A New Year, a summer holiday, and op-shopping!

It's so long since I have posted anything on this blog that I feel I should be wishing you Happy Everything, not just Happy New Year! I do hope that this year brings us all health, happiness, peace of mind, and lots of mini enjoyment - and I hope to keep in touch more with my blogging friends!

I wish my summer holiday could have been longer - but I did manage to avoid the really hot weather that arrived just after I left, so I can't really complain. I had hoped to work on some of my dolls houses in Bathurst which need restoring, but didn't really have time. I did make a start on reorganising one of the rooms where some of my houses live - the former main bedroom of the house - so that they are easier to access, and so I could also fit a couple of new houses in (more about them in later posts).

My sister and I went to a few op shops (thrift stores / charity shops), which we always enjoy doing - and my haul of dolls house related things was better than it often is! Above you can see most of what I found in two op shops. Two things are from the art gallery shop - the little figurine may go in a house or a dolls house art gallery as a sculpture, and the postcard has lots of great mini portraits! The place mats have a nice woven pattern of green and red through them, and will make good flooring - and the silk tie will come in handy for bedding or cushions or curtains ....

My sister found the Blue-Box dolls house in one of the op shops - I have several other Blue-Box houses, but not this one, so I was thrilled to find it! It cost the princely amount of $4!!! (much less than its original price of $27.00, probably in the late 1970s - I have an ad for this dolls house from 1978, though I'm not sure when it was introduced or last available).

The mat is missing, but I think all the other pieces are there (plus a couple of extras) - hopefully I'll have time to photograph it all next time I'm there.

(The box does not have the Blue-Box name on it, strangely, but it is impressed on the bottom of the house.)

In another op shop, we had taken our finds (mainly books) to the front counter, and I had a look in the glass cabinet there, where small things are kept - and was amazed to see these two containers of miniature plastic plants!

The Britains flowers even have the planting tool (it's the long blue piece with a label about complaints attached to it). (These are two views of the same container here, by the way.)

 

 

Silver birch trees with moss foliage, and plastic conifers - are these also Britains?

In the op shop where I found the place mats, silk tie and Blue-Box dolls house, I also looked through the books. There were quite a few vintage carpentry manuals and children's annuals, both of which can be sources of plans for dolls houses or dolls house furniture, so I had a good look through them - and struck lucky with one, called The Handyman's Complete Carpentry Guide by Andrew Waugh, with furniture designed by William Greenwood. This was published by the former Australian newspaper company Consolidated Press - there's no date in the book, but it was advertised in newspapers in 1954 (and was a "privilege book" (ie offered at a discount) for purchasers of Consolidated Press's newspapers, including The Argus in Melbourne).

The inside covers show some of the items described in the book - including the dolls house (the small thing just to the left of the bed, with a green roof and red walls). (As you can see, this copy of the book was originally sold at Boans, a Perth department store, so it had made its way right to the other side of the country.)

The book gives instructions for building a house, as well as for making furniture, a slippery dip, an extension ladder (!), a sleep-out - and toys, including a dolls house:

The dolls house has a rather strange front, to my way of thinking. The roof is asymmetrically pitched, but the removable front has a "double-gable appearance" - a false roof line matching the steeper side of the roof, as well as the real roof line of the shallower side ... Perhaps they thought it looked better, as the false roof line would be parallel to the porch roof. I don't think that I've seen a dolls house made to this design, but I'll look out for it now - if this plan was followed faithfully, it would be quite distinctive.
The suggested colour scheme for the dolls house was cream coloured walls, apple green window sashes and frames, and a terracotta roof (quite different from the illustration on the inside cover!).

Most of the dolls house furniture is quite simple - it might be possible to identify pieces made to these plans, but some look quite similar to commercially made pieces. The book recommends that the dolls house furniture be "stained and finished with French polish or clear lacquer", with scraps of fabric for the settee, bed and dressing table).

I was very happy with these finds - and I hope to be back soon to show you the two dolls houses which were waiting for me in Bathurst.

Definitely shutters, if only I could show you!

So much has happened since I last posted about my dolls houses, I don't know where to start!

In early December, I went to a conference in Newcastle, in New South Wales, for work. As Christine Jaeger lives near Newcastle, that gave us a chance to meet - for the first time, though it certainly didn't feel like it! I had a wonderful evening looking at all her dolls houses, furnishings and dolls, and we persuaded her husband Max to take a photo of us - here we are standing in front of her Princess house:

At the conference, a friend mentioned that he would be driving from Sydney through Bathurst the following weekend, and he offered transport if I had anything to go to Bathurst. I didn't exactly - but I had been thinking about a dolls house listed on Gumtree, that was in Ashfield, in Sydney .... things worked out, and the Ashfield dolls house is now mine, and in Bathurst!

What hasn't worked out is the photos of the front of the house, which I know I took while I was in Bathurst in January. (Being a Gumtree listing, it has now disappeared from the interwebs.) The front of the house has a central porch, with a false front door (which doesn't open), and false windows which all have opening shutters. That is probably hard to imagine, but unfortunately, photos will have to wait until I am next in Bathurst.

UPDATE: The friend who collected the dolls house from Ashfield and delivered it to Bathurst also very cleverly saved a photo from Google's cache soon afterwards. Thank you! Here is a thumbnail of one of the photos in the Gumtree listing:

The photos I do have show the paint stripping I did to reveal the original colours. It is currently painted dark brown on the porch, shutters and roof, and the exterior walls are white. The roof was originally green, scored to simulate tiles:

 

 

This is the back of the roof, where I started the stripping. I'll probably have to repaint it green - or at least even out the scrape marks. In the top right of the photo, you can see the base of one of the two chimneys. The other chimney is on the back left of the house:

The walls were originally painted a lovely honey colour:

Inside, there are four rooms. The top two were painted pink and apricot - a bit of stripping shows that the pink room was originally apricot too:

Here you can see the top left room, with the doorway through into the top right room. All the rooms have skirting boards, architraves around the doorways, and picture rails. There's no evidence of any doors. The wood trim was originally dark brown, as you can see here:

(After I took this photo, and realised that the apricot paint goes over the white paint on the architrave, I removed a wee bit and found that it's painted over earlier apricot paint. So both upper rooms were originally painted apricot.)

Above the picture rail is a buff colour under the white:

Downstairs, both rooms are painted a greeny blue colour. I don't have a good photo of that - that also seems to have disappeared with the photos of the front of the house. You can just see a bit of the blue in this photo of the kitchen floor:

This is the only room with interesting flooring - textured paper of some kind, I think (which has been overpainted with white, and then had something stuck over that, by the looks of it).

The other floors seem just to have brown paper. At first I thought it had the kind of spatter and smear pattern that some lino tiles had in the 40s and 50s, but I think it is actually paint spatter, smeared by being wiped off, from when the roof was painted brown:

 You can see in this photo that the ground floor doorway is set further back than the upper doorway.

The white paint splashed messily on the wood trim, and spreading on to the walls, was presumably applied at some point when the walls were wallpapered. There were some remnants of paper which I have removed - none with any pattern remaining, just the back of some wallpaper. I also started removing the white paint from the walls - I will strip them back to apricot upstairs, and greeny blue downstairs, with brown wood trim and buff above the picture rail. I may find a similar paper for the kitchen, but will probably find rugs or carpet for the other rooms. Outside, I will strip it back to the lovely honey colour with a green roof and green trim on the windows, shutters and porch.

I'm so annoyed that I don't have a photo to show you of the front, as it's much the most interesting part of the dolls house! I don't know who made this house, or when. It does have some resemblances to the dolls houses shown in Walther & Stevenson catalogues - the line of the porch, and the style of the chimneys - but that may be coincidence. It is very well made, suggesting either a skilled home maker, or a commercially made house. The colours suggest the 1930s or 40s to me, but it could be from the 1950s, I suppose.

While I was in Bathurst, I also cleaned several houses by Bestoys, and another one by Woodtoys - I do have photos of them, and will show them in my next posts!

Heart Cake From Kaybot

Valentine's Day is not something I have ever celebrated - I don't remember it being a big thing when I was young, and I suspect that it's become bigger in Australia in recent years through being promoted commercially to sell more cards, chocolates, roses and so on ...

However, it seemed an appropriate occasion to share another of my new acquisitions.

When I wrote the article about Kaybot Novelties and Kay Miniatures for Dolls Houses Past and Present last year, I commented that it was frustrating that the 1951 and '53 ads for Kaybot's Golly Stores did not show any of their own plaster foods.

Then, late last year, a boxed Kaybot store popped up on UK ebay - and I was lucky enough to win it! This store is called the Circle Bakery, and the box has a photo showing Kaybot cakes and breads, as well as some boxed goods!

I was even more thrilled that the advertising signs at the top of the store are for Huntley and Palmer's biscuits and cakes - as my grandfather's surname was Palmer, he was called Huntley in the family.

Although the store shown in the label on the box is pale yellow, the store in my box is blue. It doesn't have any advertising at the back of the shelves, but has the same stickers along the top:

and the same Ryvita ad on the counter that sits in front of the shelves:

The counter is made quite simply, and the top has become a bit warped:

Here is the bakery filled with all the goods that came with it:

The boxes of sugar are different from those shown on the label, but are from the same range. I think I have boxes of the kinds of sugar shown on the label, but I expect that the actual varieties included did vary, just as the colour of the store did.

You can see that there are some gaps on the shelves of my store. I'm glad that so many pieces have survived with it, including one of my favourite items, the Hovis loaf:

It even still has its paper label! I loved eating Hovis bread when I stayed with my grandparents in England - and especially loved the mini Hovis loaves that we could buy with a bowl of soup when we went shopping at Bentalls, in Kingston-on-Thames! I have some other plaster Hovis loaves, but I didn't know who had made them, so I'm delighted to have this photo showing it among other Kaybot breads.

I also hadn't realised that the fruit tart on the counter, next to the heart cake, was Kaybot, nor the Victoria sandwich cake on the bottom shelf! Some of the items that are missing from my bakery include what looks like another fruit flan, on the top shelf, a cottage loaf, and the cake on the middle shelf with yellow, white and brown checkered icing. Luckily, I have just bought a lot on ebay that includes one of those cakes! What is it called? All I can think of is Battenburg cake, but that has checkered cake, not the icing ... Also, there's no Huntley & Palmer's Dundee Cake tin. I have one, in the kitchen of my Cupboard House - perhaps I will look for another one to add to this bakery.

All this writing about and looking at photos of bread and cakes has made me quite hungry! Unfortunately, I don't have any cake in the house - but I have plenty of bread, so I think I'll go and make some toast!

No more stripping done

Well, tomorrow I go to Sydney for a few days on my way back to Darwin. I've unpacked quite a lot of my sister's boxes in our real-life house - I didn't get any more paint stripping done on this dolls house, though. However, I had brought with me a couple of rugs I acquired on ebay, and another set of Walther & Stevenson dolls house furniture, so I had a play with furnishing the house.

I was delighted to spot a set of Walther & Stevenson dolls house furniture on UK ebay late last year - I wonder how it got to England from Sydney? In the set were some pieces I already had, and many I didn't, including the lounge suite and the radio shown in the photo above.

There was also a grandfather (or grandmother?) clock (missing the clock face) and a hall stand (missing the mirror) in the set from England. (The pink table here is made from lids from jars, nailed to a wooden cotton reel - it came with this house, but I forgot to photograph it last time.)

The blue kitchen set came with this house, too - these photos will help remind me what I have, and what I still need in this house. (I have bought another rug for this room, but it hasn't arrived yet.)

The most exciting part of the UK ebay lot was this Walther & Stevenson bathroom! I was absolutely delighted to get it, even though the toilet is missing a bit, and the boiler (chip heater?) doesn't have its shower head - I can probably make one from a bit of wire.

There was another bedroom set, too:

For some reason, all the mirrors in this lot are missing, so I shall have to try to find replacements ... The door of the larger wardrobe doesn't hang properly, either.

With the pink and blue bedroom sets which came with this house, I can now have three bedrooms.

I have added a few of the other pieces that came with this house - the rug in the bathroom, a cushion, pillows and mattress, a hairbrush, and two of the dolls. A lot of the other items that came with it are more recent, or, like the felt carpeting and a matchbox lounge suite, in poor condition. I may use some of the felt, and I'll keep the matchbox furniture, but now I have the Walther & Stevenson lounge suite, I will use that instead.

So I have lots more paint stripping to do on future visits to Bathurst! In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye out for more rugs, and looking through my stash for bedding, dolls, kitchen accessories, etc.

Bambolina Dolls House by Bestoys

I didn't get any more paint stripping done today; I did unpack some more of my sister's boxes, though. I also took these photos of one of the new dolls houses I mentioned in my last post.

 

This is a dolls house made by the Sydney company Bestoys, probably in the 1960s. You may remember that I discovered Bestoys in the toy trade journals I looked through in May last year. I saw photos of three Bestoys dolls houses in those journals, from 1964 and 1967. None is exactly the same as this model, although one has a similar design, and appears to have some printed details on it. 

As you can see, this dolls house has a name printed on the lithographed balcony balustrade: it's called Bambolina, which means Dolly in Italian. This name, and the name of my other Bestoys dolls house - Laura, which was not a particularly popular girls' name in Australia until the 1980s - make me curious about the people behind this company. I hope I can find out more.

The brand name is very helpfully printed on the patio balustrade:

This house is quite big - it's 33 1/2" (about 83 cm) wide by 26 1/2" (about 66 cm) tall, at the peak of the roof. I bought it from someone living near Bathurst (who had bought it from an antiques and collectables shop in Sydney), and when I went to pick it up last time I was in Bathurst, I told my sister it was just a small dolls house .... I hadn't realised how big it was! I was probably thinking of another Bestoys dolls house which Anna Maria collected for me from a seller in Canberra, which is (I think) only two rooms wide:

 

This Bestoys dolls house is called Laura.

There are six rooms, which are 12" (30 cm) high, about 10" (25 cm) wide and about 9" (22.5 cm) deep.

 

The brightly coloured interior is not original - traces of the original pale green paint can be seen on the edges:

 

So maybe as well as cleaning it, I'll strip the interior of this dolls house, too. I don't think the red paint on the balcony and patio is original either, as it's quite blotchy at the sides. But the chipboard the house is made of is a bit battered in places, so perhaps it was painted to conceal that.

The roof is made from firmer material (perhaps hardboard?), moulded on the upper surface into the shape of tiles: 

I don't yet have a sense of how I will furnish this house, or which dolls will live in it. But as you can imagine, I'm very happy to have dolls houses made by this Australian company!

June

June for me was busy with the Dolls Houses Past and Present online magazine. As well as editing and uploading other members' contributions, I wrote two articles myself. One article is about Kaybot Novelties and Kay Miniature, who made yummy plaster food:

 

and other things like fireplaces:

My other article is about the dolls houses made by the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops in London, during and just after World War I. They were set up to provide employment for soldiers and sailors who had lost hands or limbs in the war.

A while ago, I came across the catalogue from 1916/17. It's full of the toys made in the workshops - lots of battle toys, as well as dolls houses, farms, villages and shops:

A butcher's shop

A houseboat dolls house

I had read about one Lord Roberts' dolls house in the International Dolls House News, but I've never seen one anywhere else. Their toys would have their logo on them:

If you know of any, I'd love to hear about them!


Some Blogger ps and qs:

If anyone knows if it's still possible to place two photos in a row in this new blogger set-up, please let me know how! It used to be possible not to select either left, right or centre for the alignment of photos, and you could just add them across the page like text - and resize them by dragging the corner, not just by choosing a preset Small, Medium, Large or X-Large. I think we have been left with fewer options now.

I know that Google Reader is about to finish. My understanding is that the Blogger Dashboard and Google Friend Connect will continue, for the time being at least, so we can still follow each other as we have done, and see the most recent blog posts in the dashboard and on the side of our blogs. So I haven't set up an alternative like Bloglovin. However, I have saved a list of all the blogs I follow, so if I'm wrong and my dashboard reading list disappears, I can find you all and follow you again!