THE CHILD AND THE TOY.
AT this time of year a great many people are buying toys who do so at no other. Parents, of course, do not come into this class, for who having a nursery does not occasionally fall before the impulse of buying an " un-birthday, un-Christmas present" I It is difficuli; enough for parents to give toys judiciously. "The Public" sometimes reem rather uncertain in their reception of a new object. Directly it has ceased to be s present—that is about half an hour after the last piece of brown Paper has been taken off—it may cease to have any attraction for its new ctraor. If it has been an expensive purchase, this generally makes tho donor feel, according to his temperament, annoyed either with himself or with the child. How much more us tho dark is an uncle or aunt, a godfather or godmother ?. Tb.ese are apt to go to a shop and ask the young lady for a toy
Suitable for a little boy of five, you know ; net too expensive."
Probably the shop young lady's acquaintance with the minds of little boys of five is not a very wide one. Something may be bought which very soon bores the child. But this boredom can be foreseen by the instructed, for it almost certainly follows quite well-established rules. There are guiding principles. Children's ways and habits are a good deal less diverse than those of grown-up people. Allowing a certain margin for individual idiosyncrasies, it ought always to be possible to think of toys that will be certain to please any child of any age. I say advisedly to think of toys, for it would not always be possible to buy them.
Toy-making has immensely improved lately. It is, indeed, as I have said before in these columns, at the moment aesthetically one of the most advanced of the Applied Arts; but there area few principles which toy-makers and toy-choosers ought to bear in mind. For instance, I think toy-makers do not make a necessary distinction between toys proper and what we might call "nursery ornaments." In a nursery with which I am familiar, a great deal of pleasure is derived by its inhabitants from a brightly coloured silhouette of a horse and another of a ship made (by the Chelsea Furnishing Company) of three-ply wood and set upon rockers. These charming objects are not strong enough to be toys ; they stand on the top of the two nursery cupboards, high out of reach of all except Nannie, who is frequently requested to give them the touch that sets them rocking. The Chelsea Furnishing Company sells these as toys, but in that capacity either would be that most horrid of disappointments—a toy with which you cannot do anything and whioh is easily broken.
There is another thing that the makers of the most beautiful modern toys do not always bear in mind. One sometimes, for example, hears both designers and critics say, "But would a child really like that ? " The answer is, of course, "That depends on the child's age." There is almost more difference between a child of two and a child of twelve than between a child of twelve and a grown-up of twenty-two. I think in the toyshops of the future toys will be divided into, first, toys and nursery ornaments and, secondly, into groups according to the ages of the children for whom they are intended. Toy-makers will always have a definite type of " consumer " in mind. A baby till it is four or five months old does not, as a rule, want a toy at all, but at about that age it will begin to find a rattle extremely pleasant. If that rattle be hard or heavy the baby will, however, bang itself about the head and scratch itself severely with it ; one that is not strongly made will very soon get broken ; one that is painted will disagree with the baby. On the whole, probably celluloid rattles are the best ; but these, unfortunately, are very rarely to be had sufficiently strong to withstand use by a really determined and resourceful baby, whose legitimate occupation—research into the nature of things in general—will include determined as well as random efforts at its analysis or destruction. At about nine months old a child begins to like soft animals, bath toys, and simple picture-books. Really admirable and delightful soft toys are now made for very small children. It is particularly important here to consider the price, as however strongly toys are made, they cannot, as a rule, in the nature of things stand the ravages of a toddling child for more than a month .or two. Messrs. Dean's soft " rag " toys are particularly good. For example, their " Tru-to-Life " Baby Puck, stands more than a foot high, costs only 2s. ed., is charmingly dressed, and has a delightful, realistic face. For the children who can just walk, the same maker's " Scootazoo " Bears are admirable. They can be pulled along on a little wheeled stand and cost 3s. These makers even supply dolls 12 inches high, from Is. to Is. 6d., but these should be chosen with care. Some of them are of the tiresome comic type—" Charlie Chaplin" or "Gilbert the Filbert," creatures of such forced humour that they are apt to blunt the child's sense of amusement for less obvious jokes. Of course, at these prices one cannot expect every virtue, but it is a pity that Messrs. Dean's do not make their toys in better colours. Much the best bath toys to be had at the moment are the " Sorbo " rubber sponge fishes. They are beautiful in colour and cannot break. By the time the child is three it is no longer waste of money to get it slightly mere expensive toys. Perhaps the best " covers " to beat for the child of three, four, and five are Messrs. Liberty's, Heal's, Harrods, and the Chelsea Furnishing Company in Sloane Square. Quite the best dolls that I have seen this year (taking into consideration the various qualities which dolls should have—strength, beauty, and moderate prioo) are those with carved wooden heads, made by some provincial Women's Institute for Messrs. Liberty. They reptesent very bucolic little boys and girls, respectively in smocked frocks and sun-bonnets and aprons, and are quite delightful. There are also admirable tigers at the same shop, extraordinarily realistic, and well modelled. Hears and the other two furnishing shops are perhaps best for wooden toys. The Chelsea Furnishing Company have extremely nice hobby-horses with beautiful and boldly designed heads and delightful bright-coloured frills and bells—brilliant green, purple, or striped blue. The best rocking- horses I have ever seen are to be had at Hears—magnificent post-impressionist creatures, with purple or flame coloured manes, and whose every line expresses speed. These creatures fulfil two functions—they are both toys and nursery orna- ments. Both at Heal's and at the Chelsea Furnishing Company children's love of gay colour is properly considered. Some of the nursery ornaments reach what is indisputably a very high level of art. At Heal's, for instance, there is a chariot drawn by two horses, designed by a Dutch architect named Wigdeveld, which is worthy of a primitive Greek artist. It is both too beautiful and too expensive to be a toy. Mr. Hugh Gee, a young artist who has taken up toy-designing, has some charming barrel-organs, strong in substance and attractive in colour, which can be had at Heal's.
Probably most children will not get full enjoyment out of a doll's house till they are five or six. Little children do not, as a rule, care very much for things on a very small scale ; their fingers are too clumsy to be able to handle small toys easily, and, as Madame Montessori points out, things for their use should always be comparatively large and simple in shape. By the time they are five or six, however, their increasing powers of muscle co-ordination and their consciousness of growing bigger themselves are both gratified by little intricate toys, and of all little toys perhaps the doll's house remains the most delightful. I wish that Mr. Gee or M. Wigdeveld, or some of the many other artist toy-designers would turn their attention to planning a really good architectural doll's house. I have searched fairly diligently, but have nowhere been able to find a satisfactory one. Copies of the jerry-builder's worst efforts, complete with sham bow-windows and Ruabon bricks, are still with us, and even the best designs never seem to rise higher than the desperately picturesque suburban type found in the richer garden cities. The same low standard obtains in the furniture. It has not kept up with grown-up furniture at all. In the eighteenth century the most delightful " Georgian " dolls' houses were made, dignified little structures with their orders and cornices, sash windows, and pediments.
The male equivalent to the doll's house is, of course, the tin soldier. Soldiers seem difficult to get now, probably because many of them were made in Germany. Their design should offer great possibilities to the artist toy-makers, as should also the cannon, fortifications, baggage trains, and savage adversaries which supplement them.
The reader will perhaps notice that I have made no mention of the Montessori apparatus, for of course, strictly speaking, the line of demarcation between toys and educational apparatus is, and always should be, an arbitrary one. I have said nothing about this because at present it is extremely hard to get and very expensive ; also it would be obviously impossible in the course of a short article to explain its use and the object with which it was designed. I cannot help thinning, how- ever, that it would be a very good thing if the artist toy-makers acquainted themselves with the principles according to which the apparatus is designed. For, as a glance round any of the Christmas exhibitions will show, there is a tendency among the best of the workers to regard the toy "as a thing in itself" and to forget the child. On the other hand, the Montessori toys, if their shapes cannot be modified, might be very much improved as to colour, and such things as the designs of the letters and the patterns used. I think that if a rapproche- ment in this direction were effected the exhibitions next Christmas might show a decided advance on those of this year, good as they are. A. W.-E.
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