PI Angus Shand

As Pubdoll (very appropriately) pointed out, a Private Investigator must have whisky! PI Angus Shand agrees, and has stocked up with some fine Scottish whisky - Grants, Spey Royal and Old Fettercairn, to fortify himself before he goes out to follow up a new lead:


(It was through his choice of whisky that I learned this private investigator's name. My Shand ancestors came from Garmouth, in Speymouth parish, Moray, in Scotland, and later bought estates in Fettercairn parish, Kincardineshire. One, William Shand, patented improvements in the distillation of whisky, ca 1830s.)

VERO (DDR) 1960s bungalow

I have had this house for just over a year, but have only just put it together. It came in its original box, with an instructional diagram:


"Zerlegbar" means it can be taken apart. Of course, it has to be put together before it can be taken apart. The box also says 'Absolut Standfestigkeit durch Schraubverbindung" - roughly: 'complete stability due to screw fastening'. I don't know about that - I think you need to be an octopus with hands and eyes on each tentacle to screw this together. I managed, but I have to admit that the plugs into which I was supposed to be screwing the screws came out of the holes in the walls and became firmly attached to the screws, so in effect my house has metal plug joints. Oh well - here it is:


Definitely worth trying to be an octopus.

(The box also says 'Washable surfaces'. I agree about the roof and floor, but I'm not sure about the wallpaper or the artificial grass.)

Until this weekend, I thought this house dated to the 1950s. I think that's what the auction on German ebay said, and it looked like it to me. However, I was looking through the Puppenhausmuseum website trying to identify the furniture, and found a similar, though two-storey house, with an identical box, dated to 1968-70:


This house has a name - Seeblick, 'Seaview', unlike the bungalow. But they have many identical features, and were most likely made at the same period.

The Puppenhausmuseum site is a wonderful source of information (as well as being very enjoyable to look through). Another page gives some information about VERO, describing a house as made by "Moritz Gottschalk innerhalb von VERO (Vereinigte Olbernauer Spielwarenfabriken VEB" - 'Maurice Gottschalk within VERO (United Toy Factories of Olbernhau POI [People's Own Industry])'. So VERO stands for Vereinigte Olbernhauer.
Olbernhau is in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) region of Germany, in what used to be East Germany, close to the Czech border. This is an area well known for its wooden toys. I found some more information about VERO on German Wikipedia, which lists the companies that at different times formed part of VERO (including a wax flower factory, construction toy firms and a musical toy firm, although Gottschalk is not mentioned). It seems that VERO was founded in 1966, although of course many of the firms which combined to form VERO were operating long before this.


So, back to my house. There are only two rooms, which I have furnished as a bedroom:


and a living room:


The red and yellow chairs, the fireplace, and the two little three-legged stools in the bedroom came with the house. So did several pieces of country-style wooden furniture painted with hearts and flowers, which I think may also be made by VERO. Also, there were seven little plastic and rubber people (mostly Ari), whom I have callously dispossessed. Two of my Erna Meyer dolls now live here.

All the other furniture is German, but bought separately from the house.


(I apologise for the flash in these photos. This house stands under the table which holds the Bodo Hennig Bodensee, and doesn't get much natural light.)

I was lucky enough to find the bedroom furniture with its original box, and with the bedding (though whether that is original or made by a former owner, I'm not sure). The box is lovely,


but very uninformative, unless the numbers stamped on the side mean something to somebody:


So I have no idea who made this beautiful furniture.

The living room furniture, apart from the two red and yellow chairs, also came as a set (including the clock and plant stand with pots), but without a box, so again, I don't know the maker.


The tea set I bought on US ebay; most of the ornaments are costume jewellery brooches bought on various ebays.

The glass doors in each room slide open to a long patio:


One end is roofed, and has a bed of flowers:


Here's a view through the open living room sliding glass doors:


(These poor dolls are rather faded on their fronts, but still lovely.)

As well as a chess table and one chair (from Sweden), there is also a swing seat on the patio - what in German is known as a "Hollywood swing":


As you can see, along the top of the glass doors and at each end the house is faced with wood veneer:

The VERO mark appears on this end:


(And clearly, 'Made in Germany' does not always indicate that the item so marked dates from before WWII, as is sometimes thought. This house definitely post-dates the division of Germany, but does not state which Germany it comes from on the house or box.)

There is also a (torn) paper label on the side of the box, which no doubt gives information about the production run:


Now a couple of PSs -
PS 1. - The box for the house has some writing on it. The writing on the side is clear:


"Präger Verkauft". Now, my German-English dictionary, and an online one I found, both say that Präger means 'coiner'. However, I suspect that it means 'lay-by' here (or, as I believe they say in the US, 'lay-away') - in other words, a deposit has been paid and the balance will be paid. Perhaps a German reader could let me know?
- Oese has suggested that this is probably the name of the person who bought it - thank you Oese!
So, 'Präger, Sold' - and the top of the box tells us:


As part of this writing was eaten away, I played around with the image, and I think it says "Präger bis Mittwoch" - 'Präger till Wednesday'. So the house was probably first owned by a family called Präger - so I will call my Erna Meyer couple Mr & Mrs Präger (or Praeger in English).

Ps 2. I bought another set of living room furniture, never removed from its box:


The chairs are very similar, but have metal legs, so this set is probably by a different manufacturer. It has more information on the box, with the name Keller on the lid:


and a label on the side, with the name Dregeno and an image of a leaping deer in front of a pine tree, as well as the recommended retail price of 9.20 DM (presumably?):


There is also a name, D. Mansfeld, stamped under the box, which I imagine could be the name of the seller / shop, or possibly the person who checked the contents (although they would more likely have a number or initials, I would have thought):


I haven't heard of either Keller or Dregeno before, and know nothing about them. I have been tempted to remove the furniture - I love the newspaper holder! - but for a house this small, it's not worth it.

PS 3. I bought this house on German ebay from another seller who went to some trouble to send this to me, with the usual story of incorrect quotes, and then 'oh dear, sorry, too big for the mail'. When this happens, I am happy to pay more to actually get the house (I don't see why the seller should have to pay the extra when the post office has misquoted - it's happened several times, in several different countries - just one of those things when buying a large item). I really appreciate sellers who take some effort to find a means of shipping the house I've bought. So, thank you, Limpeter!

Homemade Australian - Leadlight Arts & Crafts style house, ca 1920s?

This is another of my homemade Australian houses. This one came from Victoria (the Australian state), from an ebay seller who used to have an antiques shop at Armadale, and who picked the house up at a local market. Whether the market was in Armadale, or what the history of the dolls house was before he found it at the market, I don't know.


It appears to be quite old, based on the lino flooring and the type of glass used in the windows. Also, a lot of paint has been lost from the roof, and some glass is missing from the windows. I'm not an expert on vintage glass or lino - I suspect it may date from the 30s, but possibly even earlier, ca 1920.
A great deal of work has gone into the exterior of this house; by contrast, the interior is very basic. The house has three remaining glass windows, and one which would originally have had glass in it.
This is the main leadlight window, from the outside:


(you can also see the beading in the woodwork in this photo);

and from the inside:


The texture and colours of the glass remind me of glass I've seen in houses built in the late 19th century and the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The front gable has another leadlight window, happily complete:


You can also see the shingles individually nailed to the face of the gable here. (And some clumsy repainting, which I haven't attempted to remove.)

The side gable window is sadly empty of glass, but the metalwork is also quite intricate:



The other side of the dolls house has a small window with a single pane of cobalt blue glass:


This side, unlike the other, has timber clapboard or weatherboard cladding. It also has two drainpipes (one complete, one half there):


I like to try to work out what architectural style the builder of each dolls house had in mind. I have a book called Australian House Styles by Maisy Stapleton and Ian Stapleton, with descriptions and drawings I can compare with the houses. In this case, I think the Arts & Crafts style (as expressed in Australia) may have been influencing the maker of this house. This style was common in the decade 1910-1920.

Here is part of Australian House Style's description of Arts and Crafts:

A multi-gabled roof swept over the building ....The deeply-pitched roof dipped into steeply-angled gullies, [or] formed hoods over windows ... The roof was supported by additional brackets and corbels ... exposed rafter ends peeking from beneath the roof's edge revealed the honesty of the construction.
... The multitude of roofline gables encouraged a variety of finishes, as if to prove the architect's imaginative skill. Shingles ... were typical. ... Sometimes a shaggy coating of weathered timber shingles crept over the entire upper storey or formed an apron below a porch or window opening. ...
The organic nature of the style led to a diversity of window forms, each somewhat perversely different from the other and scattered with abandon. There were strips of windows, with delicately tinted panes, bays of casements with a coloured glass frieze, oriel windows and small slit windows. [p. 60]

Several of these features were also typical of the Federation style, common in the decade before this - coloured glass windows, gables, shingling, etc. So perhaps the maker, clearly skilled in woodwork and metalwork, was simply including decorative features seen in many houses in the first two decades of last century, without being particularly focussed on any one style.

While the exterior is very detailed, the interior doesn't seem to have been given a lot of attention. There is no ceiling - the beams are exposed, and the inside of the roof is unfinished wood:

Beams are typical of Arts and Crafts houses, but usually within the ceiling!
Why is there a strip of wood running vertically down the back wall? and why a ledge running horizontally below the blue window? Were there perhaps partitions dividing the space into two or three rooms? With several rooms, and well-made soft furnishings, the interior could perhaps have been as decorative as the exterior.

The house didn't come with any furniture. I have furnished it with items which reflect its era (depression?), the patterned and coloured glass in the windows, and its new inhabitants - two cats!

Both cats are German - the one on the left, standing at the table, is a Kersa cat:

There is a large jug for milk, some chicken soup in a packet, and a (quite modern) whole chicken. Behind her is a framed photograph (to be hung) of an explorer cat, a relative of theirs, pictured at some ruins in Italy.

The other cat is a Schuco Bigo Fix cat. He is standing in front of a German kitchen dresser with clear patterned glass in the top. The bedding is from America - a lovely crazy patchwork quilt cover. The fireplace is homemade Canadian - on it is a portrait of a military ancestor, and a statuette of a very well-known ancestor wearing boots:


The green pressed glass is German; the cobalt glass English; the glass hen dish came from the US, and the jugs and glasses came from the UK and the US, but I think they may be German originally.
I was inspired to people a dolls' house with cats by Vivien Greene's Shell Villa, "a lodging house for cats in need of sea air, kept by Tabitha, Selina and Bramwell Twitchett." I've never seen any other cat dolls like hers, and I don't like dolls with cat heads and human hands and feet, while these German small-scale soft toy animals fit well here, and have articulated heads and limbs, allowing them to be posed.