Hand-Painted Toys and Dolls

An extra large mid 19th century dolls house, with its original olive green/grey painted finish and hand applied mortar lines. With raised decorative quoin brickwork, doubled pitched ...

2 antique Chinese dolls, from the Qing Dynasty. These dolls were handcrafted in the Chaozhou region around 1880 The dolls have a wooden torso,...

Wooden carousel / merry-go-round horse made for the first carousel in Tivoli, Copenhagen, c. 1840-1850. Hand carved with nice details, glass eyes and a real horse hair tale. With its...

19th century Marionette puppet We are proud to offer an exceptional example of a late 19th Century hand carved marionette Puppet form. We have chose...

A charming late nineteenth century carved and painted rocking horse, set upon the original pine runners and base.

19th century German Noah’s Ark We are proud to offer a wonderful example of a late 19th century Noah’s Ark. Each section of this collection is hand carved from pine and hand painted...

American cast iron toy by Kenton Hardware Manufacturing Company, known as a "Cabriolet" or Hansom Cab, was the modus operandi of travel, ubiquitous in t...

This American cast iron bank known as "Organ Bank" (Boy and girl), was manufactured by Kyser & Rex Company, Frankford, Pennsylvania in 1882. It conforms exa...

An antique large English bisque porcelain piano baby offers hand painted and gilt baby on blanket or book, circa 1890. Measures: 8.5" H x 16....

Miniature Geschutz Vienna bronze "Elephant Family" sculpture, circa 1890 Wonderful elephant family with some remnants of paint. Dimensions: 4" wi...

19th century Georg Heyde painted metal cats with shaking heads, circa 1890s A charming pair of ladies on a bench. One is knitting and the other is...

A rocking horse is a child's toy, usually shaped like a horse and mounted on rockers similar to a rocking chair. There are two sorts, the one where the horse part sits rigidly attached to a pair of curved rockers that are in contact with the ground, and a second sort, where the horse hangs on a rigid frame by iron straps the horse moves only relative to the frame, which does not move. Predecessors of the rocking horse may be seen in the rocking cradle, the tilting seats used during the Middle Ages for jousting practice as well as the wheeled hobby horse. The toy in its current form did not appear before the 17th century, though some conflicting sources note medieval manuscripts including references to carved rocking horses, presumably of the toy kind. From the 19th century onward, rocking horses became more commonly considered as child's toy. Mostly built by hobby woodcrafters, and ranging from relatively crude to finely ornamented and the toys of future kings, it was not until the late 19th century that the production became industrialised. In 2006, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Katlinel and Les Hartness of California as having the largest hand carved wooden rocking horse...