Bunnies And Other Collectibles of the Season

Here comes Peter Cottontail,

Hoppin, down the bunny trail,

Hippity hopin',

Easter's on its way.

                    -Peter Cottontail

Hill & Range Songs c. 1950

While Easter has been an ever-welcome sign of spring for a long time, over the past 100 years it has also left a happy trail of widely assorted collectibles.

The holiday itself has been observed worldwide for thousands of years, but it was not seen as a significant commercial event in America until the second half of the 19th century.

Charles Panati, author of Origins of Everyday Things, says Americans did not go hopping down the bunny trail until after the Civil War  "when the nation as a whole began a widespread observance of Easter itself, with a seemingly frivolous symbol of a white rabbit gaining acceptance in America."

Scholars generally agree than early Christians had managed to work their own religious observance into the time of the ongoing Roman festival for the goddess Eastre.  By doing so Christians avoiding drawing attention to themselves and the danger of further religious persecution.

Some writings suggest that the earthly form of the goddess Eastre was the hare, which more or less translated to the rabbit in 19th century America.  However in Holiday Toys and Decorations, Margaret Schiffer notes the Easter bunny is actually "a modern day descendent of the Pennsylvania-German Oschter Haws.  Since 1680, on Easter even Pennsylvania-German children have set out their caps and bonnets for the Easter Rabbit to fill with colored eggs."

Certainly chocolate bunnies can be traced back to the 1850s in Germany when candymakers produced rabbits, chickens and eggs for public consumption.  The popular practice soon spread to other European countries, and eventually to the U.S.

The tradition of giving chocolate and various candy eggs became firmly established in the 19th century and has endured ever since.  But real eggs were part of the holiday too.

"In parts of Germany during the early 1880s," Panati notes, "Easter eggs substituted for birth certificates.  An egg was dyed a solid color, then a design with included the person's name and birth date, was etched into the shell with a needle or sharp tool.  Such Easter eggs were honored in courts as evidence of identity and age."

But the world's finest Easter eggs came from Russia and were the work of Carl Faberge, goldsmith for the Russian Imperial Court during the latter part of the 19th century.

The fabulous gold, glass, and porcelain eggs were often characterized by the letters XB which stood for Xliristos Voskrece (Christ is Risen).  The artwork and the season combined for a 'wealth' of eggs according to Antique Enamels for Collectors by Joachim F. Richter (Schiffer Publishing):

'The Russian Imperial court's fondness for Easter eggs was the subject of unusual influences in terms of taste and a desire for unequaled luxury Useful and decorative objects, even in unexpected areas, suddenly took the form of Easter eggs: bell-cord knobs, doorbells, table decorations, models of cathedrals, and containers for all manner of unnecessary ornaments appeared in egg shapes."

Faberge crafted his first classic Easter egg complete with diamonds and rubies in 1886.  Today less than 60 of the Faberge eggs are known to exist, and most of them are in museums.

The practice of giving colorful, but far less lavish, Easter eggs persisted in Germany and other European countries into the turn of the century.  Many of those of different materials remain now as treasured Easter collectibles.

In the United States, not only eggs but Easter greeting postcards grew very popular in the early 20th century.  Publishers who had mastered lithograph printing produced a wide range of Easter cards from somber messages to gaily colorful rabbits and baby chicks.

Such cards presently rank behind only the holiday cards of Christmas and Halloween in collectibility.  Easter postcards with animals wearing the clothing of humans are generally the most prized according to Warman's Americana & Collectibles, next are those with children, and those simply with rabbits or chicks.  Such cards typically list between $2 and $5 now.

In later years Easter greeting cards, much like the folded Christmas cards, became fashionable.  In 1937 the Sears & Roebuck catalogue offered, "attractive Easter folders made to sell for more than double Sears low price.  Fine art work in glowing Easter colors, ten for 29 cents."

During the 1890s a French manufacturer produced a tin rabbit in silk clothing driving a car, and the Ideal Toy Company in the U.S. a cast iron rabbit in a cart.  The real Easter-related thrust on the marketplace remained with confections.

In the book Toys, (House of Collectibles) author Richard Friz writes, "there was a wide variety of papier-mache and composition candy containers featuring Easter rabbits, chickens, eggs, and other Easter items which do not readily identify as toys, but are nonetheless often found in specialty collections."

By 1930 decorations for the Easter holiday were widely available.  A Slack Manufacturing Company catalogue offered lithographed egg boxes "in bright colors, which open in the center for candy." They also offered an assortment of Easter favors which included "cotton chicks and rabbits with long metal legs and assorted color paper dresses."

It was not until the mid 1930s that toy-makers fully realized the major market potential of Easter orientated toys.

In their book Fisher-Price, researchers John Murrary and Bruce Fox credit that 1936 achievement to the then fledgling firm.  "To keep its workers employed year-round and to build momentum in the beginning of the year," they explain, "Fisher-Price sold the trade its first Easter toys line.  The toys were sold at cost to accomplish these objectives, and the Easter toy concept became a permanent part of Fisher-Price's and the toy industry's way of doing business."

That firm's first Easter toys include Donald Duck and Clara Cluck from Walt Disney's Easter Parade, and with three stenciled pull-toy Funny Little Bunnies.

About the same time Marx was offering the Easter Rabbit Express toy train with a large tin rabbit, and Lionel marketed the Peter Rabbit Chickmobile of steel and tin.

A number of celluloid and tin rabbits, ducklings and eggs were made in Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s.  They too were identified as Easter toys and were made for export to the United States.

In 1949 Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote the memorable Peter cottontail song that western movie king Gene Autry turned into a million-selling hit record in the early 1950s.

Autry's song, as much as anything, reignited the Easter season as leading market period for both toy and candy manufacturers.  Fiber baskets with plastic glass, stuffed bunnies and chicks, and pull-toy ducks all became a part of the egg-hunt holiday.

Now these "eggs, bunnies, chicks, and baskets that were once basic elements of our Easter celebrations are being collected," concludes Schroeder's Antiques Guide, "they are often sought for nostalgic reasons, and displayed during the holiday to make the festivities brighter."