Cat's Meow Village Collector's Pieces

CMV pieces, (remember that means Cat's Meow Village) are wooden decoratives that are shaped like buildings. many of the CMV accessories are shaped like billboards, signs or whatever they are representing. They were designed to sit upright or on ledges, (many people put them on their door or window frame ledges), and are made of 3/4 inch think pieces of wood that range from 3 to 8 inches wide, and 4 to 8 inches tall

The designs are screen printed and each piece has the piece information, series date, Casper the cat, and Falines dated signature on them for authentication. Initially they were created as individual creations, but they quickly became popular sellers and were issued in sets and series. This increased their collector's value because now people would buy them to complete their series or set collections.

Hello, I'm Casper the Cat, I'll be around at various places, leaving you tips and tidbits about the Cat's Meow Village and stuff.

These collectibles started out as a small collection of hand-made crafts, made as a part-time income source by a young secretary, and expanded into a world known collection.
Here's the story of it's humble beginnings.

Information provided by: Diana West article, Dee Williams book, and independent research
** content is primarily the article credited above, but I have edited and added commentary. (Appletreedeals)

In 1982, Faline Jones of Wooster, Ohio was a part-time Secretary. She supplemented her income with some craft work - she made cloth covered doorstops in the shape of a cat, and called them the Cat's Meow. Her "workshop" was her kitchen table.

One day, while visiting a gift shop that sold her Cat's Meow doorstops, some tiny wooden houses in in the shop caught her eye, and she thought, "I can do better than that." Using her sparse resources, she used $39 to buy several pieces of pine and went to work cutting out and painting a dozen two-dimensional miniature wooden houses.

She called her creations The Cat's Meow Village, taking the name from her previous business venture making the cat-shaped fabric doorstops. "I didn't want to throw away those business cards and letterheads," says Jones, 47. Following on her feline theme, Jones stamped a black cat on the front of the 4-by-5-inch wooden architectural facades and peddled her creations to several area gift shops.

"They are more than miniature houses," says Rosann Burger, then owner of the Country Traditions gift shop. "It's the moments and memories people associate with them."

The simple style of the handmade country cottages gave the designs a down-home feel. When a salesman noticed them in January 1983, he began taking orders and, within a year, 800 outlets were selling Jones' houses.

The is the first CMV house Faline created, and one of the originals she took to her friend the, Gift shop owner, to ask if you would try to sell them.

So, there's more to this story, but let's grab a cup of coffee first, then I'll tell you the rest.

Check out these Retired 'Home Town' CMV pieces available on Bonanzle.

Royal Langsford Jones Toy Shop
1989 Series VII - Retired 1994, Signed on back "Faline 94", this piece is from the last year's production of this series..

Madaline Dress Emporium
1992 Series X - Retired 1997, Signed on back "Faline 93"

Williams Apothercary Medicinals
1989 Series VII, signed "Faline 94", also from last year's production before series was retired

Johan Singer Boots And Shoes
1993 Series XI, signed "Faline 95"

The Little House Giftables Shop
1986 Series I, signed "Faline 91", also from last year's production before series was retired

F.J. Bonnette Hairdressing Parlor
1989 Series VII, signed "Faline 94", also from last year's production before series was retired"

Casper says, "To guarantee you are getting authentic CMV pieces, look for me somewhere on the front. (or maybe even the back too)

CMV pieces were really 'catching on' as decorative and collectible pieces and...

She soon began receiving letters telling her how the houses brought back warm memories of growing up on a farm or visiting grandparents in the country. "Stories in their own lives created a connection to the collectible," she says. "That sparked their interest in finding more."

With help from family and friends, Jones filled orders while working part time as a secretary and waitress. In 1984, she plunged into the business full time.

Based on customers' requests, she started replicating actual buildings and historic landmarks such as lighthouses, barns and churches. "Collectors are attracted to the history of each piece," Jones says. "I find ideas by reading travel and historic magazines, visiting national parks and special celebrations." About 100 new designs are added annually while others are retired.

As business boomed, Jones expanded. In 1989, she built a 24,000-square-foot building just outside Wooster, which today has 70 employees. Although millions of products have been made, the company hasn't lost its personal touch. Each piece travels through seven sets of hands that cut, screen-print and hand finish it.

Many Cat's Meow Village pieces are modeled after real places and structures, check these out.

The Galveston Sacred Heart Church
1996 Galveston Series, Signed "Faline 96"

The Swan House
1996 Atlanta Christmas Series, signed "Faline 96"

The Ashton Villa
Also from the 1996 Galveston Christmas Series, signed "Faline 96"

The Bucyrus Historical Society
1994 Series XII, signed "Faline 94"

St. Mark's in the Bowery Church
1995 New York Christmas Series, Signed "Faline 95""

Casper says, "To guarantee you are getting authentic CMV pieces, look for me somewhere on the front. (or maybe even the back too)

In the beginning... Early production.

As mentioned in the above "How CMV began" story, Faline left the gift shop with an idea in her head. She bought $39 worth of pine wood, and used some left-over room paint from home. The early pieces were all hand done, step by step. The story of that very first piece illustrates the early production process:

After Faline had her design on that first piece of scarp wood, she had to find a way to get the wood cut into the shape of her design. Her Grandpa Mullet had built himself a small workshop in the loft of his hog barn, and he had a homemade power saw. Off she went.

It took awhile, but soon enough, she had her first piece cut in the shape of her design, and then it was back home to her basement to begin the painting process.

The first pieces of The Cat's Meow Village, (CMV), were actually painted with leftover paint from various painting jobs around the house.
Each step was a time consuming process. First the base colors had to be applied and allowed to dry. (That drying process had to be done for each color used) Then each area of detail had to be hand painted and allowed to dry. Even doing each process on multiple pieces was still just as time consuming because of the need for the drying process. As mentioned earlier, the first 24 pieces took 2 weeks.

After that first order, the shop owners, (two were involved now) convinced her to design a series of buildings. It started as 14 different designs but boiled down to 12 basic building styles. They were named after their basic functions. Such as Apothecary, Toy Shop, Victorian House, etc%u2026

It was with this first series that Faline developed the concept of stamping the name of each piece on the bottom, along with her signature and year. This gave each piece an identity and collectible notation.

But now she really needed production help.

This is when her husband Terry first jumped in. He handled buying the needed wood, and used a radial arm saw in their basement to cut the wood into blocks, and then it would be back to Grandpa Mullets to cut out the designs. Then it was back to Faline's basement for sanding, painting and stenciling.

As soon as summer arrived...

as I was saying...as soon as summer arrived...

As soon as summer arrived Faline recruited her friend Dannette, (a school teacher) and another friend to help her with the painting and stenciling.

As the orders started rolling in, Faline became more pressed for production. She wasn't happy with the stencil results, and even with the extra help, she wasn't able to keep up. Her next step was to meet with Jeff Miller, the owner of a new woodworking shop called Archwood. Jeff agreed that Archwood could cut the designs from the 'raw' blocks and even agreed to take over the purchasing of the wood and doing the 'rough' cuts.

This allowed Terry to help Faline in other areas, giving her a little more time for the designing aspect of her production.

It was about this time that Terry designed a spray rack so they could paint the base coat on multiple pieces at one time. This cut initial paint production down to about 15 minutes

As you can see, the early days at CMV were all about family and friends. This wasn't some big company buying divisions and production facilities, it was Faline's energy and effort, relying on friends and family, to grow her business a step at a time.

Faline soon discovered that her pride in the details of each piece was not being well served with stenciling. Although it was faster, the stenciling process just didn't produce the degree of detail that Faline wanted.

The next step was to go to screen printing the designs. It was also about this time that Faline realized that CMV had overwhelmed their home and she had to find more space. Jeff, at Archwood wasn't using all the space in the building his wood working shop and he offered a part of the building to Faline.
It was a good match, she could get the extra space she needed, and get her final production efforts under the same roof as the design cutting process that Jeff was doing. So in 1983 Faline made the official company move to her new space on Nold Avenue.

The CMV pieces from these early years were made of real, solid pine board, (you can see the grain of the wood on the unpainted bottoms of each piece. This was also were the piece info, and Faline's signature were stamped.

we'll tell you more, a little farther down...

I'm going to take a break now, but I'm not finished here. So stop back by and I'll tell you about:

- How Faline's doing with CMV now

- How she changed her production method to accomadate all those new sales demands

- and, uhh, other stuff

Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to leave a comment in "The Log Book"

and if you want to contact me

Email me

G.A. Anderson aka Appletreedeals, started out as an occasional ebay seller, selling old stuff from around the house. From the very 1st sale of some old bulk Legos, I was hooked! I started looking for more things to sell on ebay ...

And that is how I first became involved with The Cat's Meow Village pieces. As I researched these items, I discovered they were all retired pieces from collector's series. But I needed more information ...

And that is how The Cat's Meow Village Finder blog came to be.

And... that's how I found Squidoo!

Here are some other links I hope you will like... Some are Cat's Meow, some aren't.

The Cat's Meow Village Finder
An information blog for CMV piece history, and some places to find them

CMV Pieces on Bonanzle
A great eCommerce site you can trust, full of CMV pieces

Appletreedeals Product Portal
A great portal site you can trust, full of CMV pieces, Vintage Life Magazines, and Boyds Bears Collections

Appletreedeals ebay Squidbids Lens
An ebay lens all about the story of Appletreedeals

CMV Pieces on Hubpages
More information CMV piece history, and links