The Elephant in the Room

I've heard the expression "the elephant in the room" more times this week referring to more news stories than I could shake a tusk at!  But this article really is about the elephant in the room.  We have in our collection a Schoenhut elephant.  This little toy stands about 8" high, is made of wood, and was part of a larger collection of late 19th, early 20th century toys from the Humpty Dumpty Circus.

The eyes are made of glass and the ears and tusks are made of leather.  This one is missing a tail.  It's painted gray with a red mouth, and you can see from the wear that this toy was well played with once upon a time.






Being made of wood, it's a very solid toy and weighs about 1lb. This is a toy made to last.








The legs and head are detached, being connected to the body by a sturdy cotton cord.  This makes it possible to move them so the elephant can be poseable.  The legs are spool style.

Albert Schoenhut was a toy maker from Germany who came to Philadelphia in the late 1800s.  He worked at a department store called Wanamaker’s making toy pianos.  He used metal bars in the toy pianos instead of glass ones, which really improved the sound.  Eventually, he left the store and opened his own toy manufacturing company.  Starting with making many different types of toy pianos, he eventually started making the Humpty Dumpty Circus. This became one of his most popular products and was exported around the world.  An advertisement of his circus is seen here.

Christmas is coming and what would it be without toys.  Our collection includes a Schoenhut elephant!  These toys were really popular during their time, but, in the Great Depression, not many had money to buy toys and eventually his company declared bankruptcy. Wouldn't it be great to have the entire circus collection?

Little Toy - Work of Art

Every parent knows how hard it can be to get their kids out of bed.  Mozart’s father Leopold came up with an ingenius idea.  When the young Mozart refused to get out of bed, Leopold would go to the keyboard, start playing a scale, then never play the last note.  

Hum the scale to yourself – do re mi fa so la ti …….Do it a few times.  It will drive you crazy!  Imagine what it did to a musical genius like Mozart.  He got out of bed, came to the keyboard, and just banged on that last note!

Our little toy piano is only 5.5” tall, 7.5” long, and is made of wood and covered with stain.  It only has 6 keys:  C D E F G A.  No B or second C to make a full octave. I wonder what Mozart would have thought of that!  When the keys are depressed, a flat metal piece is moved to make the sound.  The pieces of this little piano are put together with tiny nails and glue.  The sound is surprisingly good; not tinny sounding at all.

In this picture below, you can see Symphony Tuned International Pitch C D E F G A painted in gilt on the piano.  Some of these little pianos were elaborately decorated and made interesting conversation pieces in homes. 

Toy pianos first made their appearance in Germany in the mid 19^th century.  One that has endured until this day is the Schoenhut Piano Company founded by Albert Schoenhut from Germany.  He was the first to make these little pianos with individual keys connected to hammers that struck a glass sounding bar.  He eventually made the sounding bars out of metal, which is what the sounding bar in this little piano is made from.  In fact, the Schoenhut Piano Company which Albert founded, continues to make toy pianos to this day.  They still offer models based on designs from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as well as offering new models.  Did you ever have a musical instrument as a toy?