Thursday, July 31, 2008

More mystery (mini, this time)

I had some more furniture I won off eBay arrive today:I suspected it was probably Hubsch (or maybe Danish) when I bought it.

The seller was also selling the following three lots (which I didn't buy):I have no idea about the fireplace and no interest either. I suspect it's American. The sofa and chair I recognise from the 1974/75 Lisa catalogue (PDF link) hence the possibility that the set I bought was Danish.Though not Lisa.On the other hand, I'm pretty certain this lot is all German and smaller scale German at that (a side note in case you don't know: German furniture tends to come in two scales. More usually 1/10th (where 1 inch equals 10 inches in real life: chosen as Germany is and was a metric society so 1/12th wouldn't make as much sense to them) or 3/4 scale (which is a catchall term used to cover the range 1/15th - 1/18th which is what was considered standard scale for children's dolls houses through the middle of last century)Then there's this bunk set. Which is driving me nuts as I swear I've seen it before. I know similar sets have been produced in 1/10th scale in Germany but this set is definitely 3/4 scale. I spent 24 hours tossing up whether to buy it and finally decided not to. I still wonder if I made the right choice...

The reason I thought my new chairs could be Hubsch (East German) was because of a set of furniture I already own, identified from this photo of a box lid:on page 220 of
this excellent book (one of four titles by Dian Zillner that I couldn't live without as a collector)

And also because the shiny fabric used to upholster them is very reminiscent of the fabric on some miniature German divans I used to have.

But when Mrs Vero kindly lent me one of her Hubsch chairs (on the left) to compare and contrast, you can see that the new chair (on the right) is just ever so slightly bigger (and not quite as well finished): Which leaves me completely perplexed and due to remain that way as, as far as I can see, information on vintage German dolls house furniture (especially East German vintage dolls house furniture) is almost non-existent.

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