Antique Jackpot

Last week I went to an antique store, looking for nothing in particular.  But did I hit the jackpot!  Remember when I found a child's ironing board last fall?  Did you know that they (the people that made toys in the olden days) made toy irons to go with them?  I didn't!  How could I not know?!?!?!  What did I think the little girls used when they stood at their ironing boards?

They used one of these!  This cute little iron is only 5 inches tall.  I'm afraid to plug it in.  Would you let a child plug this in and play with it?  I could see them wandering off to play with something else and forgetting it was on, which sounds exactly like something I would do.

Sunny Suzy was trademarked by the Wolverine Supply and Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh (back when things were made by American workers) in 1928.  Under the Sunny Suzy brand, you'd find toy vacuum cleaners, toy laundry sets, toy wringers, toy wash tubs, toy irons & ironing boards, and toy dishes.   I wonder if there are other brands of toy irons?

So here they are, So Happy Together (just like The Turtles)!

Then I found this beauty. It was pulled out of a sewing cabinet, so there's no pedal or any way to make it work.  My husband made the nice stand for it.  I don't care that it doesn't work, because it is SO PRETTY!  I never saw a blue sewing machine before.  I need to do more rearranging in my sewing room to give this a place of honor.

I like the decorative Montgomery Ward trademark thing.  It looks like something from a car hood.  Pig Dean would like it.

I never saw one of these either.  The bells still ring when you dial a number.  It was made by the N.N. Hill Brass Company, 1889 - 1960, which specialized in bells and toys.  Put them together and what do you get?  A toy telephone that "rings".  Putting aside the illogicality of a phone that rings when you dial, it's still cool.

Notice how the "1" is missing.  All those little fingers over the years have rubbed it off.  

Notice how "OPERATOR" is spelled from the bottom up.  Maybe more than one mother had to answer the question "Mommy, what is a ROTAREPO?