407 - Gely Georg Levy Nuremberg, tin toy crane with clockwork, lattice tower, lithographed, circa 1920/30

Gely Georg Levy Nuremberg, tin toy crane with clockwork, lattice tower, lithographed, circa 1920/30 Tin, lithographed, crane, Georg Levy (Gely), Nuremberg, model no. 192, the ball with relief “GELY”, inscribed “D.R.P. No. 192”, the cabin “No 192”, red lattice tower with lattice jib and black ball with eyelet on the rope, blue and red cabin with windows, rotating on an octagonal red base with pictorial lithographs of a steamer, factory with chimneys and harbour, rectangular base plate with lithographed frieze of lorries, car and tractor with trailer, crank with red handle, clockwork under the base plate, 1920s to early 1930s, condition commensurate with age, mechanism needs overhaul, rubbed, dented, without key, 47x35x15 cm (HxWxD) Georg Levy founded his tin toy factory in Nuremberg in 1920 after having been a partner of Hubert Kienberger (Huki); from his name he formed the trademarks “GL” and “GELY”, and his range of cars, motorcycles, ships, aeroplanes, figures and tin railways served the lower to middle price segment. In 1934 Levy, being Jewish, was forced to give up the company and emigrated to England; his partner Karl Ochs continued the business and later renamed it Nürnberger Blechspielwarenfabrik (N.B.N.), which existed until 1971. The large clockwork crane no. 192 is a pre-war model by Gely with lithographed motifs of harbour, factory, building site, vehicles and ships. The marking “D.R.P.” stands for Deutsches Reichs-Patent (German Reich patent). The rotating crane with clockwork is a harbour crane and construction crane of lithographed tin, as built by the Nuremberg toy industry in the 1920s and 1930s.