A Right Toys dolls house - or two?

When an Australian-made dolls house is listed on Australian ebay or gumtree several times from the same area, it's a fair guess that it was made in that area. This type of dolls house on wheels has appeared many times in Victoria:

 

When I was looking through the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer at the beginning of last year, I was pleased to find this dolls house in a photo of a toy fair stand in 1975:

The caption says:

"RIGHT TOYS: Another new manufacturer, also featuring wooden toys, run by partners Peter Fortune and Gary Mellish. The range embraces some 21 items including doll's house on castors, table and chair set, walker wagons, blackboards, rope ladders, swings, go-kart, etc. Holding a truck is sales rep. Beverley Hall."

Right Toy Manf. Pty. Ltd. also had a display at the 1976 toy fair, sharing a stand with Sun Dip soft toys. The caption indicates that Right Toys displayed a '2-storey, 4 room unpainted dolls house on castors' - it is just visible at the front left, under a very large Pink Panther soft toy!

These entries don't give an address for Right Toys, but I have been able to find both partners in the Australian electoral rolls, and their addresses indicate that these dolls houses were indeed made in Victoria. In 1977 and 1980, Gary Mellish lived in Bentleigh, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne; he was self-employed. Peter Fortune lived in Dandenong, a bit further out than Bentleigh, in 1977, when his occupation is given as 'woodworker'. In 1980, his address was in Seaford, a beachfront suburb further south again. Peter Fortune's occupation in 1980 was stated as 'foreman' - was Right Toys still in operation, and if so, were Gary Mellish and Peter Fortune still partners in it? I don't know.

For some years, I had watched these dolls houses come up, and I was very pleased to be able to buy one earlier this year. I only have a couple of photos of it, which I took when I was in Bathurst in May:

If you've been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I love dolls houses with original wallpaper, so I was delighted to find this Right Toys house decorated with typical 1970s wallpapers! Why pink curtains, though? I suspect they are not from the same period as the wallpaper! I have not yet furnished this dolls house, so I haven't decided whether to keep the curtains or change them.

The layout, of two rooms upstairs and two downstairs, with the stairs on the left and fireplaces on the right, is the same as in two of the other Right Toys dolls houses I showed at the top of this post. One has only two rooms, but the same positioning of the stairs and fireplaces:

I have another dolls house on castors from Victoria, too. It also has four large window openings, although the bottom two have no bars, and the top two have sliding doors:

Left: front of dolls house, closed; right, inner front of dolls house.

The sliding doors, the balcony wall and the back wall of the dolls house are made of laminex on plywood. The main walls are made of chipwood. The curtains came with the house, and seem to date from the 1970s - there is a pair for the other downstairs window too, but they need new wire to hang on.


The front of this house opens from the other side - from the left side, rather than the right side as in the Right Toys dolls houses above. There are no stairs, and no fireplaces. (I haven't furnished this dolls house either yet, though I've had it longer than the one above. I have bought some pieces of furniture in hot pink and bright blue, to match the curtains, so I must try setting it up. It will need some flooring too, I think!)

This house does have a chimney, which is not only on the other side of the house - the left, rather than the right - but runs all the way up the side of the house, rather than sitting on the roof:

Is this also a Right Toys dolls house, despite the differences? I don't know.

I don't know, either, whether these other dolls houses on castors from Victoria were made by Right Toys or by another company:

This one in the three photos above, said by the seller to date from the 1970s, is made of pine wood, rather than chipboard, and has two opening fronts rather than a single large one. The windows are divided into 9, rather than 4, and the stairs and fireplaces are on opposite sides to the Right Toys dolls houses, with the chimney on the roof, but on the back left rather than the front right. (This dolls house has two fireplaces; I have also seen the same model with only one fireplace.)

This dolls house in the two photos below looks more recent, with a piano hinge instead of two smaller hinges. It does have one opening front, and the windows are divided into 4 panes - but there is a front door instead of a fourth window. Like my second dolls house, there are no stairs and no fireplaces. I can't see from the photos if there's a chimney; if there is, it's not on the front of the roof.

So, I definitely have one dolls house made by Right Toys, and the first three I showed here are also by Right Toys. For the moment, I can't say whether my second dolls house and the other two houses shown here are Right Toys variants, or similar models made by (an) other manufacturer(s). Hopefully, I will find more information in catalogues, toy trade journals, or even from the manufacturers themselves! Hopefully, too, I'll be able to show you my dolls houses furnished and inhabited before too long!

Something a bit different!

This is another of my new dolls houses in Bathurst. The house itself is fairly recent, and I don't know who made it, or even what it's made from (mdf? pine?). I bought it for the decorations - it has been painted inside and out by Australian artist Janine Daddo, and I love the details on it, especially all the cats!

There's a black and white cat on the front left, like my Harriet, and two white dogs with black spots on the front right. 

On the inner left front, there's a ginger cat, like my sister's cat Treasure.

 On one side there are two white cats:

 and on the other side, there's another ginger cat, as well as several kennels:

The roof doesn't open, but the attics are accessible through the dormer windows and the round windows at each end, so the space is usable.

Three more dogs are on the back:

 The house came with furniture, which is painted as brightly as the house itself:

The bedroom:

 The bathroom - lots of fish!

 The kitchen:

 And the living room (not many chairs - I wonder if there were more once? I might have to add some):

 

 Who will live here? I don't know yet, but they will certainly have lots of cats and dogs!

 

A flower transfer house from Victoria

I've seen several houses listed on ebay in Victoria which had transfers - or decals - decorating the otherwise fairly plain front. I definitely wanted to add at least one to my collection, and when this popped up late last year, I was able to buy it.

The seller was able to tell me that her mother-in-law had bought the house in 1966, at Barwood Toy Shop in Stradbroke Park Shopping Centre, Bourke Road, Kew East, in Victoria, for her daughter's 4th birthday. I love being able to date dolls houses precisely!

Apart from the flower transfers - pansies and brown-eyed Susan daisies - and the balcony railing on the front, the house is quite plain. There are four window openings and one door opening - they don't look as if they have ever had 'glass' or a door attached to them. The house is open at the back, and each of the four rooms is painted a different colour - pink, blue, cream and olive green. I didn't ask if the house had been repainted at any stage, but I think not - the paint is very neat, with no sign of other colours underneath these. Perhaps it was bought cream, and the other colours were added before it was given to the little girl - either way, I think these are original 1966 colours.

 

The sides are very simple. You can see that there is foxing - spots of discolouration - on the paint. I have washed it - it's possible that a stronger cleaner would remove them, but I don't want to damage the paint, or repaint it.

The side walls continue up to the peak of the roof - there is no ceiling on the upper floor.

Here are some of the other dolls houses with transfers which I have seen listed in Victoria. 

This one has a chimney, and is front opening. There is one transfer - an animal (a cat? missing its head) - above the front door. Inside, there are rather crudely cut stairs, and there seem to be arched doorways between the rooms.

Here's another one from the same maker:

I liked this one, with its kitten transfer - such a pity that the seller's son had broken the door :-(

I would still like to get one of these, but haven't seen one recently.

When I looked through the Australasian Sportsgoods and Toy Retailer journal for 1975-1978 in Canberra last month, I found two makers of dolls houses decorated with transfers.

For one, I found only one photo, from the 1976 Toy and Games Manufacturers of Australia fair, in the July 1976 issue of the journal. 

"The Winslow Marketing Co showed wooden toys from S. M. Collins, Bairnsdale, including blackboard, table and chair sets, dolls cradle, ironing board, dolls house and the popular unpainted bench set. Also from Patrick, NZ, Benson nursery, plastic and vinyl toys plus Patrick jigsaws, draught sets, wooden blocks and peg and hammer sets. On the stand is Garry Holzer."

These S M Collins dolls houses do not have chimneys, and appear to have two doorways cut into the ground floor, with two window openings in the upper floor. There is a line of colour - probably a strip of wood - across the front of the dolls house,  but I don't know whether the it's just decorative, or serves as a grip to open the front. It's hard to tell for sure, but I think that the wooden panelling of the display stand can be seen through the window and door openings. If that is the case, it indicates that the houses have open backs.
 
There are two transfers on each house, placed in the centre of the ground and upper floors. The houses have different transfers, but on each house, the same image is used on both floors.

I have found a newspaper article from July 1975 with an interview with Stan Collins, timber miller, in which he explains that S M Collins Pty Ltd had turned to making wooden toys less than two years earlier (so in late 1973 or early 1974), partly because there was a demand for them, and partly because it was harder to get good quality timber for milling.

So although my transfer house resembles this S M Collins dolls house (which seems to have an open back, and the same rectangular shaped windows and doors as on mine, although placed differently), mine could not have been made by S M Collins, as it predates their first wooden toys by at least 7 years.

The other manufacturer of dolls houses with transfer decorations was Somerville Toy Traders. Despite the use of 'traders' in the name, both the sign on their stand, and the caption, indicate that they manufactured the toys shown. No information is given in these short write-ups about where they were based, but an online search revealed that they were based in Mount Eliza, in Victoria, incorporated in May 1975, and changed their name to Ten Progress Street Pty. Limited in 2000. They appear to be still active, so I may be able to find out more.

This photo is from the May 1975 issue of the toy trade journal. The caption reads:

"Somerville Toy Traders: Manufacturers of a wooden range of hookey boards, shuttle sets, hammer peg sets, etc., plus dolls' houses, garages, hobby horse, shoe flys and kiddies' furniture, table tennis and billiard tables. A brand new release was a Do-It-Yourself Pool Table assembly kit which comes in a cartoned pack and makes up to a 6 ft. x 3ft table."

Although there are transfers on the nursery furniture, there doesn't seem to be one on the dolls house.

This photos shows the display of Somerville Toy Traders' wares at the 1976 Toy and Games Manufacturers of Australia fair. The dolls house looks very like the one shown in 1975, although it does have a transfer between the two upper windows. Also, I don't see a chimney. 

Somerville Toys were displayed that year by ABCED Trading, who also showed Australian-made Rainbow soft toys, and imported Ellegi remote control toys and Canova nursery items (both imported by ALLTOYS, so interesting that ABCED was showing dolls houses from a manufacturer other than Bestoys), and Beauty soft toys.

The 1977 display at the Melbourne Toy Fair. 

"Somerville Toys: Displayed their own range of very stable wooden table and chair sets, nursery seats, pull-a-long toys, dolls houses, push/pull carts, billy carts, pull-a-longs, cradles and cots, plus an old favourite among the children, the wheelbarrow. Also showed snooker and table tennis tables, hookey boards, shuttle tennis and bobs."

 (Yes, it does spell pull-alongs that way, and mentions them twice!)

There is definitely no chimney on the dolls house, and the transfer is clearer. Like the houses shown in 1975 and 1976, this house seems to have a central front door and four square-ish windows. It's impossible to tell if they are front-opening or have open backs.

It's unlikely that Somerville Toys made my dolls house, both because of their incorporation date of 1975, and because the windows are such a different shape. So it seems that there was probably another, earlier, manufacturer of dolls houses with transfers in Victoria, who made my dolls house.

Could either S M Collins or Somerville Toy Traders be the maker of the other transfer houses I've shown here? I don't know when these two front-opening transfer dolls houses were made. They have a chimney, as does the earliest Somerville dolls house, but on the back of the roof rather than the front. They also have windows which are more rectangular than square, so less like the Somerville squareish windows than the Collins rectangular ones, although not as long. They don't have clear similarities to either maker - perhaps they're from another manufacturer again?


Back to my flower transfer house - I was inspired by the pansy transfer to find furnishings with pansies for it. I don't have any furniture for it yet, but I have got some rugs, pictures (some downloaded and saved ready to be printed out) and bowls or pots of flowers!!

I may well change these around, or not end up using them, but I've had fun trying them out!

(I only have one horseshoe, but I tried it out inside, and where I think I will put it, on the balcony.)

I'll look for some furniture to try out, and show you again once I've found some. I'm not sure what scale will work best - the door is just under 5 ½" tall, which would suggest 16th scale, but the ceiling height of the ground floor is 9", and the floor size of the bedrooms is about  8 ½" by 11 ½" each, which would accommodate 12th scale furnishings. I'll see which dolls and furniture looks best!

Number 4, the biggest and oldest

Here's the last of my 4 new dolls houses in Bathurst. I bought this one on ebay from Melbourne, and happened to be in Bathurst when I had it freighted - fortuitous, as it's big and quite heavy! So it cost enough to bring it up to Bathurst, let alone all the way to Darwin ...

This house is over 3 feet wide - about 37" (or 92.5 cm), and 37" high as well, to the top of the roof ridge (40" (1 m) including the chimney, which isn't visible here as it needs to be fixed back into the house).

Style-wise, the house could be anywhere from about the 1880s-1930s. I don't know much about it, but, if the wallpapers are original, I think it probably dates from around the 1920s.
(There is a removalists' label inside one of the fronts - probably from a former owner, who perhaps might have a bit of information about it? I might try contacting them ..... )

The house has two opening fronts - well, they should open on hinges, but the hinges are broken, so the fronts are removable at the moment. They are held closed by little wooden latches that you can just see (at the bottom of the roof line, on either side of the non-opening central section), and there used to be a lock, as well.

There are two bay windows, one on either side of the front door ...

And just inside the front door is the staircase:

You can see that the exterior paint is quite worn and crazed, and some strips are missing from the door frame, window frames and roof ridges. I quite like the aged appearance, and the missing bits reveal earlier decoration. The existing brick exterior is incised into the wood, and painted (and then the paint seems to have come off in places where it's been washed or sanded). The exterior must originally have been papered with red brick paper - a tiny bit appears at the bottom of a window frame, where a strip of wood is missing:

The roof also has tiles incised into the wood, and is then painted grey - but where the roof ridge strips are missing, there is grey tile paper visible:

Inside the house, there are four main rooms:

and a little annex in the top left room! This was described in the auction listing as a pantry, but I'm pretty sure it was intended as a bathroom!

It's the only house of this age that I have which has a bathroom - very exciting! (Still needs cleaning!)

I mentioned the wallpapers - let's have a closer look at them. In both downstairs rooms is a rather faded and slightly stained paper with an art deco design:

I'm going to keep this paper - I've bought some artists' chalk pastels to disguise the water stains a bit. The colours were obviously brighter when the paper was new - you can see remnants of colours in some places - grey, yellow, pale blue, salmon and white. Perhaps the original colouring would be preserved behind the stairs, or behind the wood in the corner of this room - but I don't think I'll take the house apart to find out!

The lower left room, which I think of as the kitchen, had other wallpapers applied over the art deco one. I think I'll probably leave the remains of the bright blue paper, with black and red shapes on it ... but cover the water stain here with pastels ...

While whatever flooring was in the lower right room has long gone, there are remains of floor papers in the kitchen:

There's a streaky bluey-green paper, and on the right, a streaky brown paper. Both are covered with a reddish substance, which I think is probably from the base of lino which was stuck onto the papers at some point, and then later removed. So I think the original flooring was bluey-green in the centre, with brown strips at the sides (and back and front too, perhaps?) I'm not sure yet what I'll do with this floor - probably find some old floor paper and place it over this.

Upstairs, the wallpapers are less exciting, but both rooms have two layers of flooring. This is the upper right room:

Here's a better view of the original wallpaper, as well as a scrap of one of the papers applied over it:

The original paper was cream-coloured, I think - it's browned in places - and embossed in a small pattern of irregular round shapes. One of the later papers was a ca 1970s embossed design of green on white, which can be seen in the corner in the photo above. On the back wall, there are remains of this paper too - just the brown back part of the paper, which I am removing - you can see the shapes of the embossing in this brown backing. You can also see a scrap of another paper, with a pink on white design.

The floor in here is very exciting. What you see first is blue stripey lino with a pink painted surround - but under the blue lino is a pink floor paper with a design of tiny dots:

Isn't it wonderful?! I'd like to lift the lino off altogether - I just hope I can do it without tearing this lovely paper.

The upper left room has some rather nice lino:

and a plain terracotta wallpaper:

It also has the same kind of very delicate floor paper under the lino, this time in brown. The lino isn't as loose here, but you can just see the paper:

I tried out a couple of pieces of furniture, just to see what they would look like. Obviously, there's a lot more cleaning to do, let along possibly removing the lino, and finding new floor papers for the kitchen and lower right room.

This bath would look good with the lino - not such a good match with the brown floor paper, if I remove the lino ....

I thought the triangular decoration of this sideboard made from Handicrafts design 5363 (available from the early 1920s-1934) would go well with the art deco wallpaper ...

I am also thinking about dolls to live here. The rooms have very high ceilings - about 13 inches (32.5 cm), and this lower right room is 12" (30 cm) wide and 15" (about 37.5 cm) deep. I could either have 1/12th scale dolls with very spacious rooms, or perhaps slightly larger dolls - I'll see what I have, and what comes along .... lots of excitement ahead!