The other house

I mentioned that I bought two vintage dolls houses from Recycling Works. As well as the hardboard house, there was a lithographed tin dolls house. Here are some quick photos of it - I haven't cleaned it at all yet.

The ground floor exterior is built of stone, while the upper floor is timber-clad.

I particularly like the wall frieze in the children's bedroom - there's a frog, a rabbit, a squirrel, a cat and ducklings.

The walls are in quite good condition, but the floors and roof are rather rusty.

I like the yellow-flowered curtains in the living room, and there are yellow curtains in the main bedroom too.

There's no maker's name on this house - does anyone recognise it? I think it's probably American - possibly made by Marx??

Eagle Toys Hexagonal House, Canada 1950s

I have been thinking about this house. It's not a traditional-shaped dolls' house, as (1) it is a bungalow, and (2) it is round or hexagonal, depending on whether you look at the roof or the floor:

It was made in Canada in the 1950s by Eagle Toys Co. I bought it from Canada, through US ebay. It came with a lot of moulded plastic furniture, some by Eagle Toys -


and some other brands such as Louis Marx.

I like the house very much, but I was always a bit bored by the furniture. I think there were two things I wasn't happy with - much of the furniture was very similar in style to furniture produced by Renwal, Kleeware, etc, at around the same time -


and I don't think this suits the modern, innovative architecture of the house.

Some of the furniture is more modern in style:


but a bit too small for the house:


Reading Zillner & Cooper's Antique & Collectible Dollhouses and their Furnishings has explained this, I think:

The Eagle Toy Company, located in Montreal, Canada, made many different styles of dollhouses during the 1950s. The firm's two-story metal houses .... were quite small and would have been furnished with 1/2" to one foot furniture. The company's unusual hexagonal house was in a scale of 3/4" to 0ne foot and was made of both fiberboard and metal.

So most of the Eagle Toy dolls houses were 1/24th scale; only the hexagonal house was 1/16th, and was no doubt furnished with the same furniture made for the two storey metal houses (which were also more traditional in style than the hexagonal house).

The other day I pulled out the boxes of 1950s German dolls' house furniture I have bought and stored for the 1950s bungalow and room boxes I haven't yet set up - and tried out some of the furniture in the house. I found that I had pieces that match remarkably well in colour, as well as design.
The bedroom now has two pieces of Crailsheimer furniture, which I think look great, and the original Eagle Toys bed. I'm now on the look-out for a more stylish bed.


The living room is next:


followed by the dining room:


I think the interior designer wasn't quite up with the modern style of the house - but maybe people really did mix their styles, and choose ornate wall candelabras and mirrors to furnish houses like this?

Next to this is the kitchen:


This gorgeous kitchen cupboard and sink may also be Crailsheimer, but I'm not sure. We had a cupboard in the 1960s like this - except it was all white, and the sliding doors of the upper shelves were glass. Unfortunately it got sold by mistake during a move (mixed up with the cupboard we really wanted to sell).
The woman who lives here came with the house. I think she likes her new furniture better - it does rather fill the rooms, but I think she has worked as a stewardess (flight attendant in modern-speak), and is used to working in compact spaces.

Here's another view of the kitchen - you can see that the ceilings are raw fibre-board:


Finally, there's the outdoor area - presumably also the entrance:


These dolls are the niece and nephew of the woman who lives here - they also came with the house. I think they must have been chosen to match the decor!

Two rooms, and this entrance area, are open to the covered central courtyard, and two have doors leading to it - those are the doors to the dining room opposite.

The house is meant to be on casters, to make viewing it easier. It certainly would, but sadly there were no casters - there are certainly holes for them, so maybe I can find some to fit.