Overview
Toy theater materials from the United States, England, Spain, Denmark, and Germany.
Dates
- Creation: 1890-1997 and undated
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English, Spanish, Danish, Portuguese, and French.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
Most of this collection is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
5 linear feet (12 boxes)Primarily reproductions of early 19th-century toy theater material, but some were newly designed and manufactured in the 20th-century. Collection contains toy theaters manufactured in Germany, Spain, England, the United States, and Denmark, including full cardboard and wooden theaters, prosceniums, stage floors, cloth curtains, scenery, characters, character slides, printed scripts, an audiocassette, and paper wrappers. Also includes cutouts, models, a set of electric lights for a toy theater, plastic and wooden toy figures, stencils, and paper dolls. Companies and individuals associated include: McLoughlin Bros., D'Oyly Carte, Mike Bartley, C. B. Nualart (El Teatro de los Niños), Pollock's Toy Theatres, Theatre Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum), Walt Disney Company, and many others. Tiles include: Sweeny Todd, The Mikado, Punch & Judy, The Merchant of Venice, Violet, Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack the Giant Killer, and Disney's Beauty and the Beast among others.
Biographical / Historical
Toy theaters were especially popular as English children's toys in the first half of the 19th-century. They were also called paper theaters and model theaters. By the late 19th-century popularity waned and publishing of these materials declined. Individual character portrait prints known as "penny plains" and "twopence coloureds" were collected and often used in toy theaters, as were engraved prints of multiple characters and scenery. Performing scripts were written especially for children to be used with these materials.
Arrangement
Organized into the following series:
- I. Toy theaters, cutouts, models, and paper dolls
- II. Miscellany for toy theaters
Physical Location
Harvard Depository, pf
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number; Source and date unknown.
General note
The majority of this collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
- Title
- Toy theater collection, circa 1890-1997: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02445
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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