Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.1 #23 (27 Dec 1890).
Four-fifths of the dolls sold all the world over come from Germany. Of these a large proportion are made in one little place, Sonneberg, a town of about ten thousand inhabitants in Thuringen. Almost the entire industry of this place is confined to the manufacture of dolls. The inhabitants are very poor people and are brought up to doll-making.
Before it is completed a doll passes through many hands. The heads, hands, and feet are made by one person, the body, by another, the hair is fixed on by another, and the face is painted by two or three different people, one doing the rough work and the others the finishing touches. The clothing is made by another person and the dresses are put on by still another.
To this town of Sonneberg there comes every year a large number of buyers from all over the world. There are at least five hundred different kinds of dolls, and the variety is remarkable. The French invent many of the most attractive, but the Germans copy them so cheaply that the world's buyers go to the latter for their stock. For the manufacture of fine dress dolls the French still hold the lead. It is only in the cheaper goods that the Germans outdo them.
England furnishes very few dolls, and there is only one that is distinctly English—the rag doll, made wholly of rags. There are French walking dolls, smoking men, and other automatic figures, too intricate in their mechanism to be classed as mere dolls.
As with dolls, so it is with other toys. Most of them come from Germany, where they are made very cheaply. This same town of Sonneberg furnishes many of them, but more come from Nuremberg and small towns in its vicinity. It is in this district that magnetic toys, swords, guns, trumpets, horns, woolly sheep, jumping-jacks, monkeys on sticks, jacks-in-the-box, and ingenious mechanical toys are made.
The carved wooden toys come principally from the Bavarian highlands, but they are brought to Nuremberg to be sold. The cheaper kinds of wooden toys are made in poorer Saxony, and comprise cheap arks and sets of furniture. Toy horses, cows, elephants, cats, dogs, lions, tigers, and all kinds of animals are made largely in the German prisons. Many of these are ingenious novelties, being so constructed as to be able to move heads and to emit a noise resembling more or less the natural cry of each animal.
Iron toys are largely made in America, and so are tin toys. The tin for the latter is imported from Europe, and when the toys are finished they are exported for the European market. The majority of the rubber toys come from France, chiefly from Paris, although the manufacture of this line of plaything is constantly increasing in America, and the American rubber toys are really the best to be had. Toy watches are largely made in France, and are remarkably cheap.