F is for Follow-up - Dusyma Now

An overly-grand title, as there's very little I can tell you about Dusyma now you can't tell yourself with five minutes on Google! But a few thoughts with images from their current catalogue.

Typical animals and trees - infant 'snap' type game

A quick Google may lead you straight to the Dubai-based (.ae = Arab Emirates) English language website, despite the fact that the German firm is still there now at Schorndorf-Miedelsbach, and on .de (= Deutschland), if you look harder.

While some image searches lead you straight to a Hong Kong factory, apparently passing-off the [German] wooden-production as theirs?

Other simple dexterity/matching games

It would seem that the parent in Germany now formally called Dusyma Kindergartenbedarf GmbH, is the wholesaler of products from around the world to the educational (and hospital?) sectors in Germany and Europe, and may also be responsible for project management of larger jobs - outfitting new schools, early-learning libraries or hospital play-areas, worldwide?

A heard of elephants!

"The self-developed and distributed Dusyma wooden and educational toys are mainly produced in Germany and other European countries. Dusyma itself operates its own production facilities in Schorndorf, Brandenburg and the Erzgebirge."

Dusyma Germany - Code of Conduct

"Dusyma develops, manufactures and supplies educationally valuable play and learning material as well as room concept for children. Dusyma is the most innovative designer of kindergardens and social institutions in the world."

Dusyma Dubai - Website

We had a set like this when we were kids!

Equally, while Google keeps sending me to Dubai, that may be only a local thing? Like an Englishman in Nigeria Googling Walgreens and being redirected to the Boots branch in Fleet each time? Anyway, the company is still run by Lulu Schiffler-Betz, the older Schiffler's daughter by his first wife.

Ammunition for when you absolutely, positively have to go nail-crazy!

The products in these images are finished in the same fashion as the toy train in Joe Walton's sample-case, that is to say glossy, flat colour with minimal wood-grain, they could also sit next to products from Dregano or Tobar imports and be indistinguishable, unlike the rough-cut stuff that made-up most of the case's contents.

The Logo/building block

Image; Wikicommons

One hopes we will actually see much more of wood (and tin-plate) in toys and playthings going forward, as we break-off from our addictive love affair with polymers and while one also hopes there will be a more sophisticated type of wooden toy for slightly older or more discerning children, maybe (with higher production values) we could also see a return to compositions?

Links

German website - in German - https://www.dusyma.com/de/

Dubai website - in English - https://www.dusyma.ae/

Hong Kong Factory? - https://www.etchkshop.com/collections/dusyma

B is for Buildings and the Built Environment

So to conclude our look at the contents of Joe Walton's case we get to the buildings and other bits, and weigh-up what we've looked at. Firstly it's quite a big case, once I'd realised the size of the figures and trees, and therefore the vehicles, those compartments started to look very large!

And it gives a lot of depth to these and their layer. These have been better finished though, maybe not to the same 'modern' standard as the little train, but the look 'produced' rather than home made. They are relatively unique too; both by size and design. More of a stand-alone wooden toy range than anything typically 'erzgebirge' as the animals and people are.

They are hollow with full gap windows (which may have been routed or drilled and then squared-off with chisels, some skilled workmanship at last!), but this is the biggest clue as to the nature of the set, it lacks the finesse of both later and earlier sets of the type, and also avoids some of the more common tropes and memes of erzgebirge playthings, and where those tropes are present, they are not the common sizes?

The dressed-hedges (yew?) are also very modern-looking, like the train, which would seem to be just low-enough to pass through the tunnel?

The impression you get from the item as a whole (the case and both its contents and possible age) is that it's half an attempt to pick-up after the war with limited staff, budget and/or machinery while having signs of an improved range coming through from the factory, a turn-around piece?

If the following year (whenever that was) there was more stuff of the quality of the train or above-hedges, it may be that this case simply became obsolete and forgotten somewhere, but to find its way to America in relatively pristine condition, one wonders if maybe it was sold at a flea-market by the salesman after he's received his updated samples, to a member of the US forces, or swapped for something. or some favour? Contraband? Chocolate? Vehicle Parts? Who knows, but I suspect a GI took it home to the 'States back in the 1950's?

While I've picked holes in it, I have done so for the purpose of making sense of it, of trying to understand and date it, not because I don't like it, it is a stunning survivor of a different age, there is no damage, no playwear, it wallows in charm and deserves to be in a museum somewhere, set-up under spotlights, behind spotless glass.

The company had been getting big in early-learning toys and child-sized playroom or schoolroom furniture before the war, so the crudities exhibited in some of the contents do point to struggle, to austerity and recovery, while the better items point to that recovery being months away when the case was filled for the salesman's trip round the toy stores and departments. It also goes some way to explaining way the stuff is 'not quite' true, or 'standard'  erzgebirge?

Many, many thanks to Mr Walton for sending me the original images, and for answering the call for more pictures . . . twice! It's joy to post stuff like this; there's a whole bunch of history in that box, but it's likely to remain mostly a mystery history!

W is for Wooden Warriors

The military selection in this wonderful box of Joe's is the clincher for the post-war, but near-war age of the set, with several clues as to why it's from the 1950's or very late 1040's.

The soldiers are generic, not in a 'German' [feldtgrau/field gray] colour and wearing the bloused trousers of the occupation army's GI's or - the then brand new - NATO forces from just about anywhere? The factory would have been sandwiched between the US and French sectors of occupied (or NATO-bulwark!) Germany.

Looking here at the base you can see it's a three-ply, which for a while led me to believe these were larger than they are! The finish however is not smooth, and you would expect rounded edges and smooth surfaces in similar figures today, or from between the wars.

As well as another shot of the vessel; more of an ocean-going tug-boat in a different scale to the yacht, we have a tank, gun and two 'planes along with a selection of similar olive-green soldiers. More clues to date are to be found here.

Again we see signs of austerity in the aircraft, which, as well as looking home-made are both crude and poorly finished, and where you would expect to see signs of lathe-turning they seem to have been tapered by carving and sanding, and the small ones looks to have had its nose shaped with a giant pencil-sharpener!

The tank, which may have been influenced by British 'cruisers' or the American Sherman, actually looks most like an Australian Sentinel in profile, but is probably trying to be a Chaffee, or even an M46/47 Patton?

While the two aeroplanes have the swept-back tail-planes of post war jets but the wings of WWII fighters, indeed, the larger one seems to have borrowed its wings from a Messerschmitt Me.109!

As most post-war aircraft were finished in polished metal or silver-dope, we can consider the two to be airliners, leaving, within the box as a whole, a small military sample mostly in the not-aggressive poses of a garrison, with three chaps on the range, another sign of war-fatigue and post-war manufacture?

Scale/sizing of all the main elements of the military group, along with the aircraft. The gun is relatively in-scale with the figures; the tank however, is a tiddler!

P is for Population

These - as designs - are as timeless as the trees we looked at yesterday, and you can find some like this today still, although more common are the lathe-turned people, who are equally timeless and it is the lack of the finer turned objects in these samples which date it to the austerity period.

Obviously there has been machining but only to produce the mouldings and dowels everything has been bread-sliced from, there's no fine machining in evidence, nor the careful, skillful, carving which produces those distinctive, 'fluffy' erzgebirge trees?

They clearly had a bench or table router, but no lathes, a shortage of sandpaper and no/few skilled workers?

Anyway, a quick look at the peeps, text to a minimum as I've not collaged these to help them enlarge. As they are found; a pile of colour in the dismal industrialisation of Marshall's post war Europe or am I being too lyrical?

The policeman is dressed in pre-Wall/Wire attire, I think, but as that tangible 'curtain' didn't go up until 1961, it make no difference to the dating I was attempting in the previous post. He is similarly dressed to the magnetic one we saw in a 2018 PW show-report a year or so ago, which equally dates that plastic to the 1950's!

The animals are of common design, you can find similar in modern sets, but - like the vehicles - these are a bit rough and not up to the standard of modern versions, but neither are they up to the finish seen on older pre- or inter-war examples, suggesting - if nothing else - a shortage of sandpaper or fine-toothed files . . . or both?

Another shot, the lion is spoilt for choice, not that anyone seems that fussed by his roaring - all mouth and no trousers! I think the two smaller gray ones are monkeys of some type?

I had to stop some of the images down slightly and it's left the elephants a bit dark in this shot, but brought out the colours of the snake. The Elephants are cut in thicker slices and have no bases, looking at them two images above, they have a white undercoat under the grey top coat but you can still see a roughness to them absent from earlier and more modern examples, and the glossy train?

The lion and crocodile face-off while a huge anaconda glides by!

Offered from the new (newish?) Hong Kong factory's portal, but probably made in Germany, these are the modern types; the figures are a little different but they may be trying for local/domestic-Chinese sales and looking to India and other Asian markets, while you can see the trees (as the figures) are baseless, single colour and have more symmetry through a central axis, although some don't, a Dusyma trope maybe?

I asked Joe (late in the day) what size they all were and he patiently went and did more images than I could find blurb for! Suffice to say this is a reasonable sample of the figure shots which reveal they are slightly larger than I originally assumed they were, but much smaller than I'd convinced myself they might be after looking at the grain on the plywood bases!

In point of fact, they are about the same size as the modern figures we've seen before, and will see again soon; at 30-odd millimetres. The smaller ones being children.

V is for Vehicles

Continuing with the contents of Joe's salesman's sample case; we arrive at the road transport, and some clues to the dating of the set, a set which the factory have shown an interest in buying-back, but aren't answering queries-on - often the way, as I discovered with the Tatra premium guys.

The vehicles are pretty crude, even by the standards of the basic range currently in Dregano's catalogue, and point to that period immediately after the war (World, Second - for younger readers!), when Germany was suffering the same (or worse) privations as everyone else they'd involved in their [not-so] 'grand social experiments'!

Lack of money, materials, machine tools and manpower which would place this sample around 1950, maybe a bit earlier? The sedan-cars with their teardrop back-ends are a post-war trope, while the lorries are pretty generic. And again; bread-sliced, but thicker, 'doorsteps'!

The ladder for the fire-engine is particularly crude and home-made looking, from scraps, compared to the farm fencing (previous post), this looks like it was made by a monkey, and not a pink-one! Ignoring the cars, this ladder would appear to be trying to take us back from 1950, to 1945 or even late-war - and it could be old stock?

The yacht is equally home-made in appearance, we whittled this sort of thing from lumps of fir-bark when we were kids - a penknife and a cocktail stick; you were captain of your own vessel!

However, the little train has been finished to exactly the same quality as the trains being sold by these companies today (another point I made in that old post on the subject - the timelessness of a lot of this stuff), having had a proper sanding and a polished-gloss finish; compare with the saw-marks and roughness of the fire-engine.

This would be pushing our date the other way, closer to '54/55 maybe? By this time the likes of Koho, Manurba and Siku were filling shelves with the multiple colours of their shiny, 'dimestore' polymer toys and novelties, so this is a strictly erzgebirge view we're taking here!

Even the picket-fence is better finished than the fire-ladder, with a formal, factory-imposed geometry lacking from the scraps used on the ladder. If I had to narrow it down (at gunpoint), I think a fair stab at a date for this set is 1952? . . . ish!

Again the close-up reveals a roughness you wouldn't get now, and (as far as I know) didn't get before the war, although some wartime plywood WHW's such as the 'DRK collector children' - are the same poorly finished splinter-risks!

The boat is par-for-the-course size wise, but the lorry/truck is a little on the big size compared to the other examples I've seen - both old and modern? But then I suppose it's no larger than the little two-horse/two-axle wagons you find?

H is for Holtzstoff

It's a poor pun, but there are six of these posts, so 'any port on a storm'! In this post we're looking at the trees and fences from the Dusyma sample case sent to the blog by Joe Walton from the 'States.

Dark green trees, both fluffy (deciduous?) and evergreen firs, and a length of hedging or shrub which seems to have lost its bases. The bases are a two-ply or 'three-mil' plywood and are stained, against the full painting of the trees themselves - the same is true of the figures we will be looking at.

I quite like the kink in the trunk of the deciduous or 'broadleaved' tree, most of these erzgebirge trees have - traditionally - an axis of symmetry, while other details are the brown trunks, 2nd green tufts at ground level and additional bases, both usually lacking in these types.

Light green stuff; no firs, but solid elm/oak/chestnut types, along with longer lengths of hedge in two designs and an immigrant shrub from the compartment next-door! Looking like they were made yesterday, it's only the accrued dust down the compartment-edge which hints at the true age of this case and its contents.

Like most of the stuff in this set, these are all produced on the bread-slice principle we looked at here at Small Scale World years ago and which is still used by erzgebirge (and Bavarian, Tyrolean, Baden Württemberger, Black Forest . . . ) makers today.

Indeed ignoring the Dubai thing, Dusyma are based near Stuttgart, but I can never remember if Stuttgart is in Baden Württemberg or Baden-Baden - very important if you live there, I'm sure - no 'Hampshire Hog' wants to be labeled a Surreyman, they're all posh and 'up' themselves!

More hedges in dark green are in with the farm fencing. There is also a packet of picket-fencing (there's a silly rhyme in there somewhere!), which is shown originally being in-with the train, one wonders if someone in the factory said to the salesman "Dude, you haven't got any picket fence, we’ve already packed them, here; you better take a pack" (except - in German) before sticking a 'finished' product in the case?

More likely he deliberately carried it to show a sample of the packaging available to the shopkeepers/buyers, as they played with carefully studied everything else!

60-65mm is quite large for these types, which part-explains the extra colours and the bases, they will need something to hold them upright on runs or carpets, and something to break-up what whould otherwise be a large piece of green!

Also; you can see in the reflected flash-light, on the deciduous tree, how crudely or pooly-finished these are; modern examples, pre-war examples . . . and the train well see in a later set, are much better finished with a smooth, even coating, the inference being austerity conditions and/or shortages, in the factory.

D is for Dusyma - Ertzgibirge Salesman's Sample Case

And so to the lovely thing I flagged-up on Friday, sent to the blog by Joe Walton of the USA, Joe found me on Google through the 'Erzgebirge' tag (obviously posting 'plastic smalls' and pencil toys for eleven years is starting to pay off, lesson there for someone, but a bit late I fear), and was looking for more information on the rigid case he'd acquired and which we saw closed in the last-but-one 'Forthcoming' post.

Two keys, one will be a spare, but the fact they've been kept together suggests the possibility of a bit of theatricality on the part of the salesman, grandly opening both at once with all the flourish of an early J. Bond about to put a secret sniper-rifle together!

Opened; it at first provides little in the way of clues! Being covered with a sheet of stiff card with two pull-handles from black ticking, I know it's called ticking because Richard Gere is told by the shop assistant that that's what it's called in the Woman in Red, or was it Mickey Rourke in 9½ Weeks? One of them was buying a bed with ticking!

Open with two keys (and a flourish!), disappoint with a plain cover . . . then the reveal! It would be hard - in the austerity of post-war Europe - to know where to look first as all this colour was revealed in its plethora of little compartments.

We'll look at them all in separate posts, but suffice to say the size of the sample [case], coupled with a small number of aeroplanes and vessels (2 each) point to the whole being a salesman's sample-case, rather than a set.

Under the smaller parts is a second, deeper tray of buildings two of the larger being marked-up as a school and hospital, a third - clearly - a hospital, larger scenics which includes two bridges and a tunnel and some base-boards; meadow, pond and river/stream section.

Some of the larger pieces are marked with an ink-stamp, which represents the interlocking building-blocks the company is still making today.

The company still exists, and the logo is basically the same, but, it seems; partly as a brand, owned by or licensed-to someone in Dubai, where the English Language website is, and seemingly supplied or part-supplied by a factory in Hong Kong.

The German company now being a major wholesaler to the trade with a 1,400-page German-language catalogue of craft, art and educational supplies, toys, game, puzzles and early-learning/teaching aids along with library, classroom and gymnasium furniture, play equipment and stationary, and covering 'rival' brands - Lego, Brio and Schleich - among others.