This illustration shows diligent children attending to their chores, like feeding the chickens, doing the laundry, cleaning, and playing violin. All against the backdrop of a magnificent boarding school. These cut-out dolls could have been used to teach children the importance of hard work through play.

This is a page from a Victorian-era series of illustrations and imagery for children, including board games, paper dolls, and diagrams.

Artist: C. Burckardt

Burckhardt’s studio was located in Weissenburg, in the Alsace–Lorraine region of France, along the French border to Germany. Burckardt created these imaginative lithographs between the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and they quickly became known as the “new media” of the 1900s. Most of the prints were created through the process of stone lithography, where the men would print the black outlines, and the women would paint in the colors by hand.

Condition: Fair, considering age