Before the Fair

Well, you've seen what I found at the fair. The day before the fair, my sister and I drove through the Blue Mountains to Sydney. We were running late leaving, and we were meeting our aunt for afternoon tea (already rescheduled from lunch). So when we stopped, my sister said "Just 10 minutes!"
I'd say we both had several lots of 10 minutes, in a bookshop, an antiques centre and a cafe! I had a quick scan of the downstairs displays in the antiques centre, and then went to get a hot drink before pushing on. I'd finished my drink by the time my sister came for hers, so I left her browsing her bookshop finds and scooted in again and whizzed through the upstairs section of the antiques centre - until I came to a cabinet which had all this in it:

A china or porcelain dinner set with a sweet design which looks rather like clover (the sauceboat is marked Germany) - and a set of four little blue serviettes (or napkins, depending where you're from), in rings!!!


(Actually, not the furniture (tables, chair, sideboard) - they're recent ebay purchases which I'm just using to display the miniature sets.)

A turned wooden dinner set, including a tureen and comport, painted with a design of cherries, and a vase of flowers:


A green painted wooden tea set, missing the saucers:


A set of four blue painted wooden cups and saucers (set out here with the same set of serviettes):


A green and gold turned wooden set of decanter & goblets on a tray:


A clock, some larger cutlery (marked Germany) and a larger serviette & ring:


A bowl of fruit and what I was most excited about, tiny turned wooden salt and pepper shakers!!! The guy in the shop (not the seller whose display cabinet these were from, but the guy on the till) said he'd seen others before. But I hadn't - not this small, dolls house sized. All the other items, yes, some more often than others - but I am delighted to have salt and pepper shakers, and I'm not sure how I'll decide which house to put them in! Perhaps I should put them in Tim's shop, and see who buys them.


In the same display cabinet was this little ring of charms - I almost didn't get it, but the little people in their big hats are so sweet! They're just over 1/2" long.

Introducing Miss Birdie Fethalite

Miss Birdie Fethalite is an Australian doll, who was born in the 1940s in Sydney. She has an extensive wardrobe, consisting of two summer frocks:



two winter coats:



a siren suit:



and a party dress:


From the front, Birdie looks nicely rounded. Her back view, however, shows that she is flat, and even slightly hollowed out:


From the back, you can see how her clothes clip on around her waist. Sadly, she has had an accident some time in which she lost most of her right arm.

Birdie is not as fortunate in regards to housing as she is with her wardrobe. I'm sure she would love to live in the Marquis kitchen and other rooms in that set. As I didn't win it, however, I have posed her here in front of Marquis kitchen furnishings set up in front of the photo of the inside of the box on my computer screen. It looks just the right size for her, and the walls even match one of her dresses - but as she can't live in front of the computer all the time, I will have to find another home for her!

Perhaps she could live with the Cacos, and they could all share the curling tongs:


This little doll is marked with the Fethalite brand name and symbol:


The number 204/1 appears to be the product number. All the pieces of clothing are also marked: the frocks are 204/2, the long dress is 204/3, the coats are 204/5, and the siren suit is 204/6. She must have had another outfit too, as 204/4 is missing from this set.

Fethalite plastic products were made by Pierwood Plastics (Piercy & Ashwood) in Chatswood, Sydney. qilich has a Fethalite catalogue from 1949, which shows miniature kitchen and bathroom sets, and a couple of dolls, but not this one. Her hairstyle and the siren suit definitely date her to the 1940s, so she was probably made before 1949. I wonder if she was always alone, or whether a family of dolls was produced?

Update: Ysé6 and Roberta have told me on flickr that the same doll was also made by the Selcol company in England. A Selcol doll is listed on ebay at the moment - here she is with her outfits and her right arm:



The clothes are almost the same as Miss Fethalite's, although the decoration on the long dress is different. The piece missing from my set is probably the little gym tunic, here in yellow next to the yellow frock.

Thanks, Ysé6 and Roberta - though I'm sorry to realise that all Australian-made plastic dolls house miniatures were made using moulds from US or British companies! Seems we did OK on production (at least while tariffs were in place), but didn't produce original designs.

Update 2: Sally also has a Selcol doll set: see her blog stitchywoowoo. It's clear from Sally's pictures that the frock is a pinafore dress - Miss Birdie's frock doesn't have straps, so that's another difference between the English and Australian clothes.

And Marcie Tubbs has very kindly emailed to say that in her book Dollhouse and Miniature Dolls 1840-1990 (which I have!), she pictures both a 'Peggy' doll made in the US by Ideal in the mid 1950s, and a Lido doll dress set, also made in the US. She also received a photo from a reader of a boxed set of 'Peggy's Magic Snap-On Wardrobe', made by Bell Industries (in the UK, I assume).
The dolls and clothing sets made by Selcol, Fethalite, Ideal, Lido and Bell, in the UK, US and Australia, are almost identical. As Marcie says, this doll really travelled! I wonder where she started?
The mid 1950s Ideal catalogue which Marcie has describes her wardrobe as consisting of 2 bathing suits, pajamas, 2 over-coats, hat, 2 school dresses and party dress. The Lido set identifies the bathing suit as a play jumper.
Sally describes the 'school dress' as a pinafore dress (the Australian one isn't, as it doesn't have straps). I was seeing the clothes through the lens of 1940s British novels, so the bathing suit / play jumper looks like a gym slip to me, and the pajamas look like a siren suit. If Peggy was originally made in the UK, the siren suit would make sense (and as I suggested, it goes with her 1940s hairstyle). If she was first made in the US, then they probably were pyjamas originally.

So, more questions: where was she first made? when? and how did she come to be made or sold by 5 companies in 3 continents? We may be able to answer some of them if we're lucky enough to find dated catalogues showing the Selcol and Bell dolls one day.

Thanks, Marcie and Sally, for sharing your dolls!

Rocket Science and the 1940s

This week, I contacted two people who bought 1950s Australian toy catalogues on ebay. Both sent very helpful replies. One collects Australian tintoys, and the other, qilich, collects Australian and New Zealand made space toys.

qilich shared some research on Australian toy manufacturers, and reminded me of an essential source for research: the digitised Australian newspapers (1803-1954, but not yet complete) available on the website of the National Library of Australia. I have previously searched this, for family history and for dolls houses, but had forgotten about it when writing my last two posts.

qilich had found advertisements for the Marquis kitchen set in newspapers dating from 1948 and 1949, so they're earlier than I'd thought. The 1949 ad, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday 30 November, is wonderful, as it shows the whole set illustrated:


As you can see, it cost 22/6, which sounds quite expensive to me - although the year before, David Jones, an upmarket department store, had advertised it for 27/6!

qilich also found a 1948 ad for the Tiny Town Kitchen Set I showed in my previous post. It was on sale for 1/9; the original price was 3/7. Being on sale in March 1948 suggests that it was not new - I'd think it would have been released in 1947 at the latest.

The same sale included Miniature Furniture, 6/- now 3/-, and Morley Toy Furniture (8/6, now 6/-), as well as Little Housewife Sets (5/2, now 3/-). It might be possible to find out more about the Morley Toy Furniture, but (saving an illustrated ad), I doubt we'll ever know exactly what the Miniature Furniture was!

So, having been reminded of this wonderful Australian research source, I did a search for Wee Folks, the company that made the Dining Room Table and Four Chairs in my previous post. Turns out they were based in Melbourne - the company advertised in the Melbourne newspaper The Argus. The first ad I found was in 1944, for Skittles, The Old Favourite Game, 8/6 each. Other ads were for factory space, plastic moulding, staff (secretarial and packing), and residential properties to buy and rent. The company was also the subject of legal action in 1949, so the records of that case might give more information about the people involved. I haven't yet found any more information about their toys, but qilich also sent me a 1947 article from Australian Plastics about plastic toys, which shows the Wee Folks table and chairs:

The Wee Folks dining room table and four chairs are in the centre of this display from Australian Plastics September 1947.

So, there are ads for the 3 Australian-made boxed sets I've posted about which date from 1947, 1948 and 1949. All of them were available in the late 1940s, earlier than I had estimated in my earlier posts. Thank you, qilich, for providing evidence to date them - and for reminding me of a great resource for research!

The Marquis of Cabinets

I have mentioned the Australian company Marquis before - I have a Marquis blue and white kitchen set in my Italian Villa style house:


Amazingly, a boxed set of this furniture has just sold on Australian ebay. I'm not the new owner, as I was outbid - I did win two other boxed sets of Australian-made dolls house furniture, which I'll show when they arrive. However, the seller very kindly said that I could save her photos of the set. Amazingly too, the seller said that these sets had come from the original owner, who played with them very carefully when she was young, and was now letting her grandchildren play with them!



According to the lid, the Marquis Little Homemaker Modern Plastic Kitchens in Miniature are Educational, Washable and Durable.

The side of the box shows the company name and address:

Commonwealth Moulding Pty. Ltd. Arncliffe Sydney Australia

I wish all boxes were as informative!

Inside, the table and chairs, sink, stove, fridge, and three cupboards - one with straight sides and two with open, rounded-end shelves - are all in their original slots in the cardboard:


And look at the sides of the box - there are pictures! The inside of the box and the inside of the lid are both printed with images of the walls of a modern kitchen, showing two windows, a door, a clock, 11 cupboards attached to the wall (plenty of storage in this kitchen!), and tiling below that.



So the room which is pictured on top of the lid can be made out of the box!

I know that Marquis also made bathroom furniture for dolls houses - I have some green pieces, and have also seen a pale blue set. Now I'm wondering if they also came in a box which could be used as a room - and what other sets Marquis made.

I have heard or read that the Marquis dolls house furniture was made using the same moulds as the American-made Plasco furniture. Does anyone know if Plasco also sold their furniture in boxes which could function as rooms in a dolls house?

UPDATE: Thank you, Louise! Louise of Grandmas Attic - Toys and Treasures has posted scans of boxed Plasco sets from Dian Zillner's book American Dollhouses and Furniture from the 20th Century. Plasco boxes did indeed form a corner of a room - Zillner's book pictures a living room, bathroom and bedroom. Also shown are boxes with a cellophane window in the lid, which don't seem to have had the images printed inside. Perhaps these replaced the ones with cardboard lids? perhaps when Plasco started making dolls houses as well? I wonder if Marquis followed Plasco in changing the packaging - I've never heard of a Marquis house, though.
Louise also has a wonderful pink and grey Plasco bathroom (in cellophane window box) for sale.

Homemade Australian Italian Villa ca 1950s

Here is another of my homemade Australian houses, the one I've most recently acquired. It is built in an earlier style than the Federation, Californian Bungalow and Arts & Crafts houses, but was probably actually made later than those houses.


The Italian Villa style flourished in the 1850s, particularly in Melbourne and Victoria generally, following the goldrushes. The style included features such as a stuccoed facade, arch-headed windows and stone paving at the front of the house, with clipped box hedges. I bought this from an ebay seller in Blackburn, an outer suburb of Melbourne. As a sheet of laminate is used to form the first floor, I think this dolls house was probably constructed in the 1940s or 50s, a century later than the real houses of this style which can still be seen in large numbers in Melbourne.

The house has been made with a lot of attention to detail. The stucco effect is created by sand stuck to the outside walls. The front door is painted to show moulded panels, and has a little door knob. A lamp used to hang in the porch, and there's a door mat for dolls to wipe their feet on:
Four flat, painted wooden topiary shrubs decorate the facade, and the ground storey windows at front and side are finished with window boxes filled with fabric flowers.

Inside, each room has skirting boards and simple cornices, and ceiling roses so typical of the era when Italian Villas were built. Only one lampshade is still hanging (in the living room), though another loose one came with the house. Here's the ceiling rose in the kitchen; this also shows the plastic laminate which the kitchen ceiling / bedroom and living room floor has been made out of:


My guess is that this dates from about the 1950s.

It's a small house, only 40 cm (16") high, with 15cm (6") high rooms, just the right size for my Australian metal furniture, and for Mr and Mrs Black, PI Angus Shand's clients (though even they have to bend to get through the front door!).


Mr and Mrs Black have just returned from a meeting with the private investigator, and Esmé Black is being greeted by two very enthusiastic dogs in the kitchen. She has already started laying out the afternoon tea.


The cupboard on the wall is built in. As well as the blue metal furniture, the kitchen is furnished with Australian 'Marquis' brand white and blue plastic furniture.

(The 'Marquis Mouldings' company, later the 'Commonwealth Mouldings' company, was established during World War II in the Sydney suburb of Arncliffe, near Mascot Airport. During both World Wars, companies producing dolls & toys started up in Australia, but didn't always survive post war when imported goods once again flooded in. The Marquis / Commonwealth plastics company, however, flourished into the 1960s, producing such varied goods as school rulers, kitchenware, and toilet seats.)

Upstairs, Harold Black is relaxing by listening to a record. He and his wife are very fond of music, and Esmé is quite an accomplished piano player.


The green piano and stool are part of the same range as the metal kitchen, living room and bedroom furniture. Not much is known about the maker, although it's thought possible that the EFCO Manufacturing Company, which made aluminium dolls' heads in the mid 1940s, may also have made this furniture. EFCO had its factory on the Prince's Highway at Arncliffe, just like Marquis / Commonwealth Mouldings.

The wooden pieces in the living room are by Barton (the bureau bookcase and TV) and Dol-toi (the radiogram), and the flying ducks on the wall are by Barrett & Sons.

The bedroom is decorated in pink and blue. To the blue metal furniture, I've added two little side tables by Barton, to hold the bedside lamps by Eagle Toys. The rugs here and in the living room are Westminster Tobacco premiums.
The cat has been asleep on the bed, but has heard Mr & Mrs Black returning, and is thinking of going down to see if any food is in the offing:


The maker of the Italian Villa had to improvise on some parts. It seems that large hinges were available to attach the front to the house, but the hinges holding the front door are made from leather and attached with tiny nails:


The hook which latches the front of the house closed is also handmade, from wire:


At the back, on the right side of the roof, is a chimney; it's not visible from the front of the house: