Tut Tut !!

A 1920's Lehmann tinplate clockwork 490 'Tut Tut' automobile, the cream motorcar with red trim, the driver wearing a white suit and holding the steering wheel and horn to mouth, spoked wheels and spring wound mechanism operating rear wheels and working bellows, 18cm long 
Estimate £50 - £80
To be sold in the Antiques and Interiors Sale 5th February


The 'Tut Tut' tin toy car was made in the early part of the twentieth century and is probably the most well known toy made by E.P. Lehmann founded in 1881 in Brandenburg, near Berlin, Germany. 

Of all the European toys produced from the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, those made by Lehmann are the easiest to recognise. They are brightly coloured, and have an amusing and clever action to create dancing, climbing, walking, crawling and rolling, usually powered by a wind-up fly-wheel drive. This gave them engaging and amusing appeal which in this case sees Tut Tut's driver blow a horn as he drives along. Lehmann built up one of the most important and prolific toy-making companies in the world with toys aimed at a mass market. Prices were kept low by the use of a newly-developed thin and cheap type of tin plate. While the First World War resulted in a decline in the German monopoly of wind-up toys, Lehmann was one company which survived. By the 1920s Lehmann employed over 800 staff and produced over 100 different toy designs. These were marketed around the world in boxes with instructions in both German and English.