VTG TIN LITHOGRAPH CIRCUS CLOWN METAL SPINNING TOP DREIDEL LITHO TOY J. CHEIN CO

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VTG TIN LITHOGRAPH CIRCUS CLOWN METAL SPINNING TOP DREIDEL LITHO TOY J. CHEIN CO:
$34.56

VTG TIN LITHOGRAPH CIRCUS CLOWN METAL SPINNING TOP DREIDEL LITHO TOY J. CHEIN CO
Description

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VINTAGE J. CHEIN

MADE IN THE U.S.A.

TIN LITHOGRAPH

SPINNING TOP

DEPICTS THE FACES OF FOUR CLOWNS

NICE OLD WOODEN HANDLE

TOY IS AGED AND SHOWS USE WEAR

THE PIECE MEAURES ABOUT 6.5\" ACROSS

IT STANDS ABOUT 6\" HIGH

THE PLUNGER LIFTS ANOTHER 4\"

WHEN THE TOY IS SPUN IT MAKES A RAINBOW KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLORS

CIRCA - \'A SIMPLER TIME\'

FYI

Clowns are comic performers, stereotypically characterized by their colored wigs, stylistic makeup, outlandish costumes, and unusually large footwear.

Clowning, in its most basic form, can be described as one form of drama without a fourth wall; however, there are other types of drama that are lacking the element of a fourth wall as well. In other words, a clown acknowledges his audience. The clown\'s humor today is often visual and includes many elements of physical comedy or slapstick humor.

Clowns spread in cultures of any time and place, because they meet some deeply rooted needs in humanity: violation of taboos, the mockery of sacred and profane authorities and symbols, reversal of language and action, and a ubiquitous obscenity. An interesting example can be found in the Native American clown societies.A clown participating in a 2004 Memorial Day parade.Clowning is a form of entertainment that has appeared in some manner in virtually every culture, including the bushmen in Africa. In most cultures the clown is a ritual character associated with festival or rites of passage and is often very different from the most popular western form. In Europe, up until as late as the 19th century the clown was a typical everyday character, and often appeared in carnivals. The performance is symbolic of liminality - being outside the rules of regular society the clown is able to subvert the normal order, and this basic premise is contemporarily used by many activists to point out social absurdity.

During the 16th century the Commedia dell\'arte also became a huge influence on perceptions of the clown in Europe, an influence which passed through pantomime, into vaudeville and on to the touring circuses of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Commedia took influences from the grotesque masked clowns of carnivals and mystery plays, and began in market places as a way to sell vegetables. It became incredibly popular throughout Europe amongst both the general public and the courts. The stock characters of the commedia originally included the Zanni - peasant clowns, Pantalone, the old Miser, Il Dottore - The Banal Doctor, and then grew from there to incorporate the Lovers, Arlecchino, Pedrolino, and Brighella, who have survived into the twentieth century in one form or another.

American character clown types
The most prevalent character clown in the American circus is the hobo, tramp, or bum clown. There are subtle differences in the American character clown types. According to American circus expert Hovey Burgess, they are (in order of class):

The Hobo Migratory and finds work where he travels to.
The Tramp Migratory and does not work where he travels to.
The Bum Non-migratory and non-working.

Gags, bits and business
\"Business\" is the individual motions the clown uses, often used to express the clown\'s character. A \"gag\" is a very short piece of clown comedy which when repeated within a bit or routine may become a \"running gag\". Gags may be loosely defined as \"the jokes clowns play on each other\". Bits are the clown\'s sketches or routines made up of one or more gags either worked out and timed before going on stage or impromptu bits composed of familiar improvisational material. A gag may have a beginning, a middle and an end to them, or they may not. Gags can also refer to the prop stunts/tricks or the stunts that clowns use, such as a squirting flower.

Some people find clowns disturbing rather than amusing. It is not uncommon for children to be afraid of disguised, exaggerated, or costumed figures — even Santa Claus. Ute myths feature a cannibalistic clown monster called the Siats.

Clown costumes tend to exaggerate the facial features and some body parts, such as hands and feet. This can be read as monstrous or deformed as easily as it can be read as comical.

The irrational fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia. Some have suggested that a fear of clowns may stem from early childhood experience, when infants begin to process and make sense of facial features. The significant aberrations in a clown\'s face may frighten a child so much that they carry this phobia throughout their adult life.

It can also be said one\'s response to a clown might depend on where it is seen. At a circus or a party, a clown is normal and may easily be funny. The same clown knocking on one\'s front door at sunset is more likely to generate fear or distress than laughter or amusement. This effect is summed up in a quote often attributed to actor Lon Chaney, Sr.: \"There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.\" In the Space To Care study aimed at improving hospital design for children, researchers from the University of Sheffield polled 250 children regarding their opinions on clowns; all 250 children in the study, whose ages ranged between four and sixteen, reported that they found clowns frightening and disliked clowns as part of hospital decor.

The British arts and music festival Bestival discarded its 2006 clown theme because many adult ticketholders were afraid of Chein & Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1903 through the 1980s. It is best remembered today for its mechanical toys made from stamped and lithographed tin produced from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Founded by Julius Chein in a loft in New York City, Chein\'s earliest toy production was a line of premiums for the Cracker Jacks snack line. The American Can Company provided the lithographic printing for Chein\'s early output until 1907 when Chein opened their own full production plant in Harrison, New Jersey. With their new facilities, they were able to produce piggy banks, noisemakers and model horse-drawn carriages. They also manufactured a number of toys under license from such companies as King Features Syndicate and Walt Disney Productions, producing Popeye, Felix the Cat and various Disney character toys.

In the 1920s and early-1930s, Chein produced a popular line of toy trucks under the \"Hercules\" name, rather than their own name. They heavily exploited the toy vehicle market with a wide range of toy boats and wheeled vehicles. They also produced many noisemakers such as tambourines and rattles. Walking, crawling or jumping figural wind-up toys became a mainstay; their coin banks were also consistently popular.

In 1926, Julius Chein was killed in a horse-riding accident in Central Park. Control of the company passed to Chein\'s widow who then turned the management of it over to her brother, Samuel Hoffman, who was already the founder and CEO of the rival Mohawk Toy Company. Under Hoffman\'s direction, J. Chein & Company expanded and prospered, producing many increasingly complicated mechanical toys. They had particular success with circus and amusement park-themed toys such as roller coasters, Ferris wheels and carousels. These toys command high interest from collectors today and are considered prime examples from the \"golden age of toys\".

During World War II, J. Chein & Company suspended toy production, instead producing nosecones and tail units for bombs and casings for incendiary devices. After the War, Chein returned to toy production with considerable success. However, as the 1940s drew to a close, they encountered increasing competition from Japanese manufacturers who produced mechanical tin toys for lower prices.

To become more competitive, Chein moved to a 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m2) factory in Burlington, New Jersey, where they employed a staff of as many as 600 workers. Their primary retailer was F. W. Woolworth Company. While this provided Chein with a steady demand and often healthy cashflow, it also meant that Woolworth\'s changing fortunes heavily affected them. In the late-1950s and early-1960s, as Woolworth\'s began to offer more inexpensive plastic toys, Chein was faced with the dilemma of competing with plastic toys that could not only be produced more cheaply, but could more easily incorporate electronics.

In the mid-1960s, Hoffman retired. Soon thereafter, the United States Government began to regulate the toy industry, in particular, the dangers posed by the sharp edges of metal toys. Stamped metal toy manufacturers were required to comply with federal regulations. Consequently, most U.S. tin toy manufacturers abandoned the material in favor of more easily compliant plastic and soft materials. Chein\'s management did not believe that plastic toys were as durable as metal toys, and the cost of retooling their tin toys to meet federal regulations was cost-prohibitive, so they phased out their tin toy manufacturing and diversified into other markets. Chein acquired the Learning Aids Group and its lines of educational materials, as well as its Renwal Plastics division. Renwal produced the successful series of anatomical kits that included \"The Visible Man\", \"Visible Woman\", \"Visible Head\" and \"Visible Dog\" models, as well as scale model vehicle kits.

One of the final original Chein toy products, and one of its most complicated, was the electromechanical \"Piano Lodeon\", a child-sized player piano. It utilized a combination of plastic and tin, and a mechanism that used spooled rolls of punched paper with well-known songs programmed onto them. A total of approximately 50 tunes were available. The piano\'s keyboard was actuated by a vacuum produced by an electric fan, with a rubber tube connecting each key with a corresponding hole in the front of the piano\'s housing. When a hole punched in the paper passed over one of these holes, it caused the correct key to strike tuned tines inside the case, producing the desired tune. The keyboard could also be played manually. The device was never financially successful for Chein due to its complexity, high price and the rise to dominance of purely electronic musical instruments.

In the late-1960s, Chein entered into a licensing agreement to produce \"Peanuts\" characters, which continued through the early-1970s. In the mid-1970s, Chein sold its Renwal division and focused upon manufacturing lithographed sheet steel housewares such as kitchen canister sets and wastebaskets, under the brand Cheinco. They also produced licensed metal containers for food brands such as Heinz, Sunkist and Maxwell House. In 1979, toy manufacturing was phased out entirely. In the late-1980s, Cheinco was sold to the Atlantic Can Company, who then changed its name to Atlantic Cheinco Corporation. The company was beset with manufacturing problems resulting from Environmental issues which in 1992 resulted in them filing for bankruptcy protection. Atlantic Cheinco\'s assets were then purchased by Ellisco of Pennsylvania, which was a division of CSS Industries. In 1994, CSS then sold Ellisco to the Baltimore-based U.S. Can Company, who continue to produce stamped metal products.

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