Maurer Paint Co. Scenery Products

The Maurer Paint Co. of Philadelphia, Pa. was in the business of making, primarily, house paints. As a side line, they were also the inventor of the first ‘fire resistant’ mountain paper (“Easy Built" Mountain Scenery) in the late 1920’s. The mountain paper was manufactured by painting brown paper with various earth tone colors and springled with mica to give a snow-like effect. The mountain paper was intended for Christmas gardens and holiday train layouts.

Upon this beginning, Maurer expanded into an extensive line of scenery items that included a No. 40 Lily Pool (similar to your No. 620 pool), garden plots, trees, hedges with a gateway, an imitation fountain, gazing balls, various pieces for modeling municipal parks, a flag pole, paper Mache painted rocks, an operating skier display, an operating faux waterfall, an old operating mill with faux water, etc.

Maurer Paint did not wish to handle the seasonal sales of this line of scenery items, therefore they handed off much of the retail distribution in the 1930’s to an entity known as Jefferson Sales Co. that was located in Jeffersonville, Pa (Norristown). Jefferson continued much of the line into the 1940's and the the mountain paper into the early 1950's. At train shows (primarily back East) you are more likely to find these pieces in a Jefferson Sales box rather than a Maurer Paint Co. box.

Maurer/Jefferson pieces are super scenery items for prewar layouts and are completely authentic to the period. A picture that includes a No. 201 Flag Plot, a No. 47 Gazing Ball and a No. 78 tree (~ 7 inches tall) is shown below. Fun stuff!

Hope this info is of some help.

Bob

Sounds like a "whodunnit" for that column in the TCA Quarterly...