Tell Laura I Love Her ...

I recently bought two fantastic catalogues on Australian ebay, from a Sydney toy shop called Hoffnung's. They are from 1968 and 1969, and as well as the toy shop's list of stock, prices, and some black and white illustrations, they both have bound into them various manufacturers' catalogues! Both have Bestoys catalogues!
The Laura dolls house is in both years. You may remember that when I showed my Bestoys Bambolina dolls house, I mentioned that Anna-Maria is very kindly storing for me another Bestoys dolls house called Laura, which she collected for me from a Canberra seller. That Laura looks like this:

The 1968 and 1969 Bestoys catalogues show two other, different Lauras!!!

Here is the one from 1968:

and here is the new Laura from 1969:

I think that my Canberra Laura probably dates from 1970 or just after - it has the same diamond-shaped moulding on the roof as the 1969 Laura, and I can imagine that the artificial flowers might have looked great to start with, but not lasted very long ... so replacing them with a fancy lithographed railing would make sense.

Not long after I received the catalogues, I spotted the 1968 Laura on ebay!!

Missing the front door, but still, look at that lovely sixties crazy paving style flooring!

And the gorgeous aqua shutters!

So, I put a bid on straight away. A middling bid - not as high as I would probably decide to go, but not low either.

Then, the night before the auction ended, I was working late on the Dolls Houses Past and Present magazine (as I have been most evenings the last few weeks), then stopped, went to ebay, put a bid on one auction and .... zooop! ... the power went off. Not just in my house, but all around too. So I got the torch, lit some candles, and did the night chores by candle light - went to bed by torch light - and got up the next morning to find - yep, STILL NO POWER!

The power was off right across the Darwin region, even as far south as Katherine (300 km away). The government had to shut schools and government offices, the police ordered the buses off the roads because it was too dangerous, and had police cadets directing traffic at some intersections until they could get generators for the traffic lights ... and I couldn't bid on my Laura!!!

In my consternation, it didn't occur to me to ring my sister and ask her to bid for me. I have a landline that doesn't need power - very useful in a place that often has blackouts, though they are not usually this long except after cyclones. The power was out at my place for over 12 hours - some suburbs got it back sooner, some later (they had to stagger it, apparently).

So I lost my Laura! To know about three different models of the same Australian-made dolls house, to have the possibility of owning two of them - and then to lose, because of a power outage - I was devastated - and also very cross!

I did message the seller to explain, and say, in case of non-payment or any problems, I was still interested! However, both seller and buyer have left feedback on the auction, so Laura has a new owner, who is not me :-( I just hope they don't wreck renovate her and destroy the original features!

At least I have the photos, so I know the colours of the walls, shutters, flooring and so on ...

Similar colouring to the Canberra Laura, but that is plainer:

The Canberra (ie probably ca 1970) door slides, rather than being hinged as the earlier door is:

So, although I have two Bestoys dolls houses (Bambolina and Canberra Laura), I can't really say I have a collection, yet. Perhaps another Laura will pop up ...

In fact, one already has - with balcony railings and shutters which have the diamond-shaped moulding, but with a hinged door! so clearly I do not yet have enough evidence to date the series ....

But this Laura has been overpainted :-( Is it worthwhile trying to buy her? She would not be as easy to reach as the Laura I lost, which was in the Blue Mountains - this one is in a western Sydney suburb ...

The Bestoys 1969 catalogue has given me another dolls house to dream about, too: Cinderella! Strange name for an A-frame, but I won't hold it against her.

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!

Toy journals and catalogues at the National Library of Australia

While I was in Canberra recently, I was able to look through the collection of toy trade ephemera (catalogues, flyers, etc) and some issues of the Australian toy trade journal, at the National Library of Australia. Autumn is a lovely time in Canberra, as you can see!

The National Library holds issues of The Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer from 1964 (I will have to go to Melbourne to read issues from the 1950s). So I started with 1964 (the year that Barbie was new! Play-doh was new!), found that 1965 wasn't on the shelf, and went through 1966-1969. I really only had time to skim and look at the photos. Here are some of the dolls houses I spotted.

The East German export agency Demusa advertised regularly. Above, in December 1967, is a dolls house with an open front and arched doorways, shown fully furnished. Below, from August 1966, is a bungalow:

(Sorry about the curved photo - 12 issues of the journal were bound together, so getting them to lie flat wasn't easy!)

In December 1966, the Demusa ad showed more traditional furniture:

I was rather surprised to see that Demusa also advertised traditional German "Schultüten", paper bags full of goodies for children's first day at school. I imagine that their ads were prepared for international distribution, but I do wonder whether there were any orders for these from Australia:

Actually, with most of these manufacturers' and agents' advertisements, we don't know whether the items were actually ordered by Australian retailers, and stocked by Australian toy stores. I spotted some toy store ads which do show dolls houses - in some cases, I recognise the houses, as with these Triang dolls houses in the Melbourne toy shop Nathan Blight in July and September 1967:

The Triang U dolls house can be seen just to the left of the two women, while the Triang V is on an upper shelf on the right. (Is there another house in the corner to the left of the U? I can't quite make it out ...)

Other photos of toy shops show dolls houses I don't recognise, for example this house shown in November 1968:

It looks rather like what I remember of our childhood dolls house - white and two-storey!

I did discover at least one Australian dolls house maker I hadn't known about before. I had seen a few dolls houses by Bestoys on ebay, but hadn't realised they were Australian. Here are the photos I found:

Bestoys display at the Melbourne Toy Market, in July 1964

(The table and chairs in the foreground look very like the ones we had as kids!)

Bestoys display at the Melbourne Toy Fair, in the August 1967 issue

(Perhaps the house on the right here is the one behind the toy shop owners in the photo above??)

Bestoys was based at Botany, a suburb of Sydney. When I googled it, I found entries in recent business directories for Lumberjack-Bestoys, in Engadine, another Sydney suburb. Interesting, especially as I had found this dolls house in a Toyworld catalogue from Geoff Emerton Sports & Cycles, of Kingston in the ACT:

This looks rather like the design of the Bestoys dolls house on the right in the 1964 display above. I can't find a date on my photos of this Geoff Emerton catalogue - I think it is probably from the late 1970s or the early 1980s, as it also shows Matilda doll playsets, the Toltoys Family Tree House, Matchbox Play Boot, and Fisher Price Play Family School and Chime Ball. (Also, the phone number for the shop is 95 9741.)

And I think the dolls house on the left in this photo below, could be the dolls house on the left of the Bestoys 1964 display, above:

This photo dates from November 1966. The house on the left has the same alignment of doors and windows as the Bestoys house does, and when I zoom in on the 1964 display photo, I can see some markings above the door and windows. I didn't see a photo of a Bestoys display from 1966, but perhaps that's what this couple are standing in front of?

Mt Ainslie from the National Library

Other imported dolls houses I saw were Jenny's Home, from Triang, heavily promoted in 1967:

A Chad Valley tin lithograph dolls house, advertised in 1968 and 1969:

 

I think this Melbourne toy store (H W Rice of Fitzroy) has a Chad Valley dolls house on the floor in the centre of the photo in this ad from May 1969:

What's the taller dolls house behind it, I wonder?

Eagle Toys of Canada exhibited at the toy fair in 1968 - the write-up mentions "dolls house mounted on castors" - but I don't see any in the photo of their stand, though there are lots of tea sets:

The "Holly Lodge" Wooden Doll's House from the UK was displayed at a toy show at the Travel Lodge Motel, Sydney, in February 1968. There's no photo of it, but presumably this was the Chas. E. Methven "Foldaway" dolls house, which has the name Holly Lodge by the door?

Other Australian dolls houses included one from John Sands, a stationery and board games manufacturer, in June 1968:

and a craft set from Sally-Ann in August 1964:

The ephemera collection of toy catalogues included some earlier and some later than these trade journals. There were two Walther & Stevenson catalogues, one missing the cover, but going by the items shown and prices given, it's from the year before or the year after my 1933 catalogue. This catalogue shows four dolls houses:

I am very intrigued by these houses, especially as there's a note just underneath these descriptions saying "We also have English and Aust.-made dolls' houses in other styles than above". My "Italian Villa" style house, which I had thought was homemade from the 1950s, has a red roof, rough cast walls and fancy door and window frames - and the porch over the front door is identical to the porch on the No 3 and 4 "Wendy" two-storey houses here:

So perhaps it's not homemade after all! And perhaps it's earlier than the 1950s, too.

The other Walther & Stevenson toy catalogue held by the National Library dates from 1953/54, a couple of years earlier than my 1956/57 catalogue. It has a page of dolls houses:

A Triang No 50, No 60 and No 61, with one Australian-made dolls house shown, just above an Amersham house:

The Australian-made house (no 64) is described as "Beautifully made and coloured, opening doors and windows. Side also opens. Green and red. Size, 8in. high x 14in. x 15in. A fine house. Price, 46/3 each." It looks to me as if it has Romside windows?

Again, the catalogue says "Come in and see the largest range of dolls houses in Australia. A size and price house to suit "your" request. Here are a few of these Wonderful Houses." So, there were probably other Australian-made designs as well as other imported ones - if only there was a complete, fully illustrated catalogue of all of them!

Walther & Stevenson still sold Australian-made wooden dolls house furniture, and was also able to offer Kleeware furniture again, showing bathroom and dining room sets for 1953/54, and promising sets for other rooms by January 1954. I'm curious about the statement "These are now made in England" - where were they made before this?

Black Mountain with the Telstra Tower, from the National Library

Among the more recent catalogues, from the 1990s and 2000s, I saw familiar brands like the Sylvanian Families, in this November 1993 ad:

Blue-Box, with the Carry-Along Dream House from December 1995:

And a whole page of dolls houses, furniture and dolls in the 2000 Millennium edition of the Windmill Equipment and Good Toys Guide, for teachers, schools, kindergartens, childcare and parents:

I will, eventually, put all the images from the toy trade journal and catalogues onto flickr. There's a lot of food for research in the trade journal especially - I hope I'll be able to go back and read the 1960s issues more thoroughly, as well as go through later issues.

I hope you've enoyed this glimpse of Canberra, too!