Friday, May 22, 2015

Yellow roses and a koala in a cardboard dolls house

This cardboard dolls house caught my eye on Australian ebay:




Golden yellow is one of my favourite colours - and I love yellow roses! They have been "my" roses since, at our childhood home, I had a yellow rose outside my bedroom window, my sister had a pink rose outside hers - and Mum had deep red roses in the front yard!



The bowl of yellow roses is in the children's bedroom, upstairs right.



The parents' bedroom, upstairs left, has a dressing table with toiletries, an abstract rug - and lots of books! I like this house!




The clocks all say the same time, which is good - but they seem to be printed back to front! So it's back-to-front 3 o'clock.
 
This house is nearly complete - it's one of those where the bottom of the box it comes in forms the base of the house. Thankfully, the base is here - but the lid of the box is missing, so there is no information about the maker or the model, nor whether there would have been furniture included. There is one piece that suggests there might have been furnishings - a red and white striped cardboard rectangle, which I have placed in front of the kitchen sink, as a floor mat.


In the kitchen (downstairs right), the cupboards don't look very Australian to me - I thought perhaps it might be American?
But then in the living room (downstairs left):




there's a picture of a koala on the wall:






That doesn't mean it's Australian, of course - I could have a picture of elephants or tigers on my wall, without having to be in Africa or Asia ....

Here is the outside of the house - quite plain, a red brick base, yellow walls with brown timbering, and a tiled roof:
The doors and windows are attached only by one side, so they can open (some have actually torn off, but thankfully all are present).



The end with the kitchen and the children's bedroom has four opening windows (and the number 12, which a former owner has added!). The other end, with the living room and parents' bedroom, has a red brick chimney, with arched window openings on either side of the chimney, in the living room:
One additional feature I like - in both downstairs rooms, light fittings are printed on the ceilings!

This house came with plastic Blue-Box furniture, much of it broken. The red living room wing chairs are a good fit, so I may find others to use in it - and look through my plastic furniture for other suitable pieces.

Does anyone recognise this cardboard dolls house? I'm guessing it was made in the 1960s, largely because of the television, but would love to know a more exact date - and of course, the maker!

(I do still have photos of the displays at the Sydney Dolls House fair to show. I have been without a functioning phone/internet line since late last week, after reporting a crackly line - now it's working again (touch wood), and I was keen to show you this lovely house! The display photos will come soon :-)  )

5 comments:

  1. That is definitely a unique little house.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice cheerful house Rebecca and it is good it is mostly all there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gorgeous little house - what a great find, Rebecca!

    ReplyDelete
  4. It might be Blue Box...does the furniture look right in situ? Blue Box did do card accessories for some of their other toys...card shipping containers for HO gauge lorries, card loads for 54mm farm carts, they may well have produced a card house for their plastic furniture?

    Hugh

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a cool building. Great graphics!

    ReplyDelete