No more stripping done

Well, tomorrow I go to Sydney for a few days on my way back to Darwin. I've unpacked quite a lot of my sister's boxes in our real-life house - I didn't get any more paint stripping done on this dolls house, though. However, I had brought with me a couple of rugs I acquired on ebay, and another set of Walther & Stevenson dolls house furniture, so I had a play with furnishing the house.

I was delighted to spot a set of Walther & Stevenson dolls house furniture on UK ebay late last year - I wonder how it got to England from Sydney? In the set were some pieces I already had, and many I didn't, including the lounge suite and the radio shown in the photo above.

There was also a grandfather (or grandmother?) clock (missing the clock face) and a hall stand (missing the mirror) in the set from England. (The pink table here is made from lids from jars, nailed to a wooden cotton reel - it came with this house, but I forgot to photograph it last time.)

The blue kitchen set came with this house, too - these photos will help remind me what I have, and what I still need in this house. (I have bought another rug for this room, but it hasn't arrived yet.)

The most exciting part of the UK ebay lot was this Walther & Stevenson bathroom! I was absolutely delighted to get it, even though the toilet is missing a bit, and the boiler (chip heater?) doesn't have its shower head - I can probably make one from a bit of wire.

There was another bedroom set, too:

For some reason, all the mirrors in this lot are missing, so I shall have to try to find replacements ... The door of the larger wardrobe doesn't hang properly, either.

With the pink and blue bedroom sets which came with this house, I can now have three bedrooms.

I have added a few of the other pieces that came with this house - the rug in the bathroom, a cushion, pillows and mattress, a hairbrush, and two of the dolls. A lot of the other items that came with it are more recent, or, like the felt carpeting and a matchbox lounge suite, in poor condition. I may use some of the felt, and I'll keep the matchbox furniture, but now I have the Walther & Stevenson lounge suite, I will use that instead.

So I have lots more paint stripping to do on future visits to Bathurst! In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye out for more rugs, and looking through my stash for bedding, dolls, kitchen accessories, etc.

Skippy, Skippy, Skippy the bush kangaroo!

 I'm sure many of you remember the Australian TV series from the late 1960s, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

A little while ago this dolls house appeared on ebay:

The post on the right of the verandah roof appears wonky - it's not fixed at the base, just sits in position, and can shift a bit. I thought I'd positioned it so it was straight, but obviously not!

It was described as "made for the 2nd series of "Skippy", so I contacted the seller to find out more. She replied,

My late husband was a cameraman in the second series of Skippy. The dolls house was made by the set builders for the set - The dolls house was used in the house where the children lived I believe. My late husband brought it home for my daughter after the series ended.

 The seller very kindly offered to pack it for freighting from Brisbane, so I was able to buy it!

As the seller also said in the auction listing, it is pretty basic - most of the detail is on the front. It's quite big - the base is 30" (76.5 cm) wide and 14" (about 35.5 cm) deep, while the roofline is 33" wide by 18" deep. It's about 26 1/2" (about 67.5)  high to the top of the higher roof ridges.

The inside is bare stained plywood:

There are four rooms, two with roof heights of about 12" (30 cm), and two about 18" (45 cm) high. Apart from the height, the dimensions of the rooms are about 1/12th scale - about 10" (25.5 cm) deep, and (going left to right in the picture above), 9 1/4" (23.5 cm), 10" (25.5 cm) and 10 1/4" (26 cm) wide.

There are arched doorways cut between the lower rooms:

The doorways are 7 1/4" (about 18.5 cm) high. (The front door is 7" (17.75 cm) high.)

The seller didn't know which episode(s) of Series 2 the dolls house appeared in - I've only watched one episode, and didn't spot it, so I'll have to check out some more.

 

The roof - thin strips of ply simulate roof capping.

I don't know if I'll furnish this dolls house - or perhaps find some figures for the verandah. What do you think?

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!

Happy New Year!

Where did the last four months of 2013 go? I don't know - I guess I was busy at work, and I did get two online magazines out on Dolls Houses Past and Present, but my intentions to write more blog posts came to nothing.
I'm now on my summer holiday, and I'm staying with my sister in Bathurst, NSW. She moved here just before Christmas, to live in the house our mother left us. I've been helping her unpack boxes, especially boxes of books.
I've also started stripping paint from the wallpaper in the antique book-style house from Sydney, which I showed in May last year.

The wall on the left was covered with the same pink paint as the back wall. (The lower right corner is the last bit I did on that wall - it's darker because it's still a bit damp from the stripper.)

The stripped wallpaper has lost some of the colour and detail of the original papers in the rooms below, but looks much better than solid pink!

I also took off some of the paint from the floor of the room below, as I wanted to reveal more of the writing stamped on the wood:

I think it says Bruto 59, though I'm not sure about the last letter.

 

And just before I stopped, because the sun was moving round to the spot in the garden where I was working, I put some paint stripper on a corner of the roof. It removed the top layer of pink - I think there's another layer of red underneath the blue:

I don't know how much more stripping I'll get done while I'm here - I have another week, before I spend a few days in Sydney and then fly back to Darwin. I'm hoping I'll get this room finished, at least.

I also have four new dolls houses occupying my bedroom here, so I'm hoping to get a headstart on blogging and show them to you while I'm here! (Actually, there are five, counting a cardboard flatpack dolls house!)

I hope you have all had a happy Christmas, and wish you all a safe, healthy, happy and prosperous year ahead, with lots of dolls house fun!

Hansa, not Hanse

At the end of last year, when I was preparing Valérie Braun's article for Dolls Houses Past and Present about Hanse and Lisa dolls houses from Denmark, I thought I'd seen another Hanse house on Australian ebay. I did a bit of googling, and found that the house I'd been thinking of was actually made by an Australian company called Hansa! I was able to buy one earlier this year, and here it is:

It's a quite simple 4-roomed dolls house for children, made of solid pine wood except for the back, which is hardboard. It's 51 cm (20") high to the peak of the roof, 63 cm (24.75") at its widest point (the eaves), and 20 cm (about 8") deep.

The main thing of interest to me is the printed paper backing showing details of each room.
Here's the kitchen, complete with mis-spelled dog bowl (it says DOGY, in case you can't see it):

The living room, which shows more details through the windows:

The scenery is not particularly Australian (unlike in another dolls house I picked up on the same trip to Sydney), although barbed wire fences can be found in many country areas in Australia.

 
The children's bedroom looks out onto more fencing extending over hills, with some sheep scattered around. Inside, there is wallpaper with pandas, and toys including a clown, a ball and a teddy bear.

The main bedroom has a similar rural scene outside, and inside, just a chair and chest of drawers with a mirror.

Thankfully, the maker's name is printed at the bottom of the living room wall:

Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have known that this dolls house was made in Australia (although perhaps the power points give a clue). I certainly wouldn't have known the maker. The Hansa company is still operating. It currently makes stuffed animals, with a special range of endangered animals. Their website says that the company was started in Melbourne in the early 1970s by Hans J Axthelm (so Hans A, I suppose). They began making plush toys in 1989. I'm not sure when this dolls house was made - hopefully, when I am able to look through more issues of the Australian toy trade journal, I will find it. I think it probably dates from the 1980s. I did find a Hansa toy garage in a late 70s / early 80s toy catalogue in the National Library:

Geoff Emerton Toyworld catalogue, Kingston ACT, late 70s, early 80s?

It looks like my house was varnished at home, rather than in the factory, as there were lots of hairs from the paintbrush stuck in the varnish!

Perhaps they were sold as raw pine, to be finished at home. There's another one for sale on ebay right now which has been painted in bright colours.

My dolls house came with dolls house furniture that I think is more recent - it's all wood, painted white with pink seats, knobs, etc. I think I'll look through my stash for furnishings that match the printed ones, perhaps blue and yellow in the kitchen and kids' bedroom, purple and pink in the main bedroom and living room - I'll see what I can find. It came with dolls, too - Fisher Price Loving Family parents, older girl, and many babies! I'm not sure if they'll stay. So - more on this house later on, when I've furnished it. Before that, I'll probably show you the other Australian-made timber dolls house I got on the same trip, which also has printed paper backing showing features of the rooms.

Linda and more Linda

Last night, I sat down to write a blog post about the latest set of Linda furniture I have acquired - and discovered that I had not blogged about the earlier ones! I thought that I had, but I only showed two chairs in my Blue-Box rooms with the Dolly Darlings.

The first sets I got came in these boxes:

Cute, hey?

I'm glad to have these sets, as they have the brand name, Linda, as well as Made in Hong Kong, on the front, side and back of the box.

Also, the back of the box shows photos of the sets available:

So, the sets I got in these boxes are -

A dining room set in orange, brown and white:

A living room set in red and brown:

And a nursery set, which, strangely, comes with a TV:

I have other sets which I acquired without their boxes, and probably wouldn't know the maker of if I hadn't found the boxed sets.

The chairs that the Dolly Darlings are using come from a yellow and white living room set, which has a table with a cardboard surface imitating tiles:

Anna-Maria has a yellow and brown living room set, which I photographed when I visited her earlier this year:

I have another dining room set, in red and white - the dining table also has a cardboard surface, probably imitating formica:

And I have a single sideboard, which came without a table and chairs. It has a cardboard desktop on it:

I wonder what colour the table and chairs would have been, if it was part of a dining room set?

The only piece I have from the bathroom set is a bath, missing its tap. It's blue, as shown on the back of the box:

I don't have any pieces from the bedroom set, as far as I know - and until recently, I didn't have the kitchen either.

Then I found this:

The kitchen is in the same colour combination as can be seen on the first box, with yellow chairs, yellow and brown stripes on the doors under the sink, a pink towel, and a blue stove top. (I will try to remove the black marker pen from the plastic covering the set.)

The box is quite different.

The back shows an ordinary girl - and a boy (I think) - playing around a large dolls house, rather than the Holly Hobbie style figure on the other boxes.

This box doesn't show the brand name, it just says Made in Hong Kong, and has a letter E in a flag. However, the sides of the box depict the same 6 sets of furniture as on the marked Linda boxes, although they are drawn, not photographed, and they are rather different colours:

The living room set is purple and yellow, and the bathroom is purple and green, blue or white!

The bedroom looks more red than pink, and the dining room looks like my red and white set, but with a sideboard that is coloured all over.

Which box do you think is earlier? I'm not sure whether photographs of the sets available would have replaced drawings, or whether the Not Recommended for Children under 3 Years Old indicates more regulation of toys, and hence a later date. As for the design of the boxes, I don't know. Perhaps they weren't from different years, but rather produced for different markets? What do you think?

As for the design inspiration for much of the furniture, compare this ad for Modella roomboxes at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg in 1968:

You can see photos of the room sets in diepuppenstubensammlerin's article about Modella roomboxes  and on her blog here.