The New-York Historical Society Helps Me Out

Friday, May 8, 2015
Sunny and Very Hot

The New-York Historical Society 

Helps Me Out

  Earlier this week, I received several e-mails. The 2 senders helped "revive" my motivation to start back to write about toys. Over the winter, I got busy with other things. Also, Hard as I try (please read yesterday's post), I have not been able to increase my readership to more than 200-400 page views per day.  Even if I don't write anything,  I still have people reading and the numbers are still 200-400 page views per day.

   One of the letters that I received was from  a reader. He had written to me to ask about a George Brown Toy that was a steamship called "Excelsior". He wanted to know if I could find the price of such a toy, as well as any books on George Brown. The only book that I found and have is an excellent book titled "The George Brown Toy Sketchbook". It was printed in 1971 by The Pyne Press in Princeton, New Jersey (USA) and edited with an introduction by Edith F. Barenholtz. The book has a well-written introduction about Goerge Brown and the history of Mr. Brown and of course his toys. The toys were made starting in 1856, but sadly Mr. Brown died at a very young age (1889).

  I asked the reader if he could send me a photo, and he obliged. It was similar to the one that I was able to present today from The New-York Historical Society. I'll be writing another post about this excellent museum band resource, but for today, it's all about the George Brown "Excelsior".

Please click here to visit the New-York Historical Society

Below is an actual George Brown original Excelsior toy that the Museum  (New York Historical Society) has. What's always great about museums is their standardized method go photography, and bet yet is the information that that will usually provide for all of their acquisitions.

 Below is the actual information from the Museum (New York Historical Society). The toy is toy is a good size measuring (L x H x W)  14"x 21"x 7"  or 35.6 cm x 53.3 cm x 17.8 cm). What I especially like is the Gallery Label . Please read this because it quite interesting. 

What's more interesting is that the original toy was not a good seller and was eventually "decommissioned" (production was stopped). 

One of the questions that was asked was what the price of this toy might be. I haven't yet been able to answer this question for the reader, nor find any more books about  George Brown or his toys. I'll continue to look.

I would think that this toy is quite valuable. First, I haven't been able to find others (so far) like it, and secondly, having been stopped in production, there probably were not many of these toys made originally.

I  did  photo-editing on the illustration below, so it does not do justice to the excellent reproduction quality of the original. I had to scan original twice. Whomever doe have the original George Brown illustration is quite fortunate. First and foremost is that these are true Americana toy illustrations from Mr. George Brown dating back to  the 1850's.

So that's it for today. I would like to thank  Eleanor Gillers from the Society for her help in allowing me to present the photo of the actual toy. Eleanor is Supervisor of Rights and Reproductions of the New York Historical Society, which is an important position of any museum or Society.

As Always,

Thanks for dropping by, and have a great day,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com