Introducing Miss Birdie Fethalite

Miss Birdie Fethalite is an Australian doll, who was born in the 1940s in Sydney. She has an extensive wardrobe, consisting of two summer frocks:



two winter coats:



a siren suit:



and a party dress:


From the front, Birdie looks nicely rounded. Her back view, however, shows that she is flat, and even slightly hollowed out:


From the back, you can see how her clothes clip on around her waist. Sadly, she has had an accident some time in which she lost most of her right arm.

Birdie is not as fortunate in regards to housing as she is with her wardrobe. I'm sure she would love to live in the Marquis kitchen and other rooms in that set. As I didn't win it, however, I have posed her here in front of Marquis kitchen furnishings set up in front of the photo of the inside of the box on my computer screen. It looks just the right size for her, and the walls even match one of her dresses - but as she can't live in front of the computer all the time, I will have to find another home for her!

Perhaps she could live with the Cacos, and they could all share the curling tongs:


This little doll is marked with the Fethalite brand name and symbol:


The number 204/1 appears to be the product number. All the pieces of clothing are also marked: the frocks are 204/2, the long dress is 204/3, the coats are 204/5, and the siren suit is 204/6. She must have had another outfit too, as 204/4 is missing from this set.

Fethalite plastic products were made by Pierwood Plastics (Piercy & Ashwood) in Chatswood, Sydney. qilich has a Fethalite catalogue from 1949, which shows miniature kitchen and bathroom sets, and a couple of dolls, but not this one. Her hairstyle and the siren suit definitely date her to the 1940s, so she was probably made before 1949. I wonder if she was always alone, or whether a family of dolls was produced?

Update: Ysé6 and Roberta have told me on flickr that the same doll was also made by the Selcol company in England. A Selcol doll is listed on ebay at the moment - here she is with her outfits and her right arm:



The clothes are almost the same as Miss Fethalite's, although the decoration on the long dress is different. The piece missing from my set is probably the little gym tunic, here in yellow next to the yellow frock.

Thanks, Ysé6 and Roberta - though I'm sorry to realise that all Australian-made plastic dolls house miniatures were made using moulds from US or British companies! Seems we did OK on production (at least while tariffs were in place), but didn't produce original designs.

Update 2: Sally also has a Selcol doll set: see her blog stitchywoowoo. It's clear from Sally's pictures that the frock is a pinafore dress - Miss Birdie's frock doesn't have straps, so that's another difference between the English and Australian clothes.

And Marcie Tubbs has very kindly emailed to say that in her book Dollhouse and Miniature Dolls 1840-1990 (which I have!), she pictures both a 'Peggy' doll made in the US by Ideal in the mid 1950s, and a Lido doll dress set, also made in the US. She also received a photo from a reader of a boxed set of 'Peggy's Magic Snap-On Wardrobe', made by Bell Industries (in the UK, I assume).
The dolls and clothing sets made by Selcol, Fethalite, Ideal, Lido and Bell, in the UK, US and Australia, are almost identical. As Marcie says, this doll really travelled! I wonder where she started?
The mid 1950s Ideal catalogue which Marcie has describes her wardrobe as consisting of 2 bathing suits, pajamas, 2 over-coats, hat, 2 school dresses and party dress. The Lido set identifies the bathing suit as a play jumper.
Sally describes the 'school dress' as a pinafore dress (the Australian one isn't, as it doesn't have straps). I was seeing the clothes through the lens of 1940s British novels, so the bathing suit / play jumper looks like a gym slip to me, and the pajamas look like a siren suit. If Peggy was originally made in the UK, the siren suit would make sense (and as I suggested, it goes with her 1940s hairstyle). If she was first made in the US, then they probably were pyjamas originally.

So, more questions: where was she first made? when? and how did she come to be made or sold by 5 companies in 3 continents? We may be able to answer some of them if we're lucky enough to find dated catalogues showing the Selcol and Bell dolls one day.

Thanks, Marcie and Sally, for sharing your dolls!

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!

Triang Modern Dolls' House No 52, 1939

Triang are well known for 'Tudor'-style dolls' houses, but in the 30s and 60s they also produced houses in modern architectural styles. This one is No. 52, listed in the 1939 catalogue, according to Marion Osborne's wonderful reference book Lines and Tri-ang Dollshouses and Furniture 1900-1971.
I bought it through Australian ebay from an antiques dealer in Newcastle, NSW. It's missing the suntrap and chimney (which should sit on the roof), and also the front door and the upper curved window. But otherwise, it was in good shape.

It has been repainted, in much the same colours as the original. I have removed some paint from the window frames, and from the crazy paving on the base.


Here's how it looked on the inside:


Repainted and re-papered! And furnished mostly with Barton furniture from the 1960s or 70s. I removed the floor and wall-papers (actually the red carpeting was flocked contact, or something like that). The original floor papers (parquet in the house; brick in the garage and porch) are still there, but in very poor condition, as they had clearly not been protected when the house was re-painted at some stage, and removing the sticky floor covering was tricky. Underneath the pale brown and white striped wallpaper in the living room was pink paint. Although the antique dealers couldn't (or didn't) tell me anything of the previous owners, it looks as if the house was re-decorated twice, perhaps in the 1950s (the pink paint), and the 1960s or 70s (the brown striped wallpaper, funky 'lights', and Barton furniture).

Although the original fireplaces had been detached from the walls (and in one case, replaced), the paper fires are still stuck to the walls of both large rooms. Around these fires there are remnants of the original paint. Instead of scraping off the pink paint, I have repainted the walls as close to the original colours as I could get - a pale green (with quite a lot of black in it) in the living room, and cream elsewhere. Where original paint remained (some on the landing, and parts of the staircase), I've left it.

Here's the kitchen when I had repainted and put down new flooring - a 1930s sample of British 'Empire Series' paper.


The house was first available in 1939, and is not listed in the 1950 Triang catalogue. But as you know from my previous posts, I am not a purist about make or year of the furnishings in my houses. I do prefer vintage, 'lived-in' furniture to reproductions, but otherwise I go with what looks good. Here, the much later Twigg kitchen sink and cupboard fit perfectly with the modern lines of the house, and the Barrett & Son gas stove, from the 1950s, goes beautifully with the 1930s floor paper. The stove is all metal, with the door of the stove and the lids of the kettle and saucepans painted red.

The cream coloured metal refrigerator and table and chairs are Australian-made - according to Dolls' Houses in Australia 1870 - 1950, probably aluminium alloy, and most likely made in the Sydney area in the 1940s.

I've been trying to work out what year and what country we're in, in this house. When I supplied the household with a fly swat (on the sink, at the moment) and electric fan, I was thinking of Australian summers - and friends who have seen the house have said the kitchen reminds them strongly of older relations' houses. I think it might be just after the war - perhaps 1949 or 1950 or so.

The tall dresser here is a Triang piece; the other one is part of the set of aluminium Australian kitchen furniture. The light is German; the original light is above the fireplace, and would have had a shade.
I really got in to beads and buttons as dolls' house decoration in this house. Actually, I got the idea for the buttons from the last child to play with this house, who used buttons as plates and as wall plaques. The ornaments on the stand in the front are vintage trade beads, and there are two floral Czech buttons on the top of the dresser at the back, on either side of a metal button commemorating the 1933 Chicago World Fair:
The porcelain rooster on the mantelpiece is 1930's Herend (Hungarian), and the rather sad little dog is Denby.

Another button (Artid, 1940s) and more trade beads, as well as a glass goblet marked 'G.R. 1937' (King George VI of England's coronation was in 1937). The wonderful eggcup set is supposed to be French, ca 1910.

This is the inside of the bay window downstairs:

Oh dear! Bare windows. I do have fabric to make curtains and other soft furnishings for this house, which I've had for 3 1/2 years - and for several other houses - if I didn't keep buying more houses, perhaps I might catch up on the sewing. I should put the dolls to work - the yellow and red house has a sewing machine.

The dolls here, and the others in the kitchen, are all Erna Meyer dolls. Erna Meyer started making dolls just after WWII, but they only became widely available after a 1950 toy fair. I have chosen some of the oldest in my collection to visit this house.

The other main room is the drawing room, above the kitchen.
The lady of the house is bringing in the tea trolley. She is a 1930s Caco doll:

and her husband (in the arm chair)
and mother (on the sofa, with a pipecleaner Airedale being very friendly) are too:


The others are visiting Erna Meyer dolls - one of them a sailor, home on leave.

She has a rather lovely collection of glass (vintage art deco glass beads and cabochons (I think that's what the flat shapes are called)).
I think he is a writer - I bought him a typewriter (at least that's what I bought it as - is it?).
As you can also see, I haven't hung the pictures yet - there are more besides this one propped crookedly on the radio.
I'm not sure that the grandmother approves of all the artworks - that painting, and the bas reliefs and cameos on the sideboard - an tiny erotic art deco cameo (said to be German; bought from Canada), and a French art deco bronze bas relief and an Artid button (washed out in the flash) both of female figures in flimsy figure-hugging draperies ...


This fireplace isn't original. In pictures I've seen of other Triang 52s, the white art deco fireplace which I have in the kitchen, is in the upper room; the downstairs room has a different style of fireplace - but not this one. I don't recognise this one, but it suits the room well.

This model has only two large rooms. To the left there's meant to be a garage at ground level, and a porch off the living room. The previous owner had converted both to bedrooms, and so have I.
Upstairs is the adults' bedroom:

and in the garage is the kids' bedroom:

Both are furnished with 'Jacqueline' metal furniture, in cream, blue, red and yellow. This also post-dates the house, but its art deco styling suits it very well. The wooden beds (and the chair between them) in the kids' room are American 'Happy Hour' furniture, made ca 1933. I've just put these in today, when I realised they are the perfect size for children. Before, the kids had a piano and Jacqueline sofa and a dolls' table & chairs.
Those things that look a bit like hatstands are Jacqueline lamp stands, both missing their lampshades - I'll have to improvise.
The kids' walls look quite bare - I'm planning to create a 'window' for them, with a 1940s postcard view and curtains, and I have some tiny vintage travel posters to stick up as well. I'm going to put curtains in the upstairs bedroom, too ..... one day!

On the right side of the house are the stairs:

As you can see, I've squeezed a bathroom under the stairs, as the previous owner did too:

The bathroom set is not marked - I think it's Fairylite. (The stool is Jacqueline, and the towel rail (with towel) is Barton.)

I love this house - and I think it was the first for which I started looking for vintage miniatures that were not made specifically for dolls' houses. Starting this blog has inspired me to make and put up all the decorations I've already acquired for it - and perhaps think about others, such as plants on the balcony, and outside furniture for the roof ....