NEW YORK CITY — Why are toys habitually ignored in art, history and design circles? Are we inextricably drawn to powerful totems and thus avoid association with the possessions of weaker members of society? Or is it something about the “suspect” emotions these items can provoke in adults? Could it relate to the shadings of the word “toy,” which connote triviality, frivolity and minimal worth? Never fear, clear-eyed and determined scholars associated with the Bard Graduate Center Gallery have stormed the gates of Toyland to identify and offer discourse upon the design, social, cultural and economic ramifications of such artifacts.
Like the objects themselves, the title of the exhibition and catalog project is deceptively simple. The co-curators and their colleagues have employed a parade of wooden toys and related paraphernalia to reveal information about Swedish history and culture. Themes include the development of a pedagogy that valued children’s interaction with the potent material of wood initially through their playthings and later through manual arts training in woodworking. Also discussed is the awareness of childhood as a special time. This appreciation grew with the expansion of the middle class during the Nineteenth Century and the championing of children’s rights at home and internationally via social, labor and educational reform.
How Swedes transformed skis, sleds and other equipment they had commonly used without fanfare into more exciting gear with connotations of healthy recreation, sport, tourism and all-around winter fun is spotlighted as well.
Susan Weber, Bard Graduate Center founder and director, and Amy F. Ogata, professor of art history at the University of Southern California and former professor at Bard Graduate Center (BGC), are the co-curators of the exhibition and the co-editors of the accompanying catalog. This is the first in-depth exhibition of wooden playthings made in Sweden from the Seventeenth through the Twentieth Centuries and showcases nearly 350 objects, images and publications. The international allure of the topic has already been confirmed through the exhibition’s initial appearance at Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
Aside from the engaging exhibition, the catalog issued by BGC and Yale University Press is a winner in its own right. The design of the full-color, 400-plus-page catalog partakes in the playful nature of the material.
With little written about Swedish toys in English — even though these products were exported to the American market and others beyond Sweden’s borders — this volume fills a huge gap in the literature. Collectors with a particular interest in toy manufacturers will appreciate not only the latest research on Brio, Gemla, Micki Leksaker and other higher profile enterprises, but also newly published information on lesser known and more short-lived firms.
The catalog’s 11 essays include “Swedish Childhoods from the Era of Great Power to the Welfare State” by Bengt Sandin; “Wooden Toy Manufacturing in Sweden” by Peter Pluntky; “Playing and Learning: Wooden Educational Toys in Sweden” by Ogata; “Sleds, Skis and Ice Skates: Winter Sports Equipment for Children in Sweden, 1850–1960” by Weber and “Selling Toys, Selling Ideas: Retailers, Producers and Politics” by Hedvig Hedquist. The illustrated exhibition checklist and extensive bibliography also recommend the volume.
The project serves as an antidote to the bias toys face as a subject worthy of serious study. With its more than 20 years of success in scholarship, exhibitions, publications and education, and its reputation for tackling underappreciated genres and topics, what institution better than BGC to remedy this wrong and to create a model for the arts and design field? Let’s face it, while collectors and public history consumers are likely to enjoy toys and games without prejudice, within academia and art museums the category has been neglected, if not demeaned.
Co-curator Weber wants people to appreciate “the significance of toys. They are marginalized, but they tell us so much about childhood and culture. They are not just playthings. They are important artifacts and documents of history. … This was a culturally reflective subject for us.”
Nina Stritzler-Levine concurred in her essay “Designing Wooden Toys in the Age of Technological Imagination” that “traditional toys — blocks, trains, dollhouses — are recorded different relative values from … furniture forms, lighting designs or residential interiors.” Rather shockingly, Stritzler-Levine noted that even in contemporary and Modern design commentary, toys had largely been relegated to the sidelines until the Museum of Modern Art’s 2012 exhibition “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000.”
The richness of fabulous objects on view here might lead one to think that this project sprung from the artifacts themselves, but not so. When asked how the exhibition came to be, Weber related a saga of inquiry, challenge and discovery. It began a few years ago when Ogata was on the faculty at BGC and pursuing a research interest that resulted in Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America, 2013, among other publications. Weber remembered, “We wondered what kind of exhibition we could do in this new field of toys.”
She knew about Swedish rocking horses and pedagogical toys with which her own children had played — and had contacts in Sweden’s museum and design community — so they decided to make an exploratory trip to Sweden. Weber remembered that when hearing the nature of their research, “our Swedish colleagues laughed. They said that historically Swedish toys were ‘the toys of poverty.’ The better toys had been imported from Germany, England and France.”
But the BGC team was undeterred. Their perseverance resulted in the location of riveting wooden artifacts made in Sweden with an abundance of cultural implications. On one end of the spectrum were the interesting early toys: “They were one-offs that spoke of innovation and handwork. Farm families made them for their children.” At the other end were toys made and marketed by Brio, a company founded in 1884 and still in business today. Weber and Ogata came to realize indisputably that “there was a story to tell.”
During their investigation, they met up with Peter Pluntky, the great toy expert and, at the time, the host of the Swedish equivalent of Antiques Roadshow. Weber explained how Pluntky had assembled a Swedish toy collection with the dream that one day it would be on permanent display in Stockholm. When that did not happen, the collection was sold to the City of Rome. There was a hope that the collection would be part of a museum planned for the center of a development, but that scheme did not come to fruition either. So the collection ended up in storage at Rome’s Capitoline Museum. As Weber charmingly put it, many of the objects in the BGC exhibition came from this “Sleeping Beauty collection.”
A key subtheme is the “woodiness” of the wood harvested from Sweden’s deep forests. In the catalog, the co-curators explain how the project “explores the ways in which the materiality of wood has informed the making and design of toys.” The French theoretician and critic Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was one of several Twentieth Century commentators cited who prized wood and its natural, timeless and reassuring qualities over chemically derived plastics for toys. Today, Montessori and Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf) Schools continue to hold toys fashioned from wood in extremely high regard.
When asked what surprised her the most, Weber responded, “That the Swedes did not make dolls. We came across a few bobbin dolls, but all decent dolls were imported. They had toy homemaking kitchens and shops, but dolls weren’t made locally. The horse was more important to their way of life than the doll.” Indeed, the horse shows up copiously and in myriad forms, including the gaily painted Dala carvings, rocking and ride-on steeds and equine pull toys.
“Swedish Wooden Toys” possesses widespread appeal. It is a must-see for collectors and students of toys, games, dollhouses, sports equipment and associated images and artifacts of childhood. Midcentury Modern enthusiasts will be drawn to the beautifully designed and well-crafted toys displaying a familiar Scandinavian aesthetic. From a craft and design perspective, those interested in wood as an artistic medium will be rewarded. Educators enthralled by the relationship between pedagogical toys and childhood learning and development will find much to intrigue them.
Those drawn to graphic, packaging and advertising design will be pleased by this substantial component. Lovers of Swedish arts and culture will want to visit, especially those who can remember playing with such treasures. Since imported Swedish toys touched the lives of many American children over the years, those who grew up in the States might feel a twinge of nostalgia, too.
Once again, we can acknowledge Bard Graduate Center for celebrating a design category whose value was not immediately and universally apparent. Through the mounting of this exhibition, Weber observed, “Now there are a lot of toy collectors and also scholars interested in the topic. And we hope that the Swedes will recognize the importance of their toys.”
“Swedish Wooden Toys” remains on view through January 17 at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 18 West 86th Street in Manhattan. For information, 212-501-3023 or www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery.
