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Carnival Collectibles Page 1 Visual

Text by Ellen Gardner

Oh, how quickly one chalkware Scottish terrier evolved into a 350-piece collection for St. Louis businessman John Brauch.
“My wife, Cam, is a Scottish terrier fanatic,” he explains. “She collects all things Scottish terrier—they’re all over the house. We enjoy going to antique shows, flea markets, and garage sales, and I try to help her build her collection by keeping my eye out.”
During one antique hunt, he discovered a chalkware Scottish terrier. “It reminded me of growing up in the 1950s, when chalkware figures were offered as prizes at fairs and carnivals,” he says. “I was so drawn by nostalgia that I decided I needed a collection of my own.”

(a) Among the most coveted of the carnival game prizes from the early to mid-1900s are chalkware figurines of the Lone Ranger, Snow White, Popeye (with a real corncob pipe), and Dumbo. All are about 12 inches tall. “Popeye is one of my favorites,” John says. “He’s worth about $250, but I wouldn’t let him go for any price.”

(b) These chalkware figures reflect popular culture from about 1910 through the 1950s, including (from left) a glamour girl, ventriloquist’s dummy Charlie McCarthy, a majorette, a WWI soldier, and a girl playing bagpipes. Kewpie-type dolls (c) were popular during this era, too. The black Kewpie doll is extremely rare. The clown (d) is a bank. Its glitter decoration indicates it was made after 1930.

Chalkware figures were made by pouring watered-down, soft lime- stone into molds, which were then dried and decorated with paint, glitter, or stencils.
   Chalkware prizes first appeared along carnival midways around 1910 and remained popular rewards for game players through the 1950s. In those days, many young man tried to knock down milk bottles with a baseball or toss rings over a peg to win a prize for his best girl.
   But it’s not just childhood memories of spending warm summer nights at the carnival that captured John’s fancy. The chalkware figures themselves often were copied from the era’s popular characters from the comics, movies, and TV.
   “Needless to say, I was a huge fan of The Lone Ranger when I was a kid,” John says. The mysterious masked man, Tom Mix, and Rin Tin Tin are well represented in his collection, which fills six long shelves and spills across the floor of his office.
   “When customers around my age visit, they light up and say, ‘Hey, I remember those guys!’”

Carnival chalkware ranges in price from a few dollars to several hundred dollars per piece. Animal figurines were favorite prizes for children. Vibrant paint and intact glitter make these figures more valuable than their less-pristine cousins. Characters include (e) a dog known as “Top Hat,” King Kong, Donald Duck, and Smokey the Bear. (f) Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd, became a movie star in the 1920s. He and his offspring continued attracting audiences through the 1950s, when the shepherd was the star of a popular TV show. (g) Brer Rabbit.

(h) Because the glory years of the chalkware carnival prizes spanned both World Wars, it was not unusual to find sailors, soldiers, and airmen represented among carnival souvenirs, although manufacturers took some liberty in interpreting regulation uniforms. This group includes a variety of saucy soldiers and sailors, including female figurines in a sailor suit and a Women’s Army Corps uniform.

Carnival Knowledge
Some “chalkware” is actually made of heavier plaster of Paris, which is a mixture of gypsum or burned limestone and water. Collector John Brauch employs a good trick to tell the difference: “If you scratch the bottom of a piece of genuine chalkware,” he says, “you’ll end up with chalk on your fingernail.”
John recommends The Carnival Chalk Prize II by Thomas G. Morris (1994, Prize Publishers) as a good guide for collectors, although the prices may not be current.