Black Forest Fox Cleaning His Horn

Look who I have found today! Mr Fox. A rare Black Forest Carving of a fox with horns for boots. He has removed one boot and is giving it a jolly good clean. Gorgeous!!

Steiff Dachshund on Wheels

Look who just came home with me! A Charming Dachshund on Wheels

A Russet felt Dachshund with Glass eyes and a stitched nose, with some airbrushed detail, FF button in ear and mounted on chunky wooden wheels. The wheels are "eccentric" meaning the axis is not central, so that when pulled along, the dog appears to bob up and down. When he left the factory in Geingen he would have been wearing a leather collar.
He is 25cm long and was produced circa 1912
A similar one sold at Christies in Oct 2010 for around $800

New in today are two Victorian Glass Domes containing Antique Dogs...

Glass Dome 'Dogs Waiting for Dinner'

Dogs Waiting for Dinner - detail

 Two Dogs Waiting For Dinner is a rather large Victorian Dome containing miniature oak furniture: a Monks Chair and a table whose top flips up to make another seat, both perfectly  detailed; a miniature Wooden Clock, and two dogs waiting for their dinner, a Bronze Mastiff and a Black Forest carved St.
Bernard. Beautiful and very unusual.

Glass Dome 'Two Pious Pugs'

'Two Pious Pugs' - detail

Two Pious Pugs: A Victorian Pewter Ponce Pot Pug wearing a sober top hat and a small metal fellow sitting on a miniature Bible.
This is a miniature antique Dome, and is utterly charming.

Drummer Dog Black Forest Whip Hook

New to my Collection is this lovely Drummer Dog Whiphook. Whiphooks and Dogs! My two favourite things. So thrilled to have this boy.

antique spiked metal dog collar

I have a passion for collecting Antique Dog Collars. Such objects of beauty. The leather ones are my favourites but these do not always age well; the leather can get very stiff and start cracking. Metal collars are more collectible, especially those with intricate engravings, or those collars that show that the dog was owned by someone famous.

antique leather and brass dog collar

antique leather and brass spiked dog collar

antique leather and brass dog collar with spikes and tax disc

I love the old brass tax discs/tags that used to have to be added to the collar

antique white metal and leather dog collar

Brass Plated Chain dog collar

small rolled leather dog collar with bells

Victorian Die Cuts

At Maison Dog we are stocking Original Victorian Die Cuts, specifically dogs of course!
Very desirable, yet very affordable.
A bit about the origin of these Victorian Scrapbooking images...

From the early 1800s publishers produced 
picture sheets that were uncoloured or, at extra cost, hand coloured and sold by stationers and booksellers.
The colourful reliefs, adored by the Victorians, were embossed and glossy. They are said to have been imported to Britain in the 1850s and soon became popular as decorative additions to Christmas cards and valentines. They were also used to illustrate historical as well as popular events of the time.
The immediate forerunner of the embossed scraps were sheets containing small chromos printed in a rectangular format to be cut out in exactly the same way as the first penny postage stamps.
In the Victorian home a fashionable pastime was to embellish the folding screens that the draughty living rooms required.
Production
Scraps, known as reliefs, chromos or die-cuts, were printed by chromolithography, stamped out and embossed.
After printing of the scrap the sheets were coated with a gelatine and gum layer which gave the finished sheets a glossy surface, embossing came next giving the scrap their three-dimensional look.
The final production process was to pass them through a punching / stamping press to cut away the unrequired areas of paper from the design leaving the individual images connected by small ladders, often bearing the name or initials of the maker.
The elaborate use of stamping can often be seen in uncut scrap sheets. Optimum use of space, required minimal cutting and lead to the intricate and ingenious design of the cutting die.

japanese wind-up jumping dog

Tinplate was used in the manufacture of toys beginning in the mid-19th century. The toys were made from thin sheets of steel plated with tin, hence the name tinplate. They were a cheap and durable substitute for wooden toys. The toys were originally assembled and painted by hand. Spring activated tin toys originated in Germany in the 1850s. In the late 1880s offset lithography was used to print designs on tinplate. After the colorful designs were printed on the metal, they were formed by dies and assembled with small tabs. The lightweight of the toys allowed them to be shipped less expensively and easier than the heavier cast iron toys.
Germany was the major producer of tin toys in the world in the early 20th century. The most famous German manufacturer of tin toys was Ernst Paul Lehmann who is said to have exported 90% of his toys. France and England joined the fray and it wasn't long before hundreds of thousands of these tin toys were being manufactured.


Production of tin toys in the United States started earlier, but began in earnest when tin ore mines were opened in Illinois providing easily available and cheap raw materials. A number of manufactures scrambled to catch up in the beginning of the 20th century, but it wasn't until after World War I, with anti-German sentiment high, that they began to make real gains. There was a growing demand for American produced products and by the 1920s American firms had overtaken the competition. The largest and most successful firm from the 1920s to the 1960s was Louis Marx and Company. Marx produced a huge number of designs and depended on large sales volumes to keep prices down.


The production of tin toys was discontinued during World War II because of the need for raw materials in the war effort. After the war, tin toys were produced in large numbers in Japan. Under occupation and the Marshall Plan, manufacturers in Japan were granted the right to resume production. The idea was to give Japan all of the low profit; high labor manufacturing and the US companies could sell the imported product. It worked better than they had expected and Japan became a tin toy manufacturing force until the end of the 1950s. In the 1960s cheaper plastic and new government safety regulations ended the reign of tin toys. Presently, China has taken over the role of the leading tin toy manufacturing country. (source Wikipedia)