matter 

(a funeral carriage).

My favorite tile was this one, "H" is for "horse". Look closely: "horse" is misspelled, which is rather ironic, considering these tiles were intended to teach children to read...

Little Women

Yesterday I found this set of five little late 1800s Frozen Charlotte dolls at an antique store. They're wearing very old dresses, handmade by a young owner long ago.

They're each just 2 3/4 inches tall, which makes them the perfect size for my latest dollhouse. Here they are, loitering on the front porch:

For a sense of scale, here they are nestled in a child's antique teacup:

Dunham's Cocoanut Dollhouse Plagiarism...

I don't know whether to be flattered, creeped out, or incensed by this (although I'm leaning towards the latter) but there is currently an eBay listing for an 1890s Dunham's Cocoanut Dollhouse that has lifted the description I wrote last month for my Dunham's blog post almost word for word. You'd think for the price the seller is asking ($875) he could afford a decent copy writer...

Church Rummage Sale Finds: Vintage Barbie and Board Game

A local church had its annual summer festival this past weekend, and it included a rummage/jumble/white elephant sale. A lot of collectors have given up on these sorts of sales, in the belief that things like eBay and the Antiques Road Show have resulted in a much more antiques-savvy public, who know better than to donate valuable items to be sold for pennies. But I optimistically persevere, and am occasionally rewarded with a treasure. Or, in this case, two treasures. Amongst the miles of tables full of household detritus, I finally spotted:

1) Why: the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Game from 1958:  complete and in fantastic condition. Price: .75 cents!!! This is a much-sought vintage game that typically sells in the $45-$65 range, with appeal for TV, movie, horror, toy, and board game collectors.

2) a 1963 Barbie Fashion Queen doll, with two of her three original wigs, also in great condition. Price: $5.00!!! This Fashion Queen would normally retail for about $50-70.

I gleefully scooped them both up and raced for the checkout, where a smiling little old church lady took my $5.75. For a moment, I felt a pang of guilt and thought, "should I tell her what these are and how they should be priced?" But I didn't. I am SO going to hell....

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Game, Why, is basically a paranormal version of Clue, the classic detective game. The premise is that Alfred's mansion, depicted on the wonderfully illustrated game board, is haunted by several ghosts, and he's hired four famous detectives, one of whom is played by you, to determine how and why the ghosts were murdered. 

The detectives are clever spoofs of famous mystery icons like Sherlock Holmes and Dick Tracy:

The Fashion Queen Barbie was an unusual entry in the legendary doll line. Instead of rooted hair, she featured a molded 'do, and came with three wigs in differing colors and styles so her young owner could change her looks. Unfortunately, the materials in the wigs and head reacted badly to each other over time, resulting in chemical melt marks to the doll's cranium if the wigs were left in place for an extended period. This makes finding a Fashion Queen in good condition a bit trickier than one might expect. My rummage sale find is amazingly and delightfully melt mark free.

Here she is as found, with her two wigs:

Here she is with her brunette flip:

And with her red bubble cut:

 Barbie is dressed for church...