Another Princess

Listed on Australian ebay recently was this copy of The Australian Woman's Mirror, with the tantalising headline "Special in this issue, Princess Betty's Doll's House - A Gift Toy".

The seller was quick to point out that, 80 years after publication, it was unlikely that this gift would still be available ... but I am always looking out for descriptions and especially illustrations of dolls houses in old periodicals, and I was not disappointed with this one.

A full-page article describes and shows the reproduction of Princess Elizabeth's play house, which readers of the Australian Woman's Mirror could obtain by sending in four differently numbered coupons (so even if the publisher still had the dolls house, I think I would have some trouble finding the other three issues of the magazine, in order to collect my coupons!!)

This dolls house is much smaller than the famous Triang Princess dolls house - this one is only 10 inches wide, 7 1/2 inches high (to the eaves) and the rooms are 3 1/2 inches deep. It seems to be made of cardboard - it is described as "made entirely in one piece, and machine-cut and scored. It can quickly be folded to shape according to simple directions."

The article begins,

"Thousands of girls and boys know that the people of Wales gave a marvellous Doll's House as a birthday present to little Princess Elizabeth - a wonderful Doll's House big enough for the Princess to play inside - with real furniture and all!
"Of course only a Princess could have a Doll's Houses as big as that, but - we thought - how wonderful it would be if every Australian girl and boy could have a little one similar to the Princess's, with a tiny dining-room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, complete with furniture that could be moved around as they liked!
"That gave us an idea. We obtained all the plans and details of the famous original Doll's House. Artists and architects helped us with the model, and now the result of months of intricate work and modelling is available to every child who has longed to own a wonderful doll's house."

This sounds very much as if this version of the Princess dolls house is unique to Australia, indeed unique to the Australian Woman's Mirror - though I would not be at all surprised to find that a parent company of the Mirror in the UK was actually responsible for this model.

The stairs do not require many folds, as they are printed to simulate the treads and risers.

The article kindly showed all 8 pieces of furniture included with the house. Here is the bedroom furniture, and the bath:

You can see in the photo, above, showing the open back of the dolls house, that some furnishings were printed on the walls - the bathroom basin and mirror, for example, and the dining room fireplace. The dining room seems only to have been supplied with a table and a sideboard:

For the kitchen, there was a gas stove and a long cupboard (called a dresser, though not my idea of a kitchen dresser):

As suggested in the article, the child who owned this dolls house could add toys they already possessed, and perhaps a tiny doll as well.

Even if not every Australian girl and boy obtained this little house in 1934, I do hope that some have survived, and that one might find its way to my collection!

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!

Five Years Old!

Yesterday, 7th February, it was five years exactly from my first blog post! To celebrate, I have been thinking about a giveaway - then I read Anna-Maria's post sharing the winners of her 8th blogiversary giveaways, where she mentions legal issues .... so I am still thinking about whether to do one or not.

So, for now, I will share with you some paintings by a distant cousin of mine. Cicely Elmslie Shand was born in 1898, in Newcastle, Northumberland, in England. (She was my second cousin twice removed - my maternal grandmother's second cousin.) She painted designs for postcards and greeting cards during the 1930s. She had married a naval officer, Cecil Sheppard, at the age of 18. We don't know much about this period of her life - where she and her husband were based, for instance - but we do know that they did not have children. Cecil Sheppard would have been at sea for much of the time - perhaps she painted then. Like many professional women of the time (Georgette Heyer and Marjorie Allingham spring to mind), she worked under her maiden name.

I was lucky enough several years ago to buy some of her original paintings for cards, on ebay. 'Welcome', above, is dated 1938. 'Acceptance', below, is dated 1935.

A fan of her work has created a website showing all the cards she published. These designs are not shown - perhaps they were not all published, although I do have a card of Acceptance. She was also included in the lovely book Postcards from the Nursery, by Dawn Cope and Peter Cope (although unfortunately, the description of her family mixes up the generations,  naming her grandfather William (my great-great-grandfather John Shand's younger brother) as her father, and her father Hinton as her uncle).

To Greet You With Joy, original artwork by Cicely Elmslie Shand for a greetings card, undated.

I would like to take the opportunity of my 5th blogiversary to greet all my followers and readers with joy, and to welcome my new followers. I hope we all have lots of fun with our collections in the year to come - I enjoy sharing mine with you, and seeing and reading about yours!

Toys, original artwork for a greetings card by Cicely Elmslie Shand, 1934. Image from ebay seller apb113 (Peter Haddon); sadly, I was outbid on this painting.

Spot-On Antimacassars

In the last post, I showed the TV chair and bookcase from this Triang Spot-On boxed set. I bought this set because I love the cardboard room setting provided, especially the way that the chairs appear to have antimacassars!

The three wing chairs are held in place under semi-circular cut-outs from the cardboard of the back wall. The walls are pink, but the semi-circular pieces over the chairs are white with a pink and blue floral design. They are clearly intended to represent the embroidered doilies placed on the backs of chairs to protect them from hair oil! Isn't that a wonderful detail?

The other features printed on the walls are pretty groovy too - the mirror looks art deco with those streaks of glass going diagonally across it, and the lampshade looks like it's about to fall off!

There's a door into another room ....

though the walls on this side of the room are otherwise bare.

I showed the front of the box in the last post - here it is again:

Triang very usefully give the scale of these furnishings, 1/16", on the box.

Although the front of the box has a sticker saying "Lounge Ref. No. B", and it's definitely a lounge room in the box, the ends are printed with "Bedsitter Ref. No. L". I wonder if they produced more boxes for bedsitters than they needed?

I love the silhouettes of Spot-On pieces shown here.

Woops! Someone forgot to shut the back of the delivery van!

("Where did you get that nice furniture, Mrs Jones?" "Oh, it just fell off the back of a truck!!")

Fairylite!

Here is the box that Dolly's Living Room came in. On one end, it tells us to 'Just clip ends of flex to torch battery', and on the other end is the brand name:

 "Another Fairylite Regd Novelty"

As you can see, all the box states is that it is 'Empire Made' (that is - or rather was - the British Empire). The base of the seats gives a bit more information:

It's not very clear, but it says 'Made in Hong Kong'. So Callsmall and Redrickshaw's guesses of Blue-Box were very close! Actually, I don't know which Hong Kong company made these for Fairylite - and I don't know whether Blue-Box made any sets to be sold under another company's brand name, rather than their own. But these were definitely made in Hong Kong.

MyRealitty's guess of Spot-On was also spot-on, as the chairs, stool and bookcase are copies of Triang pieces. (The fireplace is a plastic copy of a plaster Dol-toi fireplace, and I think the lamp is a copy of a Lundby design.)

Fairylite in blue on the left, Tri-ang Spot-On in red on the right.

Fairylite bookcase on the left, Tri-ang Spot-On bookcase on the right.

The differences in the bookcases are clear - a very different colour, and no sliding doors on the Fairylite version. (I do have a better Spot-On bookcase, with books, but this came straight out of a boxed set.)

 The chairs are much more similar in appearance. The difference becomes apparent holding them - the Spot-On chair is much heavier, as its base and legs are metal, whereas the Fairylite chair is all plastic.

Here's the boxed Spot-On set the chair and bookcase came from:

 

More of it next time!

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!

Some dolls for Odessa's house

Cleopatra, Rudolph Valentino as 'The Sheik', and an Indian Maharajah are having drinks on the terrace.

Admiring the view from the balcony .... 

while a maid stands outside the main door below ....

These ladies and gentlemen would need to bend their heads to pass through the doors, especially with their elaborate turbans. I hope they can stand up inside! However, I thought the bright colours of their costumes would go well with the decoration of Odessa's house.
Cleopatra and her companions are Rexard dolls; the others are souvenir dolls from Turkey (the couple) and Egypt (the woman in the green dress).

I will see how they like the inside of the house - perhaps they are just staying here briefly while they shoot some scenes from a film ... or perhaps they will make a longer stay here.

Unexpected Treasures

After finding dolls house furniture at the Mitchell Road Antiques Centre in Alexandria, I didn't really expect to find more at other antiques and collectables shops. On Tuesday, I went to Recycling Works, in Annandale (another Sydney suburb). I had been there once before, and found some interesting bits and pieces, though nothing actually intended for a dolls house.

I had a pleasant surprise this time - there were two vintage dolls houses for sale! They weren't cheap (more than I would expect them to sell on ebay for), and I thought about them for a while.

This is one of them:

I think it's a Toy Works house, made in the UK in the 1960s or 70s. It's hardboard with paper litho, and as you can see, it's not in great condition. It's missing 3 lots of window shutters and the front door, and it has some small areas of damage. Although the guy in the shop tried to convince me that it had not had a front door at all, he did knock $50 off the price because of the missing shutters.

The house came with some furniture:

All the furniture is wooden, and it's mostly the chunky, simple pieces made nowadays for very young children.
Some furniture is missing a part:

Some seems rather out of scale (not that that usually worries me too much):

I'm not sure what this is meant to be - a bread box???

On first glance, not very exciting ....

But then I looked more closely, and got quite excited - and decided I had to buy it! Can you guess which pieces of furniture I'm excited about?