Browsed by
Category: The History of Toys & Games

What Is Traditional Dolls House Scale?

What Is Traditional Dolls House Scale?

Doll’s houses at the 1:12 scale are the most common scale for children.  But we are often asked what the 1:12 scale means and whether our range of dolls houses and accessories are compatible. The 1:12 scale has its roots in the imperial measuring system – where one inch on the doll’s house is equivalent to one foot on a real house.  So the house is twelve times smaller than a full size house. Historically, it was chosen as the…

Read More Read More

Wooden Toys to be Christmas best sellers

Wooden Toys to be Christmas best sellers

It may seem incredible to be thinking about Christmas in the middle of the summer (what summer ?!?) but that’s what we do every year at this time as we finalise our autumn & winter catalogue.  All the toy manufacturers and retailers will have been gearing up for the past few months as the Christmas season begins as soon as the summer holidays are over. We’re adding a couple more pages of wooden toys this year – which have always…

Read More Read More

Marbles over the Millennia

Marbles over the Millennia

There’s a nicely written piece about traditional games on Time Magazine’s website with the author describing how he and his primary schoolmates played marbles in the playground in the 1970s.  No doubt he thinks that makes him sound old, but I could have written the same about my primary school in the 1950s and I reckon if I asked my father – now in his 80s – he could have done the same for the 1920s and ’30s.  But in…

Read More Read More

Happy Birthday Mulberry Bush

Happy Birthday Mulberry Bush

We didn’t realise it but it turns out we’re celebrating our 400th anniversary this year, in a here-we-go-round-the-mulberry-bush sort of way. Today’s Times carries a fascinating letter – if slightly arcane – from the Master of the Garden of the Inner Temple, London (no less) explaining the provenance of the two mulberry trees that grow there. It emerges that the mulberry was introduced into England exactly 400 years ago, in 1608, by James I in an attempt to build a…

Read More Read More