Perfection in Miniature: Rock & Graner Doll’s House Furniture

The Salon – credit BTMM

This month, we celebrate a new display by our museum founder, Chris Littledale, featuring an exceptional collection of dollhouse furniture made by 19th-century German toy makers Rock & Graner.

Chris has a long history of working with metal toys and models and was a consultant to Christie’s auction house for 24 years. He is a tinsmith, highly regarded restorer and model maker, with a great appreciation for objects made in the traditional craftsman style.

In short, Chris recognises quality, and this collection of Rock & Graner pieces, in his opinion, shows “incredible quality in tinsmith work and paint finish and a huge flair for design.”

The collection was donated to Brighton Toy and Model Museum in 2021 by Lady Elizabeth Cortazzi, widow of Sir Hugh Cortazzi.

Chris recalls the excitement mounting as he unwrapped the furniture from its boxes and realised its significance. Rock & Graner furniture is rare. The museum was already fortunate to have a dining set and salon suite in its 1/16th-scale dolls’ furniture collection. However, to have so many more items, possibly acquired during the late Victorian era and kept together ever since, is very unusual.

The donation also included a large quantity of German Waltershausen furniture and glass, metal and wooden accessories, the contents of a miniature houseful. No house, perhaps, but everything a wealthy Victorian doll family could want or need!

Rock & Graner

Rock & Graner (R&G) is among the oldest German tinplate toy makers, founded in 1813 as a family business in Biberach, Württemberg.

The area became well known for tinplate toy production in the early 19th century, using techniques such as tool pressing and specialist painting methods. R&G produced a wide range of toys, including boats, doll’s house furniture, castles and fountains, and later some of the earliest model railways and buildings.

By the late 1830s, R&G employed more than 100 people, and by the 1850s the company was exporting and exhibiting across Europe, receiving high praise for the quality of its toys.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London, the company gained a prize medal for a collection that included a complete set of kitchen utensils, costing 6s 8d, around a day’s wage for a skilled tradesman at the time.

At the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris, its toys were considered “superior to any other manufactured.”

The business continued to enjoy success for the next two decades. However, relatively little was known about the company and its history until research by Baeker, Carlunst and Vaterlain in the early 1980s for their book Germany’s Forgotten Toymakers.

It was established that R&G passed out of the Graner family in 1896 and eventually ceased trading in 1904.

Rediscovering the Rock & Graner Range

The only surviving record of the company’s range of toys came to light in 1992, when two sample books dating from 1875–1880 appeared at an antiquarian book show.

They were subsequently documented for the Württemberg History Museum in Stuttgart and published in 1997. Among the many remarkable designs is a salon suite similar to the one we now have on display.

R&G never produced complete doll’s houses, although the company did make fully equipped single and double rooms furnished as kitchens, dining rooms and salons.

Chris estimates the scale of their larger doll’s house furniture to be approximately 1/12th scale, compared with the more usual 1/16th scale. A complete house built to accommodate furniture of this size would have been impractically large.

The Cortazzi Collection

The Cortazzi collection includes an elegant salon suite, dining table and chairs, a piano containing a wind-up music box, bedroom furniture, mirrors and fireplaces.

For the display, two model rooms, a bedroom and a salon, as well as a coach house, have been created by Chris and Gordon, an expert model maker.

Much consideration has gone into placing the furniture within an accurate setting, with great attention paid to even the smallest details.

Detail of piano and chair showing the ‘scumbling’ paint technique – credit BTMM

A Distinctive Style

The R&G style of dollhouse furniture is highly distinctive, reflecting both the Rococo Revival and the Biedermeier period from the 1840s.

Although the company continued until 1904, there appears to have been relatively little change in its designs and styles over time.

The furniture is particularly attractive for its beautifully painted imitation cherrywood or mahogany grain. This technique, known as ‘scumbling’, was applied directly to the tinplate, making each piece unique.

Mrs Emma Brewer, an investigative journalist who visited the R&G factory in the 1880s, remarked:

“The painting was done by women & girls, for whom they are educated from earliest infancy, the better pieces were painted & stoved up to 15 times before completion.”

Chris advises that this number of ‘stovings’ is unlikely. The painted surface would have needed careful stoving to bake the finish, but probably only once or twice, as the metalwork is all soft-soldered and could otherwise have been put at risk.

Despite the dark imitation woodgrain, many pieces have contrasting interiors or backboards painted in a bright sunshine yellow. This seems to be a feature unique to R&G, as can be seen in the wardrobe in the bedroom display.

Wardrobe with yellow interior – credit BTMM

Made by Hand

In her book The Collector’s History of Dolls’ Houses, Constance Eileen King quotes a former R&G employee writing about the company in the magazine Puppen und Spielzeug.

He recalled that a variety of materials were used, including sheet zinc, galvanised sheet iron, brass, tinplate and copper:

“The production methods were very archaic and all the pieces were shaped & decorated completely by hand.”

The employee had no recollection of a designer working for the firm. Instead, workers “either copied pieces they had seen elsewhere or worked from an example produced by a skilled tinworker.”

Despite maintaining a high standard of quality, it is perhaps unsurprising that over the years these production methods became old-fashioned, inefficient and uneconomic compared with those used by other toy manufacturers.

Chris has carried out minor repairs to some of our pieces and has observed that many of the original manufacturing processes were clearly undertaken by hand.

Bedroom fireplace – R&G used wood as well as tinplate – credit BTMM

Many R&G items feature cast-metal details and decorative fretting, with characteristic pierced designs. Legs and supports were sometimes cast in the form of writhing serpents, as illustrated by the piano in the salon.

Upholstery could be enamel or silk, but our salon set features a rich red fine velvet.

The sleigh bed on display is one of the smaller examples. The same design appears in the 1875 sample book, where it was offered in a range of different sizes.

The quality and elegance of all these pieces are part of the remarkable legacy of Rock & Graner.

We are incredibly privileged to have such a wonderful collection to display and share with our visitors.