Miniature Museum pieces from Sweden - Dollhouse chairs and more

This photo is from the Kotte Toys website

While visiting museums in
Scandinavia last summer I discovered the most charming miniature chair kits.

These kits are made by a company in Sweden - Kotte Toys - and are replicas in 1/12th scale of pieces that are in the museum where I bought them.


If you visit this page on their website the list of chair kits is down the left hand side. In most cases the links under the pictures go to illustrations of the built kit and sometimes a picture of the actual museum chair.


For example here are pictures of the chairs built from the first kits pictured here (note: the pics are from the website. I haven't built mine yet - my arm is still in a cast) ...

Although I purchased only the kits for antique items the website shows a lot of kits for "Danish Modern" type furniture as well.

I was so excited to have found these wonderful souvenirs of my trip to Norway, Denmark and Sweden. I was doubly excited when I realized I was buying actual reproductions of the museum pieces I was looking at.

I am looking forward to building my wonderful kits and painting them to match the originals. I would love to collect ALL the kits and the website has an order page, but wouldn't it be much more fun to go back to Scandinavia and buy them in person?


If I ever get my arm out of this cast and I get these kits built I will share the results in a future blog, but that won't be for a while.

Hugs,
Susan

Antique Dollhouse dolls on a board and a broken wrist

 You may have noticed, dear readers, that I haven't posted much lately.

I have lots to share with you - my own FAO Schwarz mystery house, miniature chair kits from Swedish museums, antique dollhouse furniture, and much more. But, at present I am incapacitated.

I took a header off my bicycle on the way to work a couple of weeks ago and broke my wrist.

Two days ago I had surgery on my wrist. This impedes my ability to take pictures and post blog entries.

But, as I wanted to share these dolls with you,  I took pictures with my iPhone - one-handed - and I am typing slowly with my left hand. Please excuse typos, etc.

This wonderful seven doll family is tied to a wooden board. Here are the grandparents.

All the dolls have cloth bodies and painted black boots. They are all ready to be dressed by the little mistress of their miniature abode.

Grandpa is the tallest of the family at 5.5 inches.

The next two dolls must be father and mother. I like father's jaunty moustache and mother's shiny black hair.

Next are the 3 children. I would guess that the son is the oldest due to his handsome side whiskers.

Although, we could also assume the older couple are the parents and the others are assorted children and servants - or vice versa.

Does anyone know whether these are dolls by Kestner, or what years they would have been sold?

Any comments about these dolls is welcomed. I would love to identify them.

From the top you can see the wooden board that the family is attached to by string. The board is rather crude for such an elegant family.

Here is the back of the board showing the string the dolls are tied on with, and several holes in the board.

I don't know whether the holes were used to fasten the board into a presentation box, or to hang it on a display wall. Let me know if you know anything about them.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this family as much as I enjoyed sharing them.



Hugs,
Slightly broken Susan

Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, Norway

I had a lot of fun travelling around Scandinavia this summer. I found dollhouses and miniatures everywhere I looked. I hope to post about a few of my finds soon, but for now I want to show you the wonderful exhibit of toys and dolls in the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum).

Below is a random sampling of the lovely antique toys. I apologise for the reflection in most of the pictures. The toys were behind glass. Check out Die Puppenstubensammlerin's recent post too. She visited this museum this summer too.

I hope you enjoy the tour!!

My Tynietoy Townhouse saga has come to a satisfying end. The auction house was fined for violation of ethics.

If you have been following my blog for a couple of years you may remember the terrible time I had with a certain auction house in Maine when I put in the winning bid on a Tynietoy Townhouse in February 2012.

(See pictures of my beautiful, hard-won, house throughout this post.)

You can catch up with the saga on my post of June 21, 2012 - The house is mine!!.

I got it for a very low price. I was so excited. I paid for it and waited for it to be sent to me. It didn't come. After repeated attempts to find out when it was being sent I finally got the auction house manager on the phone (he had been refusing to talk to me, but I kept insisting). He told me they wouldn't give it to me, saying that it was in the auction by mistake. That it had been smashed up by careless employees and they couldn't sell it.

But, they put it up for auction again 4 months later.

Below I quote from the post - The house is mine!!

"My dear friend, CM, went to bat for me when this house came up for sale again... She posted about it on her blogs. She called and emailed all the dollhouse collectors and dealers we know. And she had me file a complaint with the Maine Attorney General.

While none of these valiant efforts stopped the re-sale of the dollhouse, CM got the support of the dollhouse collectors world and no one bid on the house except her. And she bought it for me!!!"

Today, over a year later, I received a letter from the State of Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation and Auction Licensing Board.

They have fined the auction house $900.00 for a violation of contract requirements, failure to account for property, incompetence ... gross neglect or violation of applicable code of ethics, and violating Auction Board Licensing rules like "an auctioneer shall not commit gross negligence, incompetence or misconduct in the practice of auctioneering".

The auction house also received a warning from the State Board that they would be keeping an eye on them about ethical practices.

I feel somewhat vindicated. It just proves that consumers can fight against unfair practices and stand up for themselves.

I bet the auction house now wishes they had let me have the dollhouse back then, when I bought and paid for it.

The story has a happy ending anyway, as the Tynietoy Townhouse ended up with me after all, thanks to my wonderful friend and fellow blogger CM at My Realitty!!

VIKTOR&ROLF DOLLS on the catwalk at the Royal Ontario Museum

Last Sunday, fearing a continuation of the thunderstorms we had experienced on Saturday, my daughter and I decided to go to the museum instead of taking our planned bike ride to Toronto Islands.

We had gone to the ROM to see the exhibit on Ancient Mesopotamia, but before we had even come to the ticket counter my attention was caught by an incredible display of dolls.

This haute couture display from VIKTOR&ROLF, an Amsterdam-based fashion house, was part of this year's Luminato Festival, an event each June "where the best artists in the world and the best artists in Canada fill the stage that is Toronto with new and wonderful creations."

The ROM website tells us " VIKTOR&ROLF DOLLS features 31 Victorian porcelain dolls, dressed in impeccably crafted, miniaturized versions of Viktor&Rolf's historic couture designs, parading on a scaled catwalk.  The Dutch designers have styled these iconic dolls, roughly 65 centimetres tall, as hand-crafted archival replicas of their creations, right down to eye colour, hair, and makeup. For this show, the designers created a new and unique platform and environment specifically for the ROM's Thorsell Spirit House."

(Editor's Note; These appear to be reproduction dolls made from antique moulds. I am not sure why they called them "Victorian dolls")

Hav a look at their site here http://www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/viktorrolf-dolls
There is more information and a short movie about the dolls

I have added most of the pictures I took of the dolls below. There are a lot, so it is up to you whether you see them all or not, but I didn't want to leave any out, as each doll is unique.

Today is the last day for this exhibit in Toronto. Read more about the exhibit here: http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/viktorrolf-dolls-come-to-the-rom

Pictures of the dolls from 2010 can be found at this link.

Several of the dolls were wearing porcelain shoes like the delft pattern ones shown here.