Sunday, October 17, 2010

In Keystoneville

In Keystoneville, in Keystone Square, there are four houses.


The Jacksons step out of the house at the same time as Mr Weisman.


"Good morning," they say. "How are you today?"

On the other side of the square, Miss Marks and Mr Rimmer have also appeared.



"Good morning," says Miss Marks. "You're as regular as clockwork, Mr Rimmer!"

"Good morning, Miss Marks. You're an early bird today!"

Off they all go, to the centre of Keystoneville.


Mr Rimmer works at the Keystone Garage.


Mr Weisman needs to buy a new chamois leather for his car.



Mr Jackson is the pharmacist, and Mrs Jackson works at the bakery.


I wonder what Miss Marks is buying at the hardware store?


All is quiet at the fire station, and the cinema doesn't open until the evening.



Oh dear, it looks like someone else is at work too!


Better call the Keystone cops!

These model buildings are probably made by Keystone - Keystone made toy garages and dolls houses similar to these. The two-storey houses here are about 2" high, and the garage is 1 1/4" high. They are made of solid blocks of wood, with the cardboard and paper litho wrapped around them. The little figures are by Preiser in 1:160 scale (N scale, in model railway terms).

UPDATE: Jennifer McKendry shows the box which these came in, labelled Keystone Wood Block Village. So yes, definitely Keystone! (Scroll down her 1940s page past the real houses and past Rich to get to Keystone.) And Callsmall has a complete boxed set, with labelled slots for each building, plus trees, walls and squares of grass to sit the houses on!

11 comments:

  1. Lovely, Rebecca! And very funny too! The Keystone buildings are great, as are the Preiser figures. Is there anything inside? Did they come this way, or were they assembled? Thanks for sharing!

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  2. fantastic buildings, love them! Lizzie

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  3. Rebecca these are wonderful! I can't believe they are so small and yet so detailed. Lovely post. Pan x

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  4. What a cute little town! Love the colors. CM

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  5. Thank you all for your comments! Glad you like them as much as I do :-)

    Callsmall, I'll take a photo of the underneath - they are solid blocks of wood, with the litho designs just wrapped round. So no, there's nothing inside (except in my imagination!)
    I bought them like this, and I think they were probably made like this - you can see the tiny nails holding the roof down, and in the shrub at the back of each house.

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  6. What a wonderful and cute town, and with lovely and sweet people too, except perhaps the burglars. Are you sure they weren't just cleaning the windows? Love that the tiny houses have such great detail!

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  7. I enjoyed this post much. What a lovely little village. Oh so teeny tiny and great fun!

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  8. Hi Pubdoll, well, I thought if those people were window-cleaners, they'd have ladders and buckets and so on. And I don't think Miss Marks knows anything about them. So unless they are doing random acts of kindness by cleaning the ground floor windows with a cloth that doesn't need water, it seemed most likely that they're burglars.
    Then again, I can imagine other scenarios - maybe they think Miss Marks has kidnapped their cat, and they are looking to see if it's inside, or they think she's a spy, and they're looking for evidence, or ...

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  9. Hi Amy, nice to see you back in blogland! Congratulations on getting all your sorting and selling and setting up finished with! And it's nice to see your peeps in Lundby Lane again too - I wonder if those dolls houses have dolls in them?

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  10. Whoops! Sorry I missed this one back in October...as you know, I have a weakness for anything Keystone! I too have a set like Callsmall with the trees, brick walls, and plots of grass with stone walkways but am missing the little wooden cars that should be with the set. A complete set recently sold on US eBay for big $$...I guess my set will stay "incomplete"!
    You make up great stories...working on a book yet?? :)

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