Collectors avidly seek original Drummer’s Samples. Before the days of photography itinerant furniture salesmen, to help sell their company’s products, often used these made-to-scale miniatures. 

The Carl Forslund Company featured in their 1948 Quaint American catalog, Drummer’s Sample miniatures, a collection of their Quaint American cherry furniture made by hand to the scale of one inch to the foot.

They were exact reproductions of solid cherry, with real carvings, tiny drawers that actually pulled out, drop leaves that went up and down, a folding rocker that really folded, teeny bits of old-fashioned upholstery, and the genuine deep cherry finish.

The fourteen pieces in the collection ranged in price from $3.00 for a mirror to the most expensive, the Ben Morris Secretary-Desk pictured here, for $14.95. To see the "real" Ben Morris Secretary-Desk go to Related Items at the right.

Excerpted from the 1948 Carl Forslund catalog, which was donated by Valerie Starr.