Woolstone Brothers, Fine Art Publishers.
Jack and the Beanstalk. The “Milton Kindergarten Series,” No. 203. London: Woolstone Brothers, [ca. 1905–1910]. Printed in Germany.
Punch out Panorama - 12mo (5.25 × 4.25 in.; 13.5 × 11 cm). Original color-printed card covers with red dotted border and vignette illustration of Jack bargaining with the cow. Imprint at foot: “The Milton Kindergarten Series.” The lower left corner bears the Woolstone Bros. “Milton” trademark portrait of John Milton. Verso cover stamped “Nr. 203. Printed in Germany.”
Text interleaved with four full-color chromolithographed plates, each die-cut with green bases and slits designed to fold upright. Plates intended to be cut out and slotted into the stands to form small tableaux. Instructions printed on inside cover. Typography and color lithography in the German style of Nuremberg trade, comparable to Raphael Tuck’s panorama toy books. While the format recalls Raphael Tuck’s panoramas, it has a distinctive twist: instead of providing loose green punch-out stands at the back of the booklet, the bases are printed directly beneath each die-cut figure on its page.
Condition: FIne, complete and unpunched. Covers with light edge rubbing. One scene shows partial detachment along a perforation. A very good survival of a fragile and little-known toy book.
Notes: A scarce survival from Woolstone Brothers’ Milton Kindergarten Series, produced in Germany in the years just before World War I. Although Woolstone Bros. is best known for its Milton Series postcards, this booklet reveals the firm’s attempt to compete with Raphael Tuck in the children’s movable and panorama toy-book market. The series combined traditional fairy tales with interactive punch-out figures, intended to be staged by children as miniature plays.
Rarity: Rare and unrecorded. No copies of this title — nor of the Milton Kindergarten Series in general — are located in standard movable book bibliographies (Montanaro, Toledo, University of Virginia) or in any institutional holdings or online catalogs we have consulted. This booklet appears to be a previously unknown survival, making it a fantastic find not only for specialists in movable and toy books but also for collectors of Woolstone Brothers’ Milton Series productions.
Dating this book: The Woolstone Brothers registered the Milton trademark in 1902, using the portrait of John Milton as their brand emblem. he booklet explicitly states “Printed in Germany.” Woolstone Brothers relied on high-quality German printers (notably Winkler & Schorn in Nuremberg) for their postcards and novelties. This practice was common until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when British firms could no longer easily import German-printed items. Thus, “Printed in Germany” almost certainly places the production before 1914.
Instructions.
Cut out the green stands as shown by the lines, and leave them in separate pieces.
Raise the horse-shoe shaped part ready to fix the pictures in the slit.
Cut out each picture separately, but leave the ground in which will be found two slits, for fixing same.
When the picture is cut out fit it in the slit of the horse-shoe shaped part.
When all the pictures are fitted in the stands they can be arranged in a great variety of styles and combinations which will cause amusement to young and old.
Stamp: A purple distributor’s stamp on the inside back cover reads “W. Straker Ltd.” W. Straker was a well-established London firm of stationers and printers founded in 1863 and incorporated as a Private Limited Company in 1904. Their imprint is often found on notebooks, postcards, and ephemera, suggesting that this booklet may have been sold through their outlets or distributed under their auspices. While the publication credit belongs to Woolstone Brothers, the Straker stamp demonstrates the networks of retail and wholesale distribution that brought Milton novelties into the marketplace. ( In 1997, Straker merged with Oyez creating OyezStraker with the company acquiring over 30 different firms over the years.)
Collector’s Corner: Woolstone Brothers and the Milton Kindergarten Series
he Milton brand was the creation of Gustave Woolstone, a publisher of Silesian origin who established Woolstone Brothers, Fine Art Publishers in London at the turn of the 20th century. In 1902 he registered the “Milton” trademark, adopting a small portrait of the English poet John Milton as the company’s emblem. The name itself likely drew on the firm’s first address on Milton Street in the City of London’s “Postcard Mile.”
From 1902 until the early 1930s, Woolstone Brothers issued thousands of novelty and topographical postcards under the Milton Series imprint. Many of their finest cards were printed in Germany by Winkler & Schorn of Nuremberg, a major lithographic house, and then overprinted in London with the Milton logo. Their novelty lines included the “Sunshine Series,” “Sellwells,” “Artlettes,” and “Photolettes,” which gave them an international reputation for lively, colorful designs.
By 1910, Gustave Woolstone had even taken out a British patent “for improvements connected with postal cards and view cards,” underscoring the company’s commitment to innovation in novelty printing. As demand shifted in the interwar years, the business was restructured as Woolstone-Barton Co. Ltd., described as “printers, book and print sellers, manufacturers of postcards, art illustrations, etc.” In 1936 the name was officially changed to W. Barton (Publishers), Ltd., marking the end of the Milton brand era.
The Milton Kindergarten Series remains almost entirely undocumented. This newly surfaced Jack and the Beanstalk booklet demonstrates that Woolstone Brothers briefly ventured into the movable and toy-book market, producing punch-out stand-up scenes in direct competition with Raphael Tuck’s panoramas. The German chromolithographic printing, combined with Woolstone’s Milton trademark, firmly places it in the 1905–1910 period, before World War I ended the easy importation of German color printing.