The telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. The technology remained part of his company for many years. AT&T manufactured phones and provided the service.

There was great variety in the look of telephones. In the United States around the turn of the 20th century, the central-battery cradle-set phone was popular.

This rare phone from Norway was made in 1885. It brought almost 0,000 at an auction in Germany last year.

It looked like a large box with a metal cradle on top that held the arm. A small horn of hard rubber or Bakelite was the mouthpiece. A flat disc of metal was the earpiece. The bell and crank used to call the operator were in a separate box. There was no dial.

The early American cradle phones were made of oak or walnut. European phones were much more elaborate. The box was often decorated with painted flowers or pictures of fashionable women. The entire case was often covered with decorative grillwork of iron or white metal. Ivory-colored phones were popular for the bedroom.

Collectors pay very high prices for rare European phones of unusual design. The average American collector is searching for the figural phones from more recent decades.

The colored-plastic phones from the 1950s are popular but seem odd to children under 15 who probably have never used a dial phone. They think phones always had push buttons and that you could always carry them all over the house without worrying about a phone jack.

I bought a wooden Polish doll at a yard sale. She is 10 inches tall and is dressed in a folk costume. She stands on a 2-inch base that has a label on the bottom.

A friend translated the label, which includes the name of the maker (Chatupnik), the maker address in a city in Poland, the name of the doll, a lot of numbers and the year 1918. Can you tell me anything?

Your friend already has helped a great deal. You know the name of the doll, the maker and his address, and the year the doll was made.

We can add that Polish dolls, along with costumed dolls from other European countries, were exported in abundance to the United States between the two world wars. An early-20th-century, 10-inch Polish doll dressed in a folk costume would sell for $50 to $150.

Two years ago, I inherited a china tea set with a mark I cannot identify. Can you help?

The mark includes the initials A and L on each side of an anchor. Above the anchor is the word “Limoges,” and below it is the word “France.”

Limoges is a city in France where ceramic wares have been manufactured for generations. The word “France” indicates that your tea set was made specifically for export to an English-speaking country. The “AL” stands for A. Lanternier & Co., which worked in Limoges beginning in the 1850s.

A classified ad in one of my collectors magazines was offering a figure made of “beetleware.” What is that?

Beetleware was a trade name for a molded synthetic resin a plastic similar to Bakelite. Beetleware, made from urea-formaldehyde, was introduced in 1924 by the British Cyanides Co. Unlike Bakelite, Beetleware could be made in a wide range of colors.

The American Cyanamid Co. bought patent rights to the Beetleware formula and began producing it here in 1929. Many dishes, handles, boxes and pieces of jewelry were made of Beetleware.

I have a 36-inch walking cane with an attached seat from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The center of the round seat is decorated with the fair’s logo, the Trylon and Perisphere. The seat can be pulled up to lie flat against the three-legged cane or it can be pulled out to make a seat on the same three legs. What is it worth?

Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of canes like yours were sold near the entrance to the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The theme of the fair was “The World of Tomorrow,” but fairgoers got around the old-fashioned way on foot.

With a cane like yours a tired fairgoer could rest along the way. Your convertible cane-seat, called a “Kan-O-Seat,” was made by the Stafford-Johnson Seating Corp. of Ionia, Mich. The design was patented in 1935.

Similar cane-seats were made by other companies as late as the 1960s. We have seen one advertising the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. A 1939 World’s Fair cane like yours, in excellent condition, sells for $35 to $50.

My Windsor rocking chair has a paper label on the bottom that reads “Sikes Chair Company, Buffalo Branch 1332, Buffalo, N.Y.” Can you tell me age and value?

The Sikes Chair Co. worked from about 1900 to 1929 in Buffalo. The company manufactured reproduction Early American furniture, like your chair. Sikes also produced Arts & Crafts and Art Deco furniture. Your chair is worth about $150.

The Kovels answer as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for its use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names and addresses will not be published. The volume of mail makes personal answers impossible. Write to Kovels, Lawrence Journal-World, King Features Syndicate, 888 Seventh Ave., New York, N.Y. 10019.