Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 721 / October 20, 1877

Of British industries, not the least interesting to a large world of readers, great and small, will be found the manufacture of toys. Mr Bartley, in treating this subject in Mr Stanford's useful series of Handbooks to British Manufactures, rightly assumes that objects which are so inseparably connected with the happiness of our early life cannot be held unimportant; while we need but mention the name of Charles Dickens, in order to lend a charm to the avocations of a doll's dressmaker and a journeyman toy-maker. Although the English productions are almost entirely confined to a few special types of goods, which not only hold their own among foreign rivals, but are largely exported to the continent, we find that in London alone there are, besides various importers of toys, eleven rocking-horse manufacturers, ten wholesale dealers, and one hundred and fifty-one retail dealers, not including the large tribe of small retailers, who combine other occupations with the sale of toys. Though Germany, Switzerland, and France are the great storehouses of all toys of which the material is soft wood, the toy manufacture of London forms a large and interesting industry.
Penny wooden toys are turned out of a manufacturing establishment which consists of a toy-maker, his wife, and family. When the father has finished his work on the lathe, the mother and children have each their particular share in gluing, pasting, and painting. The material for these articles are scraps of timber bought out of builders' yards, the principal tools being the chisel and the lathe. Pewter toys are made in London in very large quantities. At one establishment a ton of metal is consumed each month in the production of Lilliputian tea, coffee, and dinner sets. English taste may be gathered from the fact, that the number of tea -sets made is nearly thirty times larger than either of the other two. Twenty-three separate articles make up a set, and of these articles two millions and a half are made yearly by one house alone. The metal is provided from miscellaneous goods, such as old candlesticks, tea-pots, pots and pans, bought from 'marine' store-dealers by the hundredweight; and when melted, is formed into the required shapes by different processes of casting in moulds. One girl can make two thousand five hundred small tea-cups in a day. Putting together the four separate pieces of a mould made of hard gun-metal, she fills it with the molten metal, dips its mouth into cold water, takes it to pieces, and turns out a cup that only wants trimming.