Mouse miniatures - Fool on the HIll

I recently watched the movie "Dinner for Schmucks" To my delight, the opening credits are a series of miniature scenes accompanied by Paul McCartney singing Fool on the Hill. Watch the credits here:
Also check out this link to learn about how the miniature scenes were created: Art of the Title. It has some interesting information about how the idea came about and how the dioramas were set up.

Below are some of the scenes.

I enjoyed the movie very much even though the main character, Barry, played by Steve Carell, can be quite frustrating to watch at times.

It is a story about an underdog with a unique talent who proves his worth despite his shortcomings.

The wonderful mouse dioramas are featured throughout the movie and are expertly done.

I would recommend it, not only for the miniatures, but for the sweet story and the rather obvious moral.


If you subscribe to Netflix you can find it there. Enjoy!

Susan

Round Shingle House at the Strong Museum - Antique Dollhouse

I took a lot of pictures the day I visited the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. I have many more to share with you in future posts, but today I want to share the Round Shingle Dollhouse, circa 1920. It is filled with beautiful Tynietoy and Lynnfield furniture.

The house as displayed in the Strong Museum. It is dated 1920 by the Museum, which would make the Tynietoy furniture contemporary with the house. I think the Lynnfield furniture was created later, perhaps beginning in the 1940s.

The top floor bedroom has beautiful blue Tynietoy furniture

The other third floor bedroom has the Tynietoy twin sleigh beds in green with a matching dresser. The highboy is also Tynietoy. If the two side chairs are from Tynietoy they are of a design I have not seen before. 

The second floor bedroom has a Tynietoy mahogany double bed and matching dresser. The painted wing chair, lamp, rocking chair and broken front bookcase on the left wall are also from that company. The standing ashtray and metal plant stand beside the bed are Gerlach accessories that were sold by Tynietoy to complement their furniture. I don't recognize the mirror, but it fits perfectly in this room.

The sitting room has a rare Tynietoy secretary on the back wall.  The two wooden side chairs are from Tynietoy's Victorian series. The upholstered pieces are Lynnfield, and the metal accessories are made in Germany, but sold with Tynietoy and Lynnfield furniture.

The kitchen has a Tynietoy dresser, metal Eagle stove and a Lynnfield table with two chairs. I am not sure who made the stove and sink. They may be early Lynnfield.

Don't you love the original light fixtures in each room?
The dining room has a large Tynietoy buffet, a drop leaf table and six Hepplewhite chairs with painted seats.
On the buffet is a Gerlach metal caddy containing real glass tumblers. This was another common Tynietoy accessory, as was the metal tea cart on the left side of the room.

The gardens outside the museum are lovely

The exterior of the Round Shingle House

Combination Doll House by Stirn & Lyon - Antique Dollhouse

I know that my favoutite Sunday morning outing, the St. Lawrence Antique Market in Toronto, offers rare and unusual treasures, but I was blown away when I came across this one and I bought it immediately.

The Combination Doll House made  by New York firm Stirn & Lyon was patented in 1881.

The houses came unassembled in wood boxes. The box served as the base for the house and the box top became the roof.

The house pictured on the box label was a little more fancy than the actual doll house.

It appears to be marble, situated in a park-like setting on a river.

Elegant ladies gossip outside the iron fence while a little girl joyfully chases her hoop.

On one side of the house is an elegant fountain in  a manicured garden with cliffs and trees in the background.

On the other side of the house is a gazebo near beautiful flowers in full bloom and where one can watch the sailboats on the river.

An idyllic setting for a beautiful dollhouse. What child (or adult for that matter) wouldn't want to own this magnificent edifice?

Let's see if what's in the box lives up to the picture.

Here is the box with the foundation blocks lithographed onto it. Someone has added strips from cigar boxes to the bottom (which slides off to become the roof). I am not sure why they are there.

Inside the box we find everything we need to build our beautiful house. Or at least we should. As we shall see I am missing some pieces.

The panels for the exterior of the house have the bricks and window details lithographed on in blue ink. The wood panels are very thin and some have split.

A couple of the panels have the windows taped back on.

We start by turning the box over so that it becomes the base of the house.  We insert the dowels of the slotted supports into the holes in the base and slide the panels into them.

Here is the house with the walls up.

This side unfortunately has a piece is missing above the lower window.

There was only one side of the steps in the box and no small pieces to actually make the steps, but I am sure I can make replacements as all I have to do is copy the side of steps I have and cut out wood pieces to lie across the supports.



Also missing were the pieces of wood that attach the balcony and the pediment. Again I think I will be able to make substitutes once I study the house to see how they were attached.


Although this seems like a wonderful toy it is quite flimsy and falls apart if you breathe on it. It must have been quite frustrating for the little ones who actually wanted to play with it.

Here is the interior. I don't know why one of the panels has the exterior printed on the inside too. It looks like a mistake to me.


Just for fun I furnished this house with my candy containers. It's not a bad fit. I have added a tobacco felt rug to cover the illustration of the house on the box top.

This is the back of the house.These two pieces of wood were left over and fit perfectly in the back to close it. I am not sure if this is right but it seems to work.

I will leave you with pictures of other Stirn & Lyon buildings that I found on the internet. These kits can still be found at auction occasionally.

This one is just like mine, but has more small pieces

The East River Suspension Bridge, which we now call the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883 and at that time was the longest suspension bridge in the world.
I'm sure kids wanted their own version and they could get it from Stirn & Lyon.

This is a much larger house but it looks just a flimsy.
This one was once in Flora Gill Jacobs' collection

Here is the interior

A Stirn & Lyon Villa. This one looks later than the one above.

Inside the Villa

A Stirn & Lyon Grocery store

Grocery store box

An 1886 postcard advertising Stirn & Lyon.
It must have been a large store. It has three street numbers

Candy Containers as Antique Doll House Furniture

As children do today, children at the turn of the last century often found packages of candy under their Christmas trees. But the candy wasn't the as big a thrill as the boxes they came in.

The variety of candy containers was almost endless. They were made of glass, celluloid, paper mache, composition, wood, plastic, and everything else used to make toys and collectibles. Although you can still buy toys containing candies today, the golden age of candy containers was from the 1870s up into the 1920s.

Containers came in many shapes - animals (some covered with real fur), trees, people, historical figures, household appliances, furniture, decor, flowers, vehicles, holiday items, and anything else you could imagine.

My collection of candy containers is, of course, doll house furniture. I believe these were made in the early 1900s.

The red patterned armchair with matching side chairs and table is made of cardboard and covered with a print patterned paper.

When the boxes are opened you can see that the original shredded paper excelsior is still in place.

The furniture is a 1 inch to 1 foot scale, so each piece must have held only one or two pieces of candy.

The black patterned set doesn't have any excelsior, but the insides of the boxes have paper lace edging.

The construction is the same as the red set.

The sofa and the chaise would have contained more candy than the chairs, but, I am sure, would have cost more.

The piano is also paper covered cardboard.

Here is a view of the piano looking down from the top

The candy space is revealed when you push back the top of the piano.

Here are the two tables side-by-side for comparison of their construction.

The black patterned one has a wooden base. The red one has a base of thick cardboard.

The side chairs are identical in construction. The backs are slightly padded.

The arm chairs are quite large in comparison to the rest of the furniture. I guess these were for the father of the family. The construction is identical, but the chair on the right is missing a padded piece of cardboard on the back, which I assume represents a cushion.

You can find  many other examples of antique candy containers on the internet by putting that phrase into a Google search.

I was amazed at the variety of items. Holiday themed containers like Santas and Jack O'Lanterns were very popular. Unusual papier-mâché and composition examples can bring very high prices.

There is even a Candy Container Collectors of America club

I would have loved to find any of these wonderful items under my Christmas tree.

I wish they made such quality items to delight and entertain us today.

Happy Holidays!

Susan