Village Houses
In the late 1920's, the Japanese began making cardboard village houses as Christmas decorations
for the American market and they were an immediate hit. These small pieces of art and architecture
were sold in the Five and Dime stores, the regional department stores and by the mail order companies.
They were sold individually or as boxed sets of 8 to match the number of lights in the series light sets.
Every house sat on a base or platform which ranged in size from under 2 x 3 inches with some larger
than 11 x 9 inches. Most of them have a fence around the front of the base and luffah trees in the front
lawn but they vary in style and finishes. There are 7 major categories of house styles/finishes for
the pre-World War II era:
1. Lithographed brick-sided houses
2. Log cabin-style houses made from single faced corrugated cardboard
3. Silk floss (actually shredded cellophane) finished houses
4. Houses that came off their base and used as candy containers
5. Houses painted white with splashes of bright colors decorated with bisque figures
6. Houses with white bases and green dots
7. Lacquer covered houses which were painted intense colors and then
had a layer of shellac varnish applied to the roof and walls of the house which gave them a shiny effect.
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