Finely Furnished: The Tynietoy Company

May 21, 2015

Rhode Island was one of the most distinctive places for furniture-making in colonial America. It was only fitting that Marion Perkins and Amey Vernon founded the Tynietoy Company there in the 1920s. The female entrepreneurs capitalized on the colonial revival movement in America and began making high-quality wooden dollhouse furniture based on early American decorative arts movements.

Wing-back chairs, highboy cabinets, and four poster beds all found their way into dollhouses. Each piece of furniture was hand-painted by students at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1923, the company standardized the dollhouse furniture to 1:12 scale (1 inch equals 1 foot in full-scale) and were produced in a variety of styles. Tynietoy’s high-end (and high-style) playthings sold at stores like Marshall Field’s and F.A.O. Schwarz. Upon Vernon’s passing in 1942, Perkins sold the company and by the early 1950s, Tynietoy had dissolved. Tynietoy dollhouses and furniture are (mostly) stamped with a trademark underneath and have become highly collectable today. Up next: a visit to T/m’s Tynietoy Georgian style dollhouse!