One of my fondest childhood memories when it comes to toys is playing with an old dollshouse that belonged to my grandmother. This particular dollshouse was not an ordinary toy for children. Homemade in the 1940s it was a piece of miniature craftsmanship.
There was a solemn atmosphere surrounding it. An almost sacred feeling.
My grandmother lived in Germany and I lived in Sweden. I would normally only be able to visit once a year. I usually stayed at my grandparents’ for a couple of weeks during summer. To me, these weeks were the highlight of the year.
My grandmother kept the dollshouse in a room that she rarely used. It was locked away in an old white cupboard. The occasions she brought forth the tiny house felt special and exciting. With a sense of eager anticipation I watched my grandmother open the cupboard and bring out the dollshouse. Seeing it laid out before me felt like a moment of magic. I was in awe.
My grandmother had made the dollshouse out of cardboard boxes, which had been turned into three separate rooms. The walls had tapestry and each room had the most exquisite miniature furniture. The pieces had been bought in the 1940s when my mother and her sister were little.
There was a a tiny enameled bathtub with a bathroom wall. Behind the wall was a water container attached to it. When you filled the container with water, you could open the little handles on the bath tub and water started running through the miniature faucets and fill the bath tub. It was a tiny bathroom crafted into perfection.
There were miniature dishes of food on the miniature kitchen table. One sitting area contained a couch, two armchairs and a table made out of cane. Each piece of furniture was upholstered with a fabric with miniature elephants in crimson and cream.
To me, playing with this dollshouse was magical. It filled my heart with the purest joy. It was like entering an enchanted world. A miniature world of perfect beauty.
I visited the Brighton Toy and Model Museum the other day. It displays one of the largest collections of British and European toys from the Golden Age of toymaking.
Jan Etches, manager at the museum, provides me with a tour. She has interesting stories to tell.
The museum holds over ten thousand toys and models, including model train collections, puppets, Corgi, Dinky, Budgie Toys, construction toys and radio-controlled aircraft.
The collection of the museum focuses on toys and models produced in the UK and Europe up until the mid-Twentieth Century. This is the time span considered the Golden age era of European toymaking. The era before plastics. During these times toys where made out tin, wood and bakelite.
Brighton Toy and Model museum is situated directly underneath the Brighton central station.
The display area of the museum includes large operational model railway layouts. The jewel in the crown is a ”gauge 0” railway layout from the 1930s. Gauge is the term used to define the size of the tracks. This particular layout is the work of collecting and conserving trains and accessories that spans a lifetime. Classic trains, buildings and landscape make out this miniature world the size of a large room.
Jan Etches shows me around. She pulls out a drawer and invites me to press a button within. There is a rattling sound as a tiny train starts rolling along the tracks. I press another button. There is the same sound ”sickety, sickety, sickety” as yet another train starts moving.
One of the tiny trains on display is the legendary Brighton Belle. This was the most famous electric train in the world, running each day between London and Brighton between 1933 and 1972. It was an electric Pullman train and was for the wealthy to wine and dine on elegant dinnerware and white linen.
Meccano is a brand of model construction system created in 1898 by Frank Hornby in Liverpool in the UK. He worked on the Liverpool docks and started constructing the toys as a way of teaching his children what his workplace looked like.
In these earlier times, toys were gender based. Trains, airplanes and other technical machinery were for the boys. Dolls, dollshouses, kitchens utensils, sewing machines for the girls. Originally these toys were created to introduce the children to their future chores. The toys were used as tools for training.
The Victorian dollshouses on the other hand, were not designed for children. They were manufactured for women from wealthy homes, the lady of the house, as a way to experiment with furnishings and room layouts. The most extravagant examples had no dolls in them. You didn’t want to spoil the illusion of the miniature rooms being real.
When it came to railways, young boys were usually introduced to them by their father. Together father and son would operate the miniature trains and railways. They were handled with a gentle touch and respect for the craftsmanship. As the boys grew older and proved they treated the mechanical miniatures in a mature and responsible way, they were given more and more access to the railway layout. Too many this went on to become a life long passion that they passed on to the next generation.
You never grow too old for a model railway. Rod Stewart is an avid collector of model trains and has mesmerizing layouts. Frank Sinatra was another huge collector of model trains. Chris Littledale, the founder of The Brighton Toy and Model Museum, met up with Sinatra on several occasions to help him restore some of his beloved trains.
What kind of toys did you like as a child? Are there any toys you would like to reconnect with?
Thank you for your sharing. This story made my day.