Garden Swing Seat

I spotted a couple of clearance lots on auction each had some familiar things...the 'sofa' was in one and the rest in the other. 

It was missing a top rail and seat supports but a bit of twiddling with some wire and a kebab stick did the trick. :o)

Good as new!

Jenny's now all set for Summer!

Utility items for miniature housework

New item in my collection...the little vacuum cleaner and the step ladders.

The stepladders are brand new 'old stock' so perfect... but the little cleaner was missing many parts...but thus very cheap. I've made a pipe, on-off switch and cleaning head for it, which now they're painted up in the correct colours look perfectly acceptable! It sits in there quite well with the other old bits and bobs. The mangle is not JHome...it's a 1950s Barton metal one, but very nice.

 Jenny has almost got everything she needs now to keep her house spick and span!

Facebook Page for Jenny

I started a social media page for Jenny where things can also be saved and shared:
Jennys Home Facebook Page

like this blog it's still very new, but hopefully will grow as time goes on. Please pop over there and add a contribution and book mark the page!

My own 1960s Jenny's Home

 This is the original Jenny's Home set I was given in the late 1960s.

I had 4 rooms as you can see...2 large and 2 small which I usually arranged as an L shape around a selection of 'Britains Garden' items. The picture above shows the same set which I redecorated for my own children to play with in the 1990s. It all survived and I'm now adding to my collection and putting the styling back to something more 'original'.

Here is my own Jenny in her living room. As you can see I didn't have a lot of original furniture in the 1960s. My mum tells me it was rather too expensive! I had alternative sets for the lounge, dining room and bedroom by TOFA of Czechoslovakia, an interesting article about them is here:

TOFA doll house and toys

I did have a complete Jenny's Home bathroom suite and some kitchen items though, and a bookcase.

My mum made the cushions...

and the bedspread and rug...

These are some modern 16th scale pans etc, but somewhere I had some Dol-Toi pans and a little pottery tea set in powder blue and a few other accessories.

In the kitchen you can see the Jenny's Home kitchen cupboard I had...it must have been the JH34 set as it came with the 'rolling pin, pastry board and plated silver tray' which I still have somewhere.

I recall even at the time as a young child being impressed by the quality of the Tri-ang pieces. They had a metal structure with plastic elements and it was very well made and detailed.

The carpets were made of felt...these are the original ones which came with the room boxes. 

You also got some red and white striped fabric which I made up for curtains.

I used some red gingham too as a drop behind the bath as there's a door there which seems a bit odd in the bathroom!! lol

Jenny's Home at the V&A Museum of Childhood Bethnal Green, London

The Bethnal Green Toy museum also has a collection of Jenny's Home:

V&A Museum of Childhood

Excerpt of text:

This modular dolls house burst onto the scene in the mid-sixties, bringing with it the fashions and language of architecture and interior design.

Jennys Home was produced in association with Homes and Gardens Magazine. It launched in November 1965 through a colour-printed centrefold in that publication.

Fittingly, collectible accessory sets were also described in terms of do-it-yourself decorating. ‘Girls!’ shouts the packaging, ‘wall-to-wall carpets and curtain material!’, ‘wonderful furniture’, and ‘four changes of colour scheme all blending in with Jennys Home’. By association with modernity, choice and luxury, Jenny’s plain plastic box became utterly desirable.

Jennys Home bucked the prevailing trend for painted wooden dolls’ houses in the form of detached mansions and villas. Instead, each room is a simple plastic box, with large windows, moulded panelling on the front and stone-cladding on the sides. These rooms could be linked together side by side, or stacked to create flexible, modular housing.

Suggested configurations included ‘bedsitter and kitchen’, ‘luxurious six-roomed bungalow’ and ‘apartment block with penthouse flat’, all increasingly familiar housing forms in mid twentieth century Britain.

Jennys Home furniture was brighter and more modern than previous ranges. It is small too, produced at 1/16th scale. The full range of accessories included modern lounge sets with televisions, fitted kitchens, and three-piece bathroom suites. But traditional dolls’ house items like the piano persisted. ‘Jenny’ herself came in blonde and brunette versions, and her parents and baby brother could also be collected.Jennys Home was made by Spot-On, a subsidiary of the Tri-ang brand. It was produced in the firm’s Belfast factory, where die-cast cars were also made. The plastic pieces used the new technique of injection moulding.

Two generous donations make up the V&A Museum of Childhood’s tower block. Given by Angela Davidson and Karen Curtis.

Jenny's Home Sets

These are some of the old photographs of the furniture sets which could be bought to add to the rooms. Some of the larger collector sets with several rooms ( for example JR105 )  did also have furniture included, and you could also buy many individual pieces packed onto smaller cards.

Brighton Toy Museum Jenny's Home Collection

The Toy Museum in Brighton have a collection of Jenny's Home materials and some wonderful images of the old promotional adverts so you can see what each piece or packaged set looked like. This can be so helpful as some of the things varied in design...there were several kinds of chair, sideboard, chairs and tables etc and many different looking Jenny dolls and her family!

This is the link to the page:

Brighton Toy Museum

An excerpt:

Originally launched as Spot-On Dollhouse Furniture, with the Spot-On brand signifying accuracy, and with the brand meant to supplement the existing range of Triang dollhouses, the Lines Brothers marketing department realised that if the range was going to be used by children rather than adults, then play value was probably more of a selling point than cold accuracy, and the range was rebranded as Dollies Home.

A second rebranding swiftly followed as the success of the Barbie doll, and Triang's own new doll and accessory range Sindy showed that what young girls wanted from a dollhouse range in the 1960s was not something that represented a house for anonymous dolls, but something that represented a house for them – a range that represented their own personal lifestyle and lifestyle aspirations. Playing with Sindy and Barbie allowed girls to identify with the dolls and rehearse what their future life might turn out to be like, and assigning a doll range a specific name created a stronger and more personal branding.

The range was duly renamed from the childish "Dollies Home" to the more personal Jennys Home. Jenny had parents, and a dog, and a set of playground furniture, and also had her own toys including a doll's pram and her own dollhouse to play with ... but she also had her own bright red open-top sports car.

The "Jenny's Home" range was less strongly targeted at owners of existing conventional dollhouses - the furniture could also be played with on the living room carpet or used to furnish a shoebox, and Triang's range included sets of clip-together plastic rooms that could be used stand-alone or combined to create a modern dollhouse "apartment" living-space, which didn't assume that everyone necessarily identified with dolls that lived in large Victorian detached dollhouses with sloping roofs and chimneys.