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!

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!