Five Years Old!

Yesterday, 7th February, it was five years exactly from my first blog post! To celebrate, I have been thinking about a giveaway - then I read Anna-Maria's post sharing the winners of her 8th blogiversary giveaways, where she mentions legal issues .... so I am still thinking about whether to do one or not.

So, for now, I will share with you some paintings by a distant cousin of mine. Cicely Elmslie Shand was born in 1898, in Newcastle, Northumberland, in England. (She was my second cousin twice removed - my maternal grandmother's second cousin.) She painted designs for postcards and greeting cards during the 1930s. She had married a naval officer, Cecil Sheppard, at the age of 18. We don't know much about this period of her life - where she and her husband were based, for instance - but we do know that they did not have children. Cecil Sheppard would have been at sea for much of the time - perhaps she painted then. Like many professional women of the time (Georgette Heyer and Marjorie Allingham spring to mind), she worked under her maiden name.

I was lucky enough several years ago to buy some of her original paintings for cards, on ebay. 'Welcome', above, is dated 1938. 'Acceptance', below, is dated 1935.

A fan of her work has created a website showing all the cards she published. These designs are not shown - perhaps they were not all published, although I do have a card of Acceptance. She was also included in the lovely book Postcards from the Nursery, by Dawn Cope and Peter Cope (although unfortunately, the description of her family mixes up the generations,  naming her grandfather William (my great-great-grandfather John Shand's younger brother) as her father, and her father Hinton as her uncle).

To Greet You With Joy, original artwork by Cicely Elmslie Shand for a greetings card, undated.

I would like to take the opportunity of my 5th blogiversary to greet all my followers and readers with joy, and to welcome my new followers. I hope we all have lots of fun with our collections in the year to come - I enjoy sharing mine with you, and seeing and reading about yours!

Toys, original artwork for a greetings card by Cicely Elmslie Shand, 1934. Image from ebay seller apb113 (Peter Haddon); sadly, I was outbid on this painting.

Remember this?

Remember this modernist, 3 storey house which was offered twice on ebay UK, the year before last and last year? Oese also made a miniature version of it . (If anyone can remind me which blog or dolls house website we discussed the second sale on last year, please do! I know it's there somewhere ....)

Another house in this design was listed on ebay recently:


this time with a label:

"An O.D. Product
Made in Scotland"
around a drawing of a thistle.

(See redrickshaw on flickr for better photos of this house.)

Coincidentally, at about the same time, Rick posted a query on Dolls Houses Past and Present about another house with the same label - this one a more traditional two storey house with lattice windows, pitched tile roof, and entry porch on the right.

So I did a bit of sleuthing in the old British telephone directories*, and found an O.D. Construction, Woodworkers, at 2 Wellington st. Paisley (ph PAIsley 4533) from 1956 to 1958. (Paisley is in south-west Scotland, very close to Glasgow.)

In 1958 there is also a listing for O. D. Products, Toy Manufacturers, at 20 Blythswood st C2 (ie, Glasgow Central) (ph CENtral 5584). From 1959 to 1970, the only listing is for O. D. Products in Glasgow - O. D. Construction in Paisley doesn't continue after 1958, and O.D. Products is not listed in Glasgow after 1970.

So I suspect that they started in Paisley as general woodworkers, found their toys were very successful, set up in Glasgow as toy makers in 1958, and ceased the general woodworking business after that. The dolls houses with the O. D. Product label probably date to between 1958 and 1970.

Are there more designs out there? What other toys did they make, I wonder? And who was the genius who designed this 3 storey dolls house?

(They're online at Ancestry, which is subscription only, so I can't link to it.)