Bliss in Winter

During the last couple of weeks, I was visiting my mother in Bathurst, NSW. It's winter in non-tropical Australia, and the temperatures in Bathurst went as low as -4°C overnight, to 11° or 12° during the day. Not as cold as many places in winter - but compared with Darwin (22° overnight - 33° during the day, and not much variation over the year) - bliss! I do like rugging up in winter woollies, and snuggling under warm blankets and doonas at night - and we went to my favourite cafe, with an open fire, and drank hot chocolate and tea - and I picked violets and jonquils for my bedroom. Definitely bliss!

I didn't take photos of that kind of bliss, but I did photograph another kind: the Bliss furniture which my grandmother collected.


My Realitty has been posting this month about her Bliss house, and she has many of these same pieces of furniture too.

A couple of years ago I picked up a copy of Bliss Toys and Dollhouses (Dover Publications, 1979) at a secondhand bookshop in Sydney. This tells me that the R. Bliss Manufacturing Company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island (US) was founded in about 1832 by one Rufus Bliss. He started out making wooden screws and clamps for piano and cabinet makers. Bliss' nephew Albert Bullock joined the company, and then Alva Bullock and Edwin Clark formed a partnership, but the company kept the Bliss name, even after Rufus Bliss' retirement in 1863 and several changes of ownership. 'Bliss Piano' and 'Bliss Doll House' do have a different ring to them than 'Bullock & Clark Piano', etc!

It seems that their first known dolls house was advertised in 1889, long after Rufus Bliss had died. So he certainly didn't design the dolls houses and furniture that bear his name.


This set of wooden furniture with paper litho designs of children and the letters of the alphabet probably dates to 1901, according to Antique and Collectible Dollhouses and their Furnishings. Each piece has a different picture of children engaging in various activities. The sofa - A B C D E and P and Y on the arms - has two children playing with a doll on the back. On the seat, a boy is lying on the ground. He doesn't look very happy - has he been making sandcastles and fallen over?

The alphabet continues on the chairs - I have G/L, H/M and J/O. My Realitty also has I/N. I think we are both missing F/K.



On G/L, we seem to have a depiction of a youthful sailor farewelling his sweetheart, who is then shown weeping. H/M has the interesting combination of a little girl looking at a tea table, and a policeman directing traffic. J/O has a young tailor measuring his equally young client, and a girl in an apron carrying a basket.


The table which goes with these chairs does not show any letters, just some children cooking:



so which pieces completed the alphabet? I can see in Antique and Collectible Dollhouses and their Furnishings that the piano stool, which I'm missing, had T U V, but I don't know where Q R S and X and Z appeared. On other sets, the piano showed QRST (and the stool UVW), but as you can see, the piano in this set has no letters either:



Very appropriately, the children on the piano are playing musical instruments - perhaps in a military band, as the top of the piano shows 5 little soldiers and their tents.

There were several sizes of furniture available, but even within a set, you can see that the scale varies - the chairs are larger in scale than the sofa, table and piano. I have the piano, the sofa and the table, which are in 1" to 1' (1/12th) scale in the nursery of my Lines No 17. The chairs are too big though - they are 5" tall, and more like 1 1/2" to the foot (1/8th scale).


(This photo shows an earlier arrangement, before I added the Bliss table and replaced the black tin piano (hardly visible on the left) with the Bliss piano. At the moment, all the furniture is wrapped up, so I couldn't take another photo (and last time I photographed the other rooms in this house, all the photos I took of this room were out of focus!)

The Battlement House has arrived - now, where do I put it?

Today my newest dolls house arrived. It is huge - 3 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet tall! Each room is 17 1/2 inches wide, 17 1/2 inches tall, and 15 1/2 inches deep. So really this is 1/6th scale. I thought about where to put it before I bid on it, but now I am not sure.
It's an interesting mixture of styles, from the battlement on the roof, to the very ornate fireplaces in the two rooms on the right. This is the upper room, perhaps a living room or bedroom?


This is the lower right room, where the fireplace decoration includes sphynxes, mermaids and cupids, along with weeping women. Possibly either a dining room or living room?


I have never seen anything like these fireplaces, particularly this one - if anyone recognises them, or knows more about them, I would love to know! They are really the reason I bought this house.

The other two rooms, on the left, are very plain - the upper room has only a lampshade:


while the kitchen has a shelf running along the back wall:


I am not sure when this house was made. I suspect that the electric lights and wiring were added at some point - it is early, but the wiring seems clumsy. The style of the house and fireplaces suggests to me the very early 20th century, or possibly late 19th century (ca 1890-1915?). I did some research in digitised Australian newspapers, and found a story, printed in the Melbourne paper The Argus in 1924, about a man who in 1914:

"made a 2-story doll's house, 5ft. 4in. in height, lit by electricity, with "all modern conveniences," and set in a miniature landscape garden."

10 years later the original owner presented this dolls house to the children's ward of a hospital, hence the story in the paper.

So it is possible that my crenellated dolls house was made around this time, complete with electricity. I will try to discover when the light switches were made, which may also provide some clues.

It seems that large scale dolls houses were quite common at this period. Here is a photograph of another large dolls house, where the inhabitants can be seen sitting on the verandah:


They are a baby doll, a kewpie, and two teddy bears. Houses such as these clearly provided a home for the dolls (and bears) which little girls played with. I think my Leadlight House is probably also in this scale; like the house in this photograph, the woodwork is fairly rough, but it has very decorative features to delight a little girl.

I don't yet know who will live in my house, or how I will furnish and decorate it. I don't have a lot of furniture in this scale, so I'll see what looks good, and think about who might live in a house with battlements, sphynxes, mermaids and cupids!

'Rose Cottage' Shell Box

This dolls' house is tiny - 3 1/2" (9 cm) wide, 2 3/8" (6 cm) deep, and 3 3/4" (9.5 cm) high!
This is the front:

As you can see, the name above the gable window is torn - but I think it's 'Rose Cottage'. It has quite a grand door for such a little cottage, and the back door also has six panels - but just a pediment, not a portico. And those look like double-hung sash windows, front and back:


Unfortunately, the doors don't open, only the roof:


It is, in fact, a little box - and was most probably a souvenir sold in a coastal town. But it came with three tiny dolls


- two frozen Charlotte type dolls, made wearing smocks, and one bisque doll with movable arms, who was dressed in a ribbon tied around in a bow which has, sadly, almost completely disintegrated.
So I think this little box was used as a dolls' house by a little girl a long time ago. Perhaps her family didn't have room for a larger house, or couldn't afford one. I bought the house and dolls from an ebay seller in Brisbane - I don't know whether she acquired it locally. I'm sure souvenirs like this were made and sold widely - Vivien Greene showed two on a page of 'Model Houses' in her book The Vivien Greene Dolls' House Collection.
I think it could well have been made close to where it was bought - perhaps someone who knows shells well could say what region it's likely to be from.
The roof shows scraps of printed paper - perhaps a papier maché base to make the roof stronger for all the shells?



The roof (shown open above) is hinged with more printed paper under a strip of fabric, and the shells are pressed into a base of ?plaster? ?putty?:


You can see the indentation in the base, where a shell was pressed into it.
I remember as a kid making a shell-covered tin following instructions in a 'things to do' book - I can remember the smell of the putty!

Victorian Cupboard House "Hartsridge" ca 1900

This is the other house my grandmother bought for me, after our visit to her in 1972/73. From the outside, it looks just like a cupboard -

Inside, it is a dolls' house with four rooms and a staircase in the middle. The top (viewer's) left is the drawing room, then the landing, and the bedroom on the right. Downstairs is the dining room on the left, the hall and staircase, and the kitchen on the right.

This house, amazingly, has a full provenance. My grandmother bought it from Miss Nancy Bettesworth, who bought it from Mrs Bernard Fox, who bought it from Mrs Searle, who bought it from Miss Avice Hoare, sister of the original owners, Eleanor and Penelope Hoare. Miss Bettesworth wrote to Miss Hoare about the dolls house, and received a great deal of information from her.

The cupboard is mid-Victorian, perhaps ca 1860s. Avice Hoare wrote, on Nov 8th, 1969:

"It was converted into a doll's house by my Father, who married in 1895 + lived at Hartsridge, Godstone, for my sisters Eleanor + Penelope, born in 1897 + 98 - I can't say when it was converted but I should think it was begun fairly soon. .... my father would no doubt have collected from home or bought an old cupboard to convert."

Eleanor, Penelope and Avice Hoare's father was Henry Gerard 'Philip' Hoare, a banker. Miniatures of Philip and of his wife Margaret hang in the dining room of the house:


and photos of the two little girls hang in the drawing room - here's one of them:


You can hardly see them for the frills!

The house has original floor and wall coverings, and the fireplaces are original too. One is in the drawing room:


Avice Hoare wrote: "I should think the carpets ... were home-made from our Grandfather's waistcoats". On the wall above the window is the other photograph of the two little girls - taken outside their house, Hartsridge in Godstone, Surrey, in England.
There is no original furniture, apart from the fireplaces - "I am afraid that unlimited playing rather disposed of the furniture."

My grandmother began furnishing this house with Victorian or Edwardian pieces appropriate to its age. Some of the pieces were rather large in scale, so I haven't kept all of them in the house - instead, I've furnished it as a family house, with dolls house furniture from my own and my mother's childhood.
In the drawing room, the lounge suite was made from matchboxes by my mother ca 1930s; the doll with her back to the camera was bought for me and my sister by my father (in France, I believe) in 1966, as was the bookcase and wooden books. I haven't identified the maker of the bookcase (and the grandfather clock, rocking chair & kitchen table, also in this house), but when I bought Zillner & Cooper's 'Antique and Collectible Dollhouses', I recognised our dolls on page 263 - they were made by Erna Meyer. I've bought a lot Erna Meyer dolls since, and several inhabit, or visit, this house, which is owned by the elderly lady in black in this room.


Here's an earlier photo, when more of the family were visiting, and before I had framed and hung the Hartsridge photo:

On the landing, some boys are playing with toy trucks. The rug and the curtain both came with the house, though I don't know whether they are original, or made by Mrs Fox. I have just added the exquisite embroideries, believed to be early or mid-19th century, which I bought on UK ebay - the stitches are so tiny, I don't know how the embroiderer managed without going blind. The tiny photographs by the doorway are original, I believe - I think they may have come from a tiny concertina postcard charm. They show images of Hampton Court Palace, Richmond, etc, which no doubt the Hoare children knew.


Next door, in the bedroom, two little girls are playing with dolls. The one with her back to the camera is the second doll saved from our childhood - she suffered a terrible accident to her face (I have no memory of it, but it looks as if someone bit it off), so prefers to keep it private. (She also has no hair, a frequent problem with vintage Erna Meyer dolls.) The curtain is original - when I first received this house, I planned to replace it, as it's torn, but I'm so glad I never got round to it. My grandmother bought the beautiful brass beds - they even have springs! The lovely washstand is a new acquisition, from http://www.ktminiatures.com/index.html.


Below the bedroom is the kitchen, where two dolls are preparing food. The flooring is original; the clock, stuck on the wall, and the little check curtain were in the house when my grandmother bought it. She put the kitchen range in - it should really have a wooden surround, and is missing its little tap for the hot water. (Strange that the dolls have not felt the need to buy a newer stove to replace it or provide an alternative for cooking.)
The green Pit-a-Pat dresser was my mother's, and then ours - I'm sure we had the second door somewhere. The light blue Twigg dresser and sink (which you can't really see - it's under the window) - were ours.


The photo of the hall shows the magificent flight of stairs, made by Philip Hoare (his daughter Avice explained "Hunt was the estate carpenter + a fine cabinet maker who worked with my grandparents + no doubt taught my father + his brothers - they were all carpenters"). The carpets here are original, too.

Finally, in the dining room, several men are having drinks. The fireplace was also made by Philip Hoare, and the carpet is original - perhaps another of Grandfather's waistcoats. Someone tried to wash the little runner, and the embroidery thread ran. On each side of the fireplace are the portraits of Philip and Margaret Hoare. As it's summer, the fire is not lit, and a vase of peacock feathers stands in front of the grate. The feathers are real - tiny feathers shed by peacocks at a caravan park I stayed at in Elliott, in the Northern Territory!

This house is pictured in Jean Latham's beautiful book 'Dolls' Houses - a personal choice' (1969), which my grandmother sent me when she bought the house. The picture below (on page 68 in the book; there are more on pages 78-79) shows the bedroom and kitchen as furnished by Mrs Bernard Fox, who owned it at the time. You can see the same clock in the kitchen, and curtains in bedroom and kitchen.


In her letter to Miss Bettesworth, Avice Hoare mentioned that "when I come to think of it, there are quite a number of doll's houses in the family, so I have made you a "pedigree" of them." One was, in 1969, shown on "Garden Open" days at South Park Farm, Bletchingley. I am hoping to trace the whereabouts of the other dolls' houses made by this family - I'd love to see how they compare with the one I now own - and it's another chance to use my family history research skills.

Lines No 17 Country Villa ca 1906

This is the house my grandmother named 'Redfern', for the place where we lived when I was a baby. She didn't know the maker or the age of the house, and neither did I, until I started reading books about dolls houses, and thought G & J Lines houses looked very similar. When Marion Osborne put a request in a dolls house magazine article in about 2002 for readers' photos of their Lines houses, I sent her photos of mine. She very kindly wrote a long and informative letter, enclosing photocopies of articles etc about this house. She identified it as a No. 17 'Country Villa'.

My grandmother bought this before we visited her at Christmas 1972, though I don't know how long before. Nor did I think to ask her if she had done any redecorating. The brick paper on the sides and back is original, as is the tile paper on the roof. The front has been repainted, though the gold paint on the gable timbers and balustrades seems to be original - it looks like there's more underneath the white paint, on the decoration on the window pediments. There probably should be brick quoining on the sides, as the catalogue illustration shows.


This is the kitchen as my grandmother furnished it. The fireplace is original; the wallpaper, according to Marion Osborne, is not. I rather like it, and haven't attempted to remove it. You can see that the inside of the opening front has a different wallpaper, which Marion Osborne thought is probably original.


I was concerned that the dolls did not have a stove - although they have a fireplace in the kitchen, it is not really big enough to cook on. Lines' houses often had large kitchen ranges - I bought these dolls a tinplate kitchen stove. I also removed some of the furniture - the light wooden pieces, which are modern (1970s) replicas, and the dark wooden sideboard, pre WWII Elgin, which has gone to another house which has a matching dining table. I also found a butler, and now have a cook to add as well, of a similar period to the other dolls in the house, replacing the rather modern person in regional costume. (The milk glass pieces, which my grandmother had obtained, were packed away at the time that this photo was taken.)

In the bedroom, the nursery maid seems to have fallen over in front of the chest of drawers- she is supposed to be caring for the two babies, one in a cradle and one in a highchair. My grandmother bought one of the beds - I found a matching one on ebay. I have seen identical beds in an 1860s dolls house, so perhaps they date from that era. The wallpaper again is not original, being a different colourway of the paper in the kitchen, and in the schoolroom below.

In the schoolroom, the governess is reading to one small boy, while another practices on the piano. I have added more furniture to this room, but don't have a good photo of it. Among their books are a history of England, an ABC, a dictionary, and a songbook; they also have a globe.

The windows of this house would originally have had lace curtains. I have bought some antique lace to make curtains, but have not hung them yet. I also plan to make mattresses and blankets for the beds, as their bedding is rather makeshift.

I'm also hoping to find out more about the original owners. I recently noticed that there is writing on the roof - faint pencil writing, hard to see on the rather darkened paper. It reads 'Miss Lulu and Miss Millie? Minnie? Agar', which I presume are the names of the two little girls who first played with this house. I've searched the UK birth indexes, and the newly released 1911 census of England, and have found some possibilities. Agar seems to be mainly a Yorkshire name, and I'm looking for a family with daughters named (probably) Louisa and (possibly) Millicent, Mabel, Maria, Marianne, Wilhelmina, or any other name for which Millie or Minnie was a pet name. Great fun for a passionate family historian - mine or my dolls' houses', the fun is in the chase!