More Australian-made dolls house furniture

Here are the two boxed sets that I did win. They belonged to the same lady who had owned the boxed Marquis set as a child.

One is another set of plastic furniture, a lovely deco style dining table and chairs:



The top of the box says Wee Folks Miniature Furniture Set No 1 - Dining Room Table & Four Chairs, while the side adds A Wee Folks Production, Wee Folks Australia Productions.

Some of you might recognise this set:

(Table: 1 1/2" high, 4" long)

It is almost identical to a set made by the British company Bex - according to Margaret Towner, the trade name of the British Xylonite Company, Ltd, of London. I have the chairs and sideboard from the Bex 'Toy Town Furniture' set - here are a Wee Folks and Bex chair side by side, and the bases of each:



The Wee Folks chairs are unmarked, while the Bex chairs show Made in England - A Bex Moulding. The Wee Folks table does have markings:


As well as Wee Folks Aust., it shows a diamond with the letters A.E.C. within it.

I haven't been able to find out anything about Wee Folks Australia so far. Apart from the Australian Electoral Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, etc, A.E.C. was the name of a UK based heavy vehicle manufacturer, in existence from 1912-1979: AEC stood for Associated Equipment Company. This A.E.C. did have a presence in Australia - here is an entry from a 1930s Sands directory of Sydney:


But were they the makers of this dolls house furniture? If they made all the components of the buses and trucks they manufactured, that would probably have included some plastics, so perhaps they were - though the British A.E.C. used a symbol with a triangle, not a diamond.

There's one more clue on the box -


- the name FARRELL in tiny print - but does this indicate who made or printed the box, or have something to do with the furniture?

The other box contains two sets of kitchen pots.


It's called the Tiny Town Kitchen Set No 1, and contains two sets of four saucepans and a frying pan. This box is more informative, as it names the manufacturer as Goodwood (Aust.) Productions.


The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has a collection of scale model cars made by Goodwood (Australia) Productions. According to the museum's database, Goodwood Productions Pty Ltd (based in Melbourne, in Victoria) made a range of zinc diecast scale model toy cars between February 1952 and June 1961. The range featured models of Australian-made cars, trucks and specialist vehicles, and were very popular with children as they "represented familiar outlines", but eventually, the British-made Dinky and Corgi model cars out-competed them.

(Frying pan: 1 1/4" diameter, 2 1/2" long)

These dolls house pots were probably made in the same time period, the 1950s to very early 1960s - and as they belonged to the same little girl, the Wee Folks dining table and Marquis kitchen most likely date to the same era. Thank goodness this little girl kept the boxes - the pots are completely unmarked, and only the table in the dining room set is marked, so without the boxes, we would not have known that these were made in Australia, let alone who made them. Both boxes very tantalisingly say "Set No 1" - what other sets did they make, I wonder?

Could Goodwood possibly be the manufacturer of the Australian-made metal furniture which I've shown before? This has been thought to have been made in Sydney, but there's no catalogue or packaging evidence yet, as far as I know. The model cars are painted in similar colours - red, green, blue and cream enamel - although these were probably common colours at the time. Some of the cars are described as having marks (words and numbers) pressed into the underside of the model (though most have raised marks). The metal furniture has numbers impressed into the backs or undersides of the pieces. Perhaps it would be possible to compare the metal, the style of the numbers, and the shades of the paintwork, of the furniture and cars.

Kitchen Table Scales

It's been a while since my last post - partly I was busy working on my part of an article about Keystone for Dolls Houses Past and Present, and partly I have been a bit down - having some ideas for posts, but not the energy to put them together. This weekend I decided that I would start decorating the inside of my Lines DH/D, even though I haven't finished scraping the outside. So I'll take photos of that in the next day or so, and meanwhile, here's one of my ideas!


Several of you have posted photos of your dolls house furniture in different scales. When I was putting together my dolls house study and the Super City mini-building, it occurred to me that it would be fun to stand pieces in different scales on top of each other.

These kitchen tables can also nest:


and by placing them next to each other and looking from above, you can see that the long end of the smaller table equals the short end of the bigger table!


The largest table is 1/10th scale, and is vintage German (from Oese). The next one is 1/12th scale, and is also vintage German - it came in my VERO Rügen, and I think it's Crailsheimer. The pale green soft plastic table is 1/16th - 1/18th - it says 'Made in England', and I think it's Kleeware. The next table is marked Kleeware - it's 1/24th scale, and hard plastic. Then there's a tiny 1/48th scale cream coloured plastic table, which I think is by the Ohio Art Company (or a copy of their furniture) - and the tiniest is 1/144 scale, from the Sylvanian Toys dolls house for their dolls house.

UPDATE: Oese wondered on flickr if the scale of the pink table might be 1/10th, and the wooden table larger still. It's a very sensible question - it's clear that the tables are different sizes, but as I didn't measure them or include a ruler in the photos, the actual size, and hence the scales, was not obvious. So, I've now measured them, and here are their actual dimensions and the dimensions they would be in 1:1 scale. (Only in metric so far - I have measured them in inches too, but multiplying inches is a bit more complicated, so one thing at a time!)

The wooden table is 15.4 cm long x 10.2 cm wide x 8.5 cm high.
In 1:10 scale, this makes it 1.54 m x 1.02 m x 85cm.

The pink table is 11 cm long x 8.3 cm wide x 6.7 cm high.
In 1:10 scale, that would be 1.1 m x 83 cm x 67 cm,
and in 1:12 scale, it would be 1.32 m x 99.6 cm x 80.4 cm.

The pale green table is 8.85 cm long x 5.8 cm wide x 4.7 cm high.
In 1:16 scale, that would be 1.41m x 92.8cm x 75.2 cm,
and in 1:18 scale, it would be 1.59m x 1.04m x 84.6 cm.

The white table is 5 cm long x 3.1 cm wide x 2.8 cm high.
In 1:24 scale, that would be 1.2m x 74.4 cm x 67.2 cm,
and in 1:30 scale, it would be 1.5m x 93 cm x 84 cm.

(I don't actually know if 1:30 scale exists for dolls house furniture, but I wanted to see what it would be in a smaller scale than 1:24.)

I don't actually have a real-life rectangular kitchen table, just a small round dining table and the built-in kitchen work benches. So I can't measure a 1:1 scale table! What do you think? I think I'd be happy with the wooden table in 1/10th scale and the pink one in 1/12th - but the pink one certainly could be 1/10th. Perhaps the wooden one could be 1/8th (1.23 m long x 81.6 cm wide x 68 cm high), but again, I'm not sure if there are many 1/8th scale dolls.

I'm not very strict about scale in my own dolls houses, and especially with vintage furniture from many different makers and old dolls houses, I tend to do what I do with clothes - try it and see if it fits, within a scale up or down. But that means knowing roughly what will be a good fit - so knowing about scales does have some use!

Some Art Deco dolls house furniture

As I have a few houses which date from the 20s and 30s, and are modern in style, I have acquired some pieces of vintage art deco furniture for them. I recently photographed some sets for a friend's article for DHPP, and I thought I'd show them here too.

The first two sets are American. The Wisconsin Toy Company showed this 'Moderne Bed Room Set' in their 1930s catalogue. It's 1/12th scale. (There is a chair with the set too, but I forgot to photograph it!)


This set is in the main bedroom of my Californian bungalow-style house (where you can see the chair from the set):



According to Zillner and Cooper's Antique and Collectible Dollhouses and Their Furnishings, the Wisconsin Toy Company was based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1921 and 1936. They made furniture in other styles as well - I also have their nursery set, which is in the nursery of the same house.

Another art deco style bedroom set I have is made by the Jaymar Specialty Company, started by Louis Marx's father Jacob and sister Rose in the 1920s. This set was sold in about 1933 as the Happy Hour Doll House furniture; it's 1/18th scale.


As you can see, here the shape of the furniture is fairly simple - it's the printed design which gives it an art deco touch. Zillner and Cooper's book also shows kitchen, bathroom, living room and dining room Happy Hour furniture. Each set is a different colour - I'd especially like to have the red living room pieces, which also have a black art deco design on them.
UPDATE: Louise at Grandmas Attic has posted a picture of her houseful of Jaymar Happy Hour furniture! Wonderful - thank you, Louise!

This set is going in the kids' bedroom of my Triang 52, dating to 1939. This room needs more work, but looks like this at the moment:


This room also has some of my Jacqueline furniture, which I'll photograph for another post.

Also in the Triang 52 are some pieces I don't know the origin of. This chair and sofa are all metal, but the upper red surface feels like flocking or felt - I don't know how it's been done.



I also have a delightful little mirror and hanging clothes brush, with a raised art deco design in the metal:

Here they are in the house:



One day I'll make some curtains for this house!