Lionel Tin Litho Milk Car Platform kids drawing to the chickens pecking away

to the chickens pecking away on the green next to the train tracks

created more than a hundred years prior (in 1898

complete with an interior shelf and a bright pink curdoroy lining

though there are a fair number of small gilded cast bronze animals out there-- Japanese and Chinese

terrifically beautiful

Lionel Tin Litho Milk Car Platform kids drawing to the chickens pecking awayI really love this thing, which feels like a modernist sculpture to me, and also the perfect tabletop stage on and around which to arrange other little things. I've learned that it was made by Lionel Electric Trains, c. late 40s I think, and would once have been sold along with a milk truck, which would pull up in front of the platform to unload milk. Now on its own it makes for a super satisfying little architectural object I think. It is well