Closer Look

Introduction The following article takes a detailed examination of the various styles of clowns. This article was written in 1998 by Fredrick Keller and is published here by courtesy of the author. Fred Keller is the co-author of "Schoenhut's Humpty Dumpty Circus from A to Z" published in 1975.
The Schoenhut Clown, A Closer Look The definitions of style which apply to the Schoenhut Circus Toys are “...the particular manner or technique by which something is done, created ...” and “...a distinctive quality, form, or type of something...”(Webster). With reference to the Clown these would include manufacture, painting, sewing, assembly, and decoration as affecting the appearance or manipulation of the toy. The decision of which styles to include is arbitrary. If one considers the hand-painted faces, the number of styles are most numerous. If differentiation includes position and size of hat plus custom-made appearance, styles number as many as 17. Style identification is made more difficult by the ease with which Clown parts can be interchanged. What follows are significant styles which may be of some assistance to the collector of Clowns. The dates are conjectures.
Comparison of Regular Size Clown Styles
1. The first Clowns are particularly distinguished in appearance by the presence of pompons instead of ears, black lines at the outside edges of the eyes, 15 point collars (made from a glued overlap of a 16 point star), gilded paper decorations pasted to the front of their costumes, and curved-sole shoes. Heads are constructed of a molded composition face glued to a lathe turned wooden base. The arms have shoulder and hand slots at right angles to each other, slotless bodies, and the head- attaching twine anchored with a nail in the top of the head. (The arm slots are of the same design as in the 1903 and 1905 Clown patent drawings.) Hands have small beveled edges on their angular slots. Costumes include 4-part,4-color variations with plain or gold ric-rac, 2-part white polka-dot on blue or pink, 2-part blue and red stripes on white. (Other designs, including the “sunburst” may also appear on these Clowns.) The sleeve and ankle ends of the costumes are tied to wrist and leg grooves. The 2-part hats are held in place with two tacks.	Click on thumbnail image below to see larger image.
2. The second style Clowns differ in appearance from the first by having ears and a pleated collar of tarlatan held in place by a drawstring. Everything else, with a greater prevalence of the new costumes and a disappearance of the gilded paper, appears to be the same. Underneath the clothing there are changes. Bodies have back slots to facilitate more efficient assembly. This was considered important enough to apply for a specific patent in April, 1904 which was granted in November, 1905. While not included in the patent, new arm designs with hand and shoulder slots aligned are evident in December,1904 advertisements. It was apparently discovered that a large enough knot in the twine would suffice to attach the head and the anchoring nail was eliminated. These Clowns also begin having a slot in the ball part of the neck ball and socket joint. (Clowns may exist in sub-styles with any combination of these changes; this is not yet verified.) The prevalent costumes include the classic “sunburst, cat, pig, and moons” design, and the “dots, stars, angles, and tadpoles” design, the 4-part, multicolored “silk” suit with gold ric-rac, an all white “silk” with large red circles, and probably others. The 4-part suit is complimented with a 2-part hat decorated with gold ric-rac, and the others have designs similar to the sleeves. All hats are attached with one or two tacks.	Click on thumbnail image below to see larger image.
3. The third style of Clown looks very similar to style #2 except the black lines on the outside edges of the eyes are no longer apparent and the shoes have “faceted” toes with flat soles. While the second arm design functions much better to grip the rungs of ladders and chairs, an attempt at 2-part arms was briefly tried. (“Briefly” because not too many of these seem to exist.) These Clowns appear both with and without a slot in the neck ball. Wooden hat cones begin showing up in the hats of these Clowns giving a more solid look. All of the aforementioned costumes continue with the possible addition of the “card suits” and “diamonds” designs and the introduction of colored collars which have a tie-band sewn on instead of a drawstring threaded through the tarlatan.	Click on thumbnail image below to see larger image.
4. The 4th style has a quite different appearance. Previous face moldings had smooth eye hollows and brows on which the features were painted. This was changed to include protruding eyes and 3 raised “tear-drop” shapes on the forehead, one for each eyebrow and a central inverted “tear-drop” for the red decoration. This change resulted in a more constrained application of paint and a slightly more uniform appearance of these features. Twine holes through the head are often made with two drillings, one central through the neck, and the other angled in from various locations on the top of the head. This procedure enabled the hats to be set at rakish angles. Different sizes of hat cone are also used. Lathe turning of the wood part of the head includes a thicker, more shapely neck. Prevalent costumes are the “card-suits, stars, and moons” design, and a multi-colored diamond pattern (red, yellow, green, blue, white, and black with some versions minus the black), and the 4-color, 4-part “silk”. Hats have miniature “card-suits” with blue and white borders or they may have a narrow band of edging. The tarlatan collars are colored dark red and yellow in addition to white.	Click on image below to see larger image.
5. This style has a one-piece molded head incorporating protruding eyes and eyebrows. The small beveled edges are gone from hand slots. Shoes now have a toe suggestive of the prow of a flat-bottomed rowboat. Costumes include various combinations of colored stripes and circles on a white background and the 4-part, 4-color “silk” which are tied at wrist and ankle. A sufficient number of different patterned materials can be found in clown suits of this style to suggest that the regular styles (as pictured in catalogs and advertisements) were sometimes in short supply. They are too various to itemize here. Hats are white with red dots and stitched trim. Collars continue to be either white, red, or yellow.	No illustration available
6. The major difference in the appearance of these Clowns is their untied sleeves and cuffs. The open-ended edges of these are trimmed with red stitching. Raising a pant leg reveals a “shapely” leg with no groove for tying the cuff. The body underneath the clothing has been simplified with more rounded shoulders and no back slot (indicating some change in the method of assembly). Heads are held on with a wire that has the hat-cone end like a flat-head nail and terminating at the other end with a hook. Twine is no longer used. Costumes continue the designs of style #6 and are pictured in the “1928” Circus catalog. Some of these have extra large ears.	Click on thumbnail image below to see larger image.
7. This style is distinguished by a wooden hat, the same as used on the reduced size Clown. They occur with both regular and extra large ears. They are otherwise the same in style as #6.	No illustration available

c Fredrick E. Keller, 1998.