Schoenhut Piano Company

Last updated
Schoenhut Piano Company
Industry Woodworking
Founded 1872;146 years ago (1872) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Founder Albert Frederick Schoenhut
HeadquartersUnited States
Products
Website toypiano.com

The Schoenhut Piano Company is an American manufacturer of toy pianos, dolls, and other wooden toys. It was founded in 1872 in Philadelphia as the A. Schoenhut Company by German immigrant and woodcarver Albert Schoenhut, who had begun making toy pianos during his youth in Germany. [1] . Both his father and grandfather had been toy and doll-makers. [1] The company began with making toy pianos and soon expanded to other toys such as dolls, doll houses, and circus figures. By the time of Albert Schoenhut's death in 1912, Schoenhut Piano Company had grown to become the largest toy company in the United States, and the first to export its products to Germany. [1] . The Great Depression forced the company into bankruptcy in 1935, but a year later Otto Schoenhut opened a new company called O. Schoenhut, Inc., continuing the legacy. It was purchased in the 1980s by the Trinca family.

United States federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Toy piano music instrument

The toy piano, also known as the kinderklavier, is a small piano-like musical instrument. Most modern toy pianos use round metal rods, as opposed to strings in a regular piano, to produce sound. The US Library of Congress recognizes the toy piano as a unique instrument with the subject designation, Toy Piano Scores: M175 T69. The most famous example of a dedicated composition for the instrument is the "Suite for Toy Piano" (1948) by John Cage.

Philadelphia Largest city in Pennsylvania, United States

Philadelphia, sometimes known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2017 census-estimated population of 1,580,863. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

Contents

Products

Toy pianos

Schoenhut toy pianos, designed by Albert Schoenhut, were the company's first products. Various models were produced beginning in 1872 until 1935. [2] O Schoenhut, Inc. continued to make toy pianos into the twenty-first century. [3]

Figurines and dolls

Related Research Articles

Cabbage Patch Kids toy brand

Cabbage Patch Kids are a line of soft sculptured toy doll like creatures sold by Xavier Roberts and registered in the United States copyright office in 1978.

Hasbro toy and media company

Hasbro, Inc. is an American multinational toy and board game company. It is the largest toy maker in the world in terms of stock market value, and third largest with revenues of approximately $5.12 billion. Hasbro acquired the trademarks and products of Kenner, Parker Brothers, and Milton Bradley, among others. Among its products are Monopoly, G.I. Joe, Furby, Transformers, Nerf, My Little Pony, Twister and the newly acquired Power Rangers franchise. The Hasbro brand also spawned TV shows to promote its products, such as Family Game Night on the Discovery Family network. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The majority of its products are manufactured in East Asia.

FAO Schwarz company known for its unique high-end toys, life-sized stuffed animals, dolls, and games

FAO Schwarz is an American toy brand and store. The company is known for its high-end toys, life-sized stuffed animals, interactive experiences, brand integrations, and games.

Troll doll

A Troll Doll is a type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair depicting a troll, also known as a Dam doll after their creator Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam. The toys are also known as good luck trolls, or alternatively gonk trolls in the United Kingdom.

Dollhouse Miniature house, possibly for dolls that fit the house according to scale

A dollhouse or doll's house is a toy home made in miniature. For the last century, dollhouses have primarily been the domain of children but their collection and crafting is also a hobby for many adults. The term dollhouse is used commonly in the United States and Canada. In the UK the term dolls' house or dollshouse is used.

Rainbow Brite, also known in Japan as Magical Girl Rainbow Brite, is a media franchise by Hallmark Cards, introduced in 1983. The animated television series of the same name first aired in 1984, the same year Hallmark licensed Rainbow Brite to Mattel for a range of dolls and other merchandise. A theatrical feature-length film, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, was released by Warner Bros. in 1985. The franchise was rebooted in 1996, 2003, 2009, and then again in 2014 through Hallmark's online on-demand streaming video service, Feeln. A line of new merchandise sold only by Hallmark online and in its shops debuted in 2015.

Raggedy Ann fictional character

Raggedy Ann is a character created by American writer Johnny Gruelle (1880–1938) that appeared in a series of books he wrote and illustrated for young children. Raggedy Ann is a rag doll with red yarn for hair and a triangle nose. Johnny Gruelle received US Patent D47789 for his Raggedy Ann doll on September 7, 1915. The character was created in 1915 as a doll, and was introduced to the public in the 1918 book Raggedy Ann Stories. When a doll was marketed with the book, the concept had great success. A sequel, Raggedy Andy Stories (1920), introduced the character of her brother, Raggedy Andy. Further characters such as Beloved Belindy a black doll, were featured as dolls and characters in books.

Ideal Toy Company toy company

Ideal Toy Company was an American toy company founded by Morris and Rose Michtom. During the post–World War II baby boom era, Ideal became the largest doll-making company in the United States. Their most popular dolls included Betsy Wetsy, Toni, Saucy Walker, Shirley Temple, Miss Revlon, Patti Playpal, Tammy, Thumbelina, Tiny Thumbelina, and Crissy. Their last big hit was the Rubik's Cube.

Gund

GUND is a Canadian-owned manufacturer of plush stuffed animals. The company is based in Edison, New Jersey, and distributes throughout the United States and Canada as well as in Europe, Japan, Australia, and South America. GUND is currently run by third generation family owner Bruce Raiffe whose grandfather Jacob Swedlin purchased the company from the original founder in 1925.

Fisher-Price American company that produces toys for infants and children

Fisher-Price is an American company that produces educational toys for children and infants, headquartered in East Aurora, New York. Fisher-Price has been a subsidiary of Mattel since 1993.

Black doll

A black doll is a doll of a black person. Representations, both stereotypical and realistic, fashioned into playthings, date back centuries. More accurate, mass-produced depictions are manufactured today as toys and adult collectibles.

Palitoy was a British toy company. It manufactured some of the most popular toys in Britain, some original items and others under licence. Its products included Action Man, Action Girl, Action Force, Tiny Tears, Pippa, Tressy, Mainline Model Railways, Merlin, Star Wars figures, Play-Doh and the Care Bears.

Bonnie D. Zacherle is an American illustrator and designer who now resides in Warrenton, Virginia. Zacherle is best known as the original creator of the best-selling My Little Pony toy line. She is also the creator of Nerfuls. Zacherle has done some outside consulting for Bliss House, an American licensing consultancy, on the graphics and product development side. In 2003, she became a member of 'Women In Toys'.

D. Dudley Bloom Conceptual inventor of rolling travel luggage; of the "magic milk bottle" for dolls; of a precursor of the cassette tape recorder; real estate developer in Florida and the Caribbean Islands.

David Dudley Bloom was an American businessman who made notable contributions to the consumer products industry as a conceptual inventor and marketing executive during the 1950s and 1960s, including proposing and designing the first conventional travel luggage built on wheels; marketing the first "magic milk bottle" for dolls; and designing and marketing a continuous-play tape recorder.

Gendron, Inc. is an American manufacturer of wheelchairs, hospital beds, stretchers, and other medical equipment based in Bryan, Ohio.

The Humpty Dumpty Circus was an animated short film made by director and producer J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, the Anglo-American founders of Vitagraph Studios. The short has been thought to have been the first film to use the stop-motion technique, based on an estimated release date of 1897 or 1898. The film featured a circus with acrobats and animals in motion. According to Smith, they used his daughter's set of small circus dolls, which had jointed limbs so they could be balanced in place. This toy set was most likely the popular Humpty Dumpty Circus produced by Schoenhut Piano Company between 1903 and 1930. The film is lost. Images that have been thought to be stills from the film may be pictures of the popular toy set.

Marjory Fainges is an Australian researcher and historian on the subject of the Australian Toy Industry over the last 100 years in particular the commercial manufacture of dolls. She has written 16 books and is a doll judge of antique, collectible, modern and artist dolls and she has lectured internationally.

Schoenhut doll

Schoenhut dolls were wooden dolls produced by the Schoenhut Piano Company between 1903 and 1935. The company, founded by woodworker Albert Schoenhut, initially made toy pianos. They began to produce figurines in the early 1900s, including wooden circus-themed sets and animals.

Albert Frederick Schoenhut (1849-1912) created the A. Schoenhut Company, one of the leading toy producers in America at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1872, he founded the Schoenhut Piano Company in Philadelphia, which later became known as the A. Schoenhut Company and was incorporated in 1897. They established a reputation, based on German handicraft traditions, and created toy pianos and other musical instruments in the early days. Eventually, they introduced dolls, play sets, games and more and they became the largest toy manufacturer in America. In 1919, Schoenhut patented his “All-Wood Perfection Art Doll” and in 1997, the United States Postal Service issued stamps of Classic American Dolls and included his wooden dolls as part of the collection.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "History". Toypiano.com. About Schoenhut. Archived from the original on 15 October 2009. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  2. Moore, Jay (24 January 2015). "What's it Worth: Figurines and a Schoenhut piano". Richmond Times-Dispatch. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  3. "Wooden Wonders". National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. 9 January 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2017.

Further reading