This weeks’ treasures are adorable toddler accessories found at different QBO sales. For safety reasons we can’t resell older car seats, and antique cribs and high chairs can only be sold as decor, NOT usable baby furniture, but these cute vintage kid items did not make the no-no list.
So first up, growth charts! Parents who expect to be in their homes for a while can use a pencil on a door jamb to chart their kids’ growth over the years, but if you are a renter who moves frequently, these portable versions do the trick. Decorative growth charts were particularly popular in the 1970s when multiple crafting companies offered kits and companies associated with kids’ products such as breakfast cereals put out their own ‘product placement’ versions.
The tall giraffe is a hooked rug from a kit sold sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Kits came with designs pre-printed on a canvas background, and appropriate colored yarns in appropriate amounts. The crafter supplied the rug hooking frame and heavy-duty punch needle. Hooked rugs enjoyed a swell in popularity in the 1920s. Pearl McGown started designing rug hooking patterns at that time and published her first book on rug hooking in 1938. She then organized exhibitions to show off rug hooking teachers’ work to promote the craft and in 1951, started the McGown Teachers Workshops to teach teachers how to teach rug-hooking to crafters, if you follow me. Over the course of her long career she created over 1000 hooked rug designs (!!!), so it’s highly probable that Pearl McGown had something to do with this giraffe.
The “So Big” growth chart was made in the 1970s, probably by Sultana. It is screen-printed on heavy felt and then hand-embellished with color-coordinated sequins around the moss hummock, the mushroom house, flowers, stems, ladybug, and around the elf’s clothing. A real, commercially-printed tailor’s cloth tape-measure is sewed down one side. Other versions say, “How tall am I?” and include a clown on stilts, or a stack of circus animals, or kids climbing a tall tree (and of course the little elf here is the opposite of ‘big’.)
The 1950s – 60s folding potty-training chair is similar to current ones except it’s made of composite wood and metal instead of plastic and metal. It’s missing its under-basin but any old dishpan would do. Toddlers can sit to practice “going like a big kid’ and then later the chair converts to a stepstool that helps the little learner get up onto the real toilet. The cute lamb decal may have been applied by the owner rather than the manufacturer; they are all over children’s furniture of the 1950s.
Precursor to peel-off backing stickers, these decals are like temporary tattoos, needing water to free them from their paper backing. Once applied they are *kinda* permanent but still somewhat fragile. A few decals had real, touchable fuzz but weirdly most are PHOTOGRAPHS of a physical, wooly lamb stuffed animal that was then printed as flat decals, so although this looks somewhat dimensional, it’s microns thin. If you love them, reproductions are sold on Etsy.
Last is a cute folding 13″ tall stepstool/chair combo. Identical wooden ones are still made, but the charm of vintage are the verses on them. Another edition reads “Stand up to wash, sit down to rest, from my little stool I see TV the best” or “This stepstool is really grand, to sit or to stand” or “I can sit ‘N’ stand by myself” and (my favorite) “This little stool is mine, I use it all the time, to reach things I couldn’t, and lots of things I shouldn’t.” Ha ha! Good on ya, kid!
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!