And here's the furniture!

I could see from the auction listing that the book house I showed in my last post was something special - I could also see that most of the furniture had come from the Sydney toy shop Walther & Stevenson!

There's a pink Walther & Stevenson bedroom set:

and a blue Walther & Stevenson bedroom set:

(I'm not sure if the blue bed is from Walther & Stevenson - I'm pretty sure the blue dressing table isn't.)

Both sets have been painted twice. Walther & Stevenson sold them as natural plywood, which could be painted by the buyer, or left plain. The pieces which I bought with the Toyworks dolls house were left plain. These have apricot paint under the pink (the same pink as the house has been painted!), and pale mint green under the blue.

There's also a blue Walther & Stevenson kitchen set:

The two layers of paint on these pieces meant that the doors wouldn't open. I used a Stanley knife (box cutter) to work through the paint in the cracks, and managed to get one of the cupboard doors on the sink open, and both wardrobes.

Guess what I found in the pink wardrobe?!

Clothes! which had been painted in!!!

Here they are:

A wee dress, a top for a baby, a table cloth, a knitted jumper, and a lace skirt. Four dolls came with the house, two little girls and two babies. The dress and top fit two of the dolls perfectly:

The other little girl does fit into the jumper, but as she has no legs, she is more comfortable in the pram:

The living room furniture doesn't come from Walther & Stevenson. There are two homemade matchbox chairs, which need recovering:

And I forgot to photograph a homemade table, made from the screw-on lids of two jars with a wooden cotton reel between them (all painted pink, naturally).

I'm not sure about the fireplace - it is wooden, but professionally painted, unlike most of pieces sold by Walther & Stevenson:

The other furniture looks more recent. It is painted with European folk designs. There's another bed, with some chairs and a bench:

And a grandfather clock, table and bench:

The bed is signed underneath:

It looks like 'A. Kody'. (The taped name is presumably a former owner of the piece?)
I think I've seen other furniture on Australian ebay, with similar painted designs and also signed with this name. Does anyone know more about it, or have any?

Another "book" house, this time from Sydney

I have posted about one of the dolls houses I picked up from Anna-Maria in Canberra. My sister in Sydney was also holding a dolls house for me - here it is on her spare bed, waiting for me:

This was listed on ebay as a "Gorgeous Vintage Wooden Children's Dolls House'. It was in western Sydney (near Penrith). The house is indeed gorgeous - or could be again - and I was especially excited to see that it came with lots of furniture which I can now recognise as from Walther & Stevenson!

This house is 18 1/2 inches wide, 2 feet tall to the top of the chimney, and 16 1/2 inches deep when closed (so the rooms are about 8 inches deep). The front "door", which doesn't open, is about 6" high to the top of the arched fanlight.

What looks like the front of the house is actually one of the side walls - the house opens in half, like a book, on the chimney side. The house I bought last year from Melbourne also opens like a book, though the chimney is at the other end on that one.

The end of the house with the hinges:

 The house seems to have had several generations of play, going by the layers of paint on it. Under the pink on the roof, there are traces of blue, and under that red:

And on the door and window frames, there's a layer of pink on top of blue again, and under that traces of green:

As you can see, there's some wonderful wallpaper inside:

The lower left room

The lower right room even has beautiful paper on the ceiling:

There's paper on the ceiling of the lower left room, but it has been painted over:

All the upstairs room have been painted pink, over the top of the wallpaper:

Can you see the texture of the wallpaper, and the strips around the windows and along the top of the walls? I'll get some paint stripper, and try to remove the paint from the wallpaper - if it's like the downstairs wallpaper, it will definitely be worth trying to save ...

It looks like there were pictures stuck onto the wallpaper, which were lifted before the wallpaper was painted over, and then stuck back down on the paint. Unfortunately, one of the pictures has torn (and so did the wallpaper it was stuck to):

Some of the dirty felt that came with the house as carpeting 

Most of the windows on this side of the house are broken - not sure how easy it will be to fix them.

I'll show the furniture that came with this house in my next post. Most of the furniture appears in catalogues of the Sydney toy store Walther & Stevenson. Maybe the house was bought from there too? I haven't yet seen it in a catalogue, but as I've only seen four catalogues, and one catalogue specifically states that they have dolls houses in styles other than those pictured, it certainly seems possible.

Whoever made it, they thriftily recycled a packing case. Here's the base:

It appears to say 'Magnetically clea[ned] by [W]alker & [G]reig Proc[....]'. I wonder what was in it?

A Bodo Hennig in Australia?

I was quite excited when I saw this dolls house on Australian ebay earlier this year:

I recognised the design from diepuppenstubensammlerin's Update: Bodo Hennig Dolls Houses 1955-1981. In Germany, it was called the MIDI-Puppenhaus Allgäu. I had also seen it in the 1983 catalogue of a UK importer, Stephen Burghard. There, it was called Tina's House:

So perhaps it had been imported into Australia, too?

I could see, though, that the wallpapers in the Australian house were different from the ones used in Haus Allgäu / Tina's house, which I recognise from my Bodo Hennig Bodensee.

(I think the stairs got a bit bumped during the trip.)

The dolls house was in Canberra, and Anna-Maria (The Shopping Sherpa) very kindly collected it and held it for me, until I went to Canberra and picked it up from her last weekend.

I mentioned in an email to Anna-Maria how great it was to find a Bodo Hennig dolls house in Australia, and not have the expense of shipping it from overseas.

The rugs came with the house, and seem to have been made for it. Major trip hazards for dolls, though!

After she had picked it up, Anna-Maria replied,

 Except it’s not a Bodo Hennig L Sorry to break that to you, but unless BH manufactured under the name ‘Woodtoys Pty Ltd’ I think you’ve just bought an Australian licensed product. Which actually might be more interesting… J

The name Woodtoys is clearly printed on the back of the house:

I agree with Anna-Maria that it's even more interesting - I had not heard of Woodtoys Pty Ltd before, and I am always delighted to learn about Australian makers of dolls houses!

I still don't know much about Woodtoys - Anna-Maria found company information which showed that they were registered in 1977, and deregistered at the end of 2009. Apart from the wallpapers, the design of this dolls house appears identical to the Bodo Hennig Haus Allgäu / Tina's house, and the dimensions are the same as those given in the Burghard catalogue. So it would seem that it was made under license. I wonder if other Bodo Hennig models were also made here, or whether Woodtoys distributed Bodo Hennig dolls house furniture (smaller and lighter to import than dolls houses)?

If you know anything about Woodtoys, I'd love to hear from you! I hope one day, too, that I'll be able to look through issues of the Australian toy trade journal, and maybe I'll find some information about Woodtoys in that. I was able to visit the National Library of Australia while I was in Canberra, and skimmed through issues of the toy trade magazine from 1964-1969. I did discover some Australian-made dolls houses that were new to me, as well as some imported ones - I'll show some of my discoveries in another post. I didn't have time to look through later issues from the 1970s and 80s, so didn't find any mentions of Woodtoys.

Sherry and Pepper have a party

Pepper and Sherry are having a party. Things look a bit strained, though, and Sunny and Mandy don't seem very comfortable ..... Are Pepper and Sherry arguing?

Or are they just talking to some of the girls in the other rooms?

Lacey is feeling a bit off colour, and is staying in bed.

Melly and Sandy have come to keep her company, but Sandy's idea of keeping her company was to play the radio very loudly. Melly turns it down, and tells Sandy off for being selfish and not thinking of Lacey ...

Heather and Libby are in the kitchen finding some food ... Perhaps some drinks would help make the party livelier, too?

Michaela is in the bathroom, despairing at the state of her hair.

"Why don't you get it cut short, like mine?" asks Susie. "It will be much easier to take care of then."


The girls are Dolly Darlings by Palitoy. Sunny and Susie have their original names, but who would want to be called Lounge Suit or Powder Puff?

 

I have just discovered that Dolly Darlings had their own playrooms - a bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. However, I don't have them - the rooms my Dolly Darlings live in are by Blue-Box.

They don't have a date on them, as some Blue-box dolls houses do. Many of the furnishings, and the colours, look quite retro ...

But that looks like a laptop computer in the bedroom, so they must be considerably later than the 1970s!

Never mind, I think the rooms suit the 1960s Dolly Darlings very well - who knows what they make of the laptop! I added some extra furniture - Fisher Price bunk beds and kitchen table and chairs, Linda from Hong Kong lounge chairs.

The buttons you can see at the front of each room turn on battery-powered lights and sounds in each room. Sometime I'll take videos of them, so you can get the full effect!

PS. I have turned on the Comment Verification again. I got tired of getting comments from spammers who said things like, "Great post, and by the way have you seen my website, house painting in Missouri?" I hope it won't be too hard for you to work out those pesky numbers - why are they such poor images here, when some other websites have quite clear verification numbers?!