Thursday, January 8, 2015
Overcast, calm, and extremely cold
I Looked for Toys
and Found a Museum
Part 2
Yesterday, I had introduced you to Fairfield Auction, LLC. As you know, I like to look at and explore all kinds of items on auctioneers websites. There were so many interesting items at Fairfield Auctions, LLC, that I didn't want to dilute the quality of the items by placing them all on 1 post. So I opted to create a 3-post mini-series.
Today's post contains items that mostly I have not seen before,except perhaps the nice Bliss ship. After 3 1/2 years, I would have thought that I'd seen most toys, but there are still many to see. As an example, I haven't even touched Marx toys that were made in the USA.
Orkin was an American company that made very fine toy ships that could actually float on water.
They were not as large or ornate as the German Fleischmann brand, but they were very nice. It's a wind-up toy, and you can see the large-sized key in the middle smoke funnel.
This is the late 19th century's version of the 20th century's slide projector.
I think a flammable liquid or a candle would rest inside the brass barrel where the smoke funnel is. Inside was a heat-resistant lens that would project the image that was placed inside the rectangular housing just behind the front cylindrical "snout".
I've always been amazed that such old toys as this Bliss ship could still be around in such great condition. It was made of lithographed paper that was glued on to wood. The toy would be
pulled by a string, hence the rubber wheels fore and aft underneath the boat.
This type of toy is appropriately a "pull toy".
Any book about toys would have to include anything having been made by Mr. Louis Marx.
At one time, Mr., Marx even made the front cover of Time Magazine, and why not? His company existed for close to 60 years (1919-1978), which is a "lifetime" in the toy world.
At one time Mr. Marx produced 1 in 3 toys for the USA market,
and his toys could be found around the world.
What I especially like about this toy is the detail. There's just so much to see.
I like the front oil sign that indicates that 4 quarts of oil cost $ 1.00
The written title reads "Bronze Pattern for Cap Gun". My interpretation of this would mean that these were the dies or forms used to manufacture hundred or thousands of toys from other metals .
Owning the left and right sides would allow you to manufacture your own reproductions of this early American toy.
I've come across Muller & Kadader toys before,. However, being a European toy, I don't have many connections in Europe, so it's hard for me to wrote about these toys. I assume that either they were in fact imported, or North Americans who ventured to Europe a long time ago by ship would bring back toys fro their children. Being a late 1800's toy, people would takes weeks to travel across to Europe from North America or vice-versa.
The toy looks like a wind-up,but I can't find the hole for the key to wind the toy up.
I'm assuming that this below is a toy and would be held by a long string. However the details are fantastic, and it could very well be a salesman's sample. A salesman's sample is an exact scale model of an original product. It would accompany the salesman by train in the late 19th and early 20th century in the USA, where train travel was the major and sometimes only means of travel in the USA.
I didn't realize that these ice pond boats would have been around so long ago. I'm assuming that this particular item is from the early 20th century or even earlier. I've seen the more modern ones on television in the early 1960's on the ABC network (American) program "Wide World of Sports".
These ice boats could travel as fast as you could them balanced on the ice, sometimes going up to
90 MPH or close to 150 KPH.
It's not a sport for me. You have to participate in cold weather (you need thick ice) and strong winds. On a day like today here in Montreal,the temperature is -26 Celsius or -14.8 Fahrenheit.
Add the wind-chill factor for a slower 40 MPH, and it would be very, very cold!
I don't like cold!
The Schoenhut toy company is famous for their circus character, animals and wagons.
However,it's great to discover that they also manufactured other items, such as this set of the milkman,his horse, wagon, and milk. Once again,the detail attracts my attention. The horse is covered with a hide, I also think the blind on the side of the wagon is made of leather. The toy is a "pull toy" as you can see from the small wheels under the horse's platform. It's interesting how the company decided to make the milkman "pudgy' ( A bit overweight).
As for those milk bottles - great,and original!
I'm old enough to remember milk coming in bottles like this. The bottles were reusable and in the early 1950's the milk was not yet homogenized. Milk would come with the milk fat (cream) at the top of the bottle, and a slight cream-coloured (yellowish-tan) colour. In the city of Montreal,milk would be delivered by the milkman to your door, but he had a truck. But in the country where we vacationed in the summer (Mississquoi Bay), in the early 1950's, there was actually a horse-drawn wagon with a milkman. His milk was cool led by ice, and he would make the daily weekday route and deliver milk to your door.
THere still are a few milkmen that still deliver milk to your door,but they are very, very, rare to see- almost as rare as this toy,that I have never seen before, until today!
Thanks for visiting on this cold winter day and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
