From Saxonia – the original model house kits.

The very first miniature wooden housebuilding sets were made in Blumenau – a small town near Dresden – around 1840. It turned out to be a profitable idea: by the 1940s practically every construction kit of this kind came from Blumenau, as ours do, too. The model house kits are manufactured in the traditional manner, with real windows and under the rightly immodest name of “Noblesse”. The building blocks – some plain, some already patterned (see illustration) – are of beech. Those that are coloured have been finished with a special soluble staining agent that stops the wood from cracking. The window panes are made of original cellulose acetate transparent foil (in white frames) – so you can light up your “mansion” from the inside when you’ve finished putting it together.