An Exquisite Rare G&J Lines No 18 Dolls House Just Gone Up For Sale Today....It Is Beautiful!!!

Now this is one dolls house that I SERIOUSLY have had great difficulty letting go of! It is beautiful and old treasures like this certainly do not come along very often.

Today, I have just listed this gorgeous early 1900s G&J Lines No 18 dolls house. It is in wonderful condition!

It is front opening and opens out into two halves. 

There are four big rooms, ceiling height of just under 10 1/2". The tiled lino flooring effect paper, I believe, is probably original. The brick flooring paper is not original. The wallpaper are replacements but they have been sympathetically and beautifully done. Also there are three wooden Lines fireplaces, which is nice.....these are so often lost.

In fact, in the kitchen a mock card wall with matching reproduction paper,  covers original green paper underneath....brilliant for research purposes. I wonder how many of us, left with just one wall of original paper, would have bothered to do this? A lesson to us all. 

The exterior is in completely original condition with the Lines brick paper on each side wall. 

The back has the remains of burgundy paint and a hint of the more modern electrics. 

The little peg that pushes into a hole on the base of the left front ensures that the whole frontage stays in place. 

The windows are all glazed with real glass and the glazed front door opens. Old lace and reproduction mock paper blinds hang at the window. The blinds have been cleverly made and are very effective. 

 

The roof has the original Lines tiled paper. The left roof with the pretty widow's walk and glazed window lifts off so this is another little room that can be furnished. 

This house was much cherished by the previous owner but due to personal circumstances it had to go into storage and the hard decision to let it go was finally made. So now this house needs a new home - one where it will continue to be cherished and loved.

What a beauty this is.......due to the size, weight and of course, sheer fragility, this needs to be collected from me here in Thame, in person. I am based just a couple of miles from the M40. Overseas customers, this could be shipped by www.williamsandhill.com They are pricey but will do a good job and specialise in shipping big antique items.

Full details of this can be found on the following page:

www.ktminiatures.com/GJ_Lines_No18_Dolls_House.html

Further Restoration On The Lovely Swan House!

If you read the previous post on here, you will have seen the wonderful discovery of a rather lovely house underneath layers of modern brick and roof paper. Needless to say this sold very quickly! I was itching to have a further little scrape on this beauty of a house and the buyer confidently gave me instructions to scrape away. So, over the couple of days whilst this lovely house was waiting to be collected to embark on a new journey in its 100 year history, I scraped away on the front - primarily to try and get rid of as much of the brown undercoat splodges as I could.

With my blunt and very old craft knife (perfect for this sort of thing) I set to work on scraping....it became obsessive! The brown undercoat came away relatively easily, along with some of that grey gloss paint. 

So I tested scraping a little of the grey paint from one of the upstairs windows......and it appeared to be that gorgeous terracotta paint underneath. Very excitedly I proceeded to continue scraping around all the upstairs windows...and the result was very satisfying indeed. I then tackled the downstairs windows and found simply the original yellow underneath.

 So this is it folks...........what a difference! 

Although you cannot really see in the photo, one can just make out the trace of black scored lines on the lower half.....just like the images in the 1912 advert of some of various different models of Swan Houses.

 1912 Advert of just some of the other Swan Dolls Houses, these ones are with a flat roof unlike those seen in the previous post that had roofs. Courtesy of Marion Osborne from her A-Z Book of 1914-1941 Dolls Houses.

When my customer came to collect the house yesterday, she was both surprised and thrilled at the result. Occasionally I get rather attached to a dolls house, particularly one that I have worked on....and it was an odd feeling having to bid farewell to this lovely thing yesterday but it is most definitely in safe hands. My customer is planning to restore this further, including removing the wallpaper. We are both curious to see what is underneath although initial thoughts are that the original wallpaper has all gone, as we have peeked under side edges where we could and it appears to be bare wood. Oh well...we shall have to see.

Hope you have enjoyed looking at this lovely rare dolls house.