Erhard & Söhne Treasures

There is something very appealing about the rich gilding and stylish detailing of the lovely antique German dolls' house furniture and accessories from Erhard & Söhne.

This is probably why their ormolu pieces [often referred to as gilt in the UK] usually come with an eye-watering price tag, so I was chuffed to bits recently to find two very nice pieces of it at a very reasonable price.

I recognised them immediately as being by Erhard & Söhne as one of the many books I regularly drool over is this excellent book by Swantje Koehler [helpfully written in both German and English]:

The book provides an excellent history of the company and also reprints three of its black and white catalogues which appeared between 1900 and 1925. It also includes beautiful colour photographs of known examples of some of the catalogue pieces.

So, which pieces did I find? 

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The first is this lovely little medicine cabinet/chest:

Erhard & Söhne Medicine Cabinet - Catalogue No. 3597.

It appears in Swantje's book in both Catalogue B (undated but from between 1900 and 1925) and Catalogue C (1925).

It also appears in Catalogue A (1900), but the door handle of that one is shaped more like a tied bow, so I assume that mine is post-1900.

Inside with contents.

Happily, it came with a variety of bits and pieces appropriate to a medicine cabinet.

The door handle turns a little catch on the back of the door to keep it closed.

Inside without contents.

The inside is lined with a lovely green silk/satin fabric.

Back of the cabinet showing bent-over hanging loop.

The body of the cabinet feels like stiff card and the outside is also covered in green silk/satin fabric.

The little hanging-loop has been bent over so as to be invisible from the front. I guess this is because it isn't actually much use for hanging the cabinet, being on the front edge rather than the back - I'm really not sure how you would hang it from the loop unless you had an enormous nail sticking out of the wall!

The dimensions, excluding the hanging loop are: H 7.4 cm x W 5.5 cm x D 2.7 cm.

Close-up of the contents.

The two rolls of lint and the taller bottles look like those shown in the photo in Catalogue B in Swantje's book.

The two smaller bottles labeled 'Spirits' and 'Pulver' (powder) are shorter than those in the catalogue picture, so possibly aren't original, though they are very nice and each has a cork, though one of them has fallen inside the bottle.

I'm not at all sure that the non-working scissors (possibly made from tin) are original to the cabinet either.

The contents in the earlier Catalogue A picture and the later Catalogue B picture in Swantje's book show the lint in little unwrapped piles, so it looks likely that my cabinet dates somewhere in between 1900 and 1925.

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The second piece I found was this little hanging bookshelf:

Erhard & Söhne Bookshelf - Catalogue No. 3310/1.

This appears in all three of the catalogues in Swantje's book but I'm thinking maybe it would have been bought at or about the same time as the medicine cabinet.

Shelves without the books to show the pattern.

The shelf could also be bought without the books as Catalogue No 3310.

Two different sets of books, each comprising volumes 1-5.

The sets of books are hollow, being constructed from thin hardboard (or cardboard) covered in the same type of paper that many real books were.

Erhard & Söhne: Bookshelf Catalogue No. 3310/1 and Shelf Catalogue No. 3390. 

I already had a smaller version of the shelf but without books and the difference in size and pattern can be seen in this this photo.

I can see in Swantje's book that the shelves could actually be bought in three different sizes and each with or without books:

• Larger size (catalogue no. 3311 and 3311/1): this had a candle sconce on each of the top front corners and, if bought with books, each set had five volumes, the same as for the medium size but presumably the books were bigger.  I don't know the measurement of the larger shelf.
• Medium size (catalogue no. 3310 and 3310/1): as seen above. Dimensions: H (including hanging loop) 7 cm x W 5 cm x 3.7 cm.
• Small size (catalogue no. 3309/1): as seen above. If this piece was bought with books, each set only had four volumes. Dimensions: H (including the hanging loop) 5.7 cm x W 3.2 cm x D 2 cm.

The catalogue photos show that the pattern on the larger size was different again from either of those in the photo above.

Added 5th July 2020:

The largest size of shelf - with candle sconces.

I just came across this photo that I took last year of the largest sized shelves in a room in the Hammond House in the National Trust’s Wallington Hall collection in Northumberland.

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I'm really just recording my research into my own pieces here, but I hope that what I've written has been of use/interest to anyone who finds themselves here for their own purposes, research or otherwise!

Over the years, I've managed to find quite a few Erhard and Söhne pieces and mostly at very good prices - though I have to confess to two pricier purchases! - and I'd really like to record them all here, but that's for another rainy day.

Until next time,
Zoe