Imari, A Port and A Pattern

Arita export porcelain was shipped from Imari, a nearby port. The Dutch traders asked for an overall brocade design that would be popular throughout Europe. The resulting ceramic was a porcelain with a blue underglaze and iron red and gold decoration. Yellow, brown, green, and turquoise were used on some pieces. The design became so […]

Determining The Age Of Famille Rose

The age of the Famille Rose porcelains can be determined by color and glaze. A 1982 exhibit of Famille Rose at the China Trade Museum in Milton, Massachusetts, showed the early 1760s examples had a thick, opaque, muddy mauve pink glaze. By the 1730s, the glaze was opaque rose pink often mixed with white and […]

Arita Ware

Early seventeenth-century Arita ware typically had underglaze blue designs that resemble Chinese Ming styles. By the 1940s, Arita potters also made a polychrome porcelain with designs of flowers, birds, and geometric patterns in bright colors, including red, yellow, green, black, and gold. In the eighteenth century, Japanese designs had become more popular than Chinese decorations. […]

Special Designs

Chinese export porcelain was made for many markets, and each country favored special designs. The English ordered dinnerware called armorial china which had a family’s coat of arms or crest emblazoned in the center of each plate. It was made to order in China and sent by ship to England. When a piece was broken, […]

Rose Palette Porcelains

Famille Rose (rose family) porcelain is a five-color Chinese porcelain that used rose as its predominant color. Three different patterns of Famille Rose are seen for sale: Rose Medallion, Rose Mandarin, and Rose Canton. All of the patterns have four or more panels of decorations around a central medallion and a background design of tree […]

Toy Timeline

    This is a timeline of when some famous toys were created and/or became available for sale. Date 1890 1890s European stamped-tin cars   1890s Electric trains 1900  Early 1900s Pedal cars 1903 Teddy bears 1907 Character dolls (The Yellow Kid) 1910 1911 Kewpie dolls Tootsietoy 1913 Erector sets 1914 Tinkertoys   1915 Raggedy […]

Early American Toy Manufacturers

Most of the toys made by these manufacturers are marked with a name or company logo. Manufacturer Dates Art Fabric Mills New Haven, Connecticut c.1899-1910 Automatic Toy Works New York, New York 1868-c.1880 R. Bliss Manufacturing Company Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island 1832-c.1914 Milton Bradley Company Springfield, Massachusetts 1860-present George W. Brown and Company Forestville, […]

List of Toy Makers

This is a list of toy manufacturers with location, dates of operations, and other useful information to help date and value your vintage toy. Manufacturer Location Dates of Operation Toys Made and Other Company Information American Flyer Chicago, Illinois 1910–1966 Trains, airplanes, accessories American National Company Toledo, Ohio 1894–1941 Pedal cars, pressed steel trucks, bicycles, […]

Trains

Many early toy trains were made of tin or cast iron with a windup mechanism, but most collectors today are interested in trains with electric motors. An electric-powered train made by Carlisle and Finch in 1896 ran on a metal track, but electric trains became popular only when toy train makers began to use transformers, […]

Moving Toys

Clockwork toys were produced in quantity in America from about 1865 to 1900. The toys were quite literally made with brass clockworks on the inside to move the arms or legs of the toy. Moving toys were manufactured from painted or printed tin, wood, cast iron, or cloth. Dancing figures, walking figures, cigarette-smoking men, circus […]