Renwal World's Finest Toys

Volume 1: Doll House Furniture & Non-Transportation Toys

Authored and Published by Charles F. Donovan, Jr.

Edited by Steve Butler

1994 Paperback

Like New. The book is clean, covers attached, uncreased spine, secure binding, crisp inner pages, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, no stains, no fading, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no corner folds, no crease marks, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Very light to faint signs of wear from use, storage and handling.

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The Renwal Company, a maker of some of the finest plastic toys and doll house furniture during the late 1940s through the 1950s. Many of these fine toys that were produced by Renwal are: airplanes, play guns, boats, helmets, washing machines, baby items and other household items. The information and history packed within 

this guide is a must for any plastic toy or doll house collector.

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Miniature homes, furnished with domestic articles and resident inhabitants, both people and animals, have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known examples were found in the  Egyptian tombs  of the  Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes. The earliest known European dollhouses were the  baby houses  from the 16th century, which consisted of cabinet display cases made up of individual rooms. The term “baby” in baby house is coined from the old English word meaning doll. Dollhouses of this period showed idealized interiors complete with detailed furnishings and accessories. The cabinets were built by hand with architectural details, filled with miniature household items and were solely intended for adults. The baby moniker referred to the scale of the houses rather than the demographic it was aimed at. They were off-limits to children, not because of safety concerns for the child but to protect the dollhouse. Such cabinet houses  were trophy collections owned by the few matrons living in the cities of Holland, England and Germany who were wealthy enough to afford them and, fully furnished, were worth the price of a modest full-size house's construction.

The earliest known recorded baby house was commissioned from 1557-1558 by  Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria. Smaller doll houses, such as the Tate house with more realistic exteriors, appeared in Europe in the 18th century. Nuremberg kitchens, a type of single-room dollhouse, date back at least to 1572, when one was given to  Dorothea  and  Anna, the Princesses of Saxony, daughters of  Augustus, Elector of Saxony  aged five and ten. The early European dollhouses were each unique, constructed on a custom basis by individual craftsmen. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass producing toys, including dollhouses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dollhouses included Christian Hacker,  Moritz Gottschalk,  Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Silber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and  Lines Brothers  (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the 19th century American dollhouses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company. In France, the Deauville dollhouses were made by the manufacturer Villard & Weill in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Germany produced the most prized dollhouses and doll house miniatures up until  World War I. The doll houses were produced in  Nuremberg, Germany; which, since the sixteenth century, was coined as the 'toy city'. Their baby houses were thought to be the origin for the basic standards of contemporary doll houses. Notable German miniature companies included  Märklin, Rock and Graner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany's involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers arose in other countries. France produced the dollhouses known as Deauville Dollhouses. They were made by the VILLARD & WEILL company, mainly between 1905 and 1925. This toys manufacturer won prices in Sydney, Paris and St Louis World Fairs. The TynieToy Company of Providence, Rhode Island, made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917.  Other American companies of the early 20th century were Roger Williams Toys,  Tootsietoy, Renwal, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dollhouse dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs. After World War II, dollshouses were mass-produced in factories on a much larger scale with less detailed craftsmanship than before. By the 1950s, the typical dollhouse sold commercially was made of painted  sheet metal  filled with plastic furniture. Such houses cost little enough that the great majority of girls from the developed western countries which were not struggling with rebuilding after World War II could own one.