Erna Meyer School ca 1950s

My favourite dolls' house dolls are by Erna Meyer. As well as individual dolls, and dolls packaged in couples or families, I have some boxed school sets. I found a homemade roombox on German ebay that makes a perfect school.

The outside is covered with brick paper:


and inside, the lower half of the walls of each room is brown wood, and the upper half is painted in the very institutional colours of cream and green.

In one room is the infants' class, taught by Mrs Thomas. They are having Morning News, followed by Storytime on the mat (today's book is Hansel and Gretel). Their maths workbooks are laid out on their desks.


Miss Johnson teaches the primary class. They will have an English lesson first, followed by maths, history and French. They also learn geography, music, art and P.E.
(The grubby little girl on the right of this photo came with the roombox.)


A portrait of the Queen hangs on the front wall; in the 1950s and '60s most Australian schools displayed her portrait.
There are also a number of posters relating to their study of Australian explorers, Federation, and Australian exports, as well as music and gymnastics.
It's a bit awkward for the pupils to sit at their desks wearing their satchels, so I must find some pegs for them.

This roombox was most likely made in the early 1950s. It came with chunky homemade kitchen and bedroom furniture, and in the kitchen dresser, along with a duster and string shopping bag, there's a little pile of German pfennig dated 1949 and 1950!

The teachers' desks and chairs, the students' desks, and the blackboards, are all part of the Erna Meyer school sets. The lids of the boxes show what the sets look like:


And inside one box was a leaflet from the shop where it was bought, "Gina & Selma" of Lexington Avenue, New York:


Another page shows groups of Erna Meyer dolls: grandparents, parents, children and nurse:

There's no date on the leaflet, but the school dolls I have have kneecaps, which dates them to between 1950 and 1962, according to a US researcher who is publishing a book on dolls' house dolls.