International studio (59.1916)

Toys at the Whitechahel Art Gallery

Toys at the Whitechapel
ART GALLERY.
The exhibition of toys recently held at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery enabled one to test the
progress of toymaking in England since the War
began, and especially that section consisting of
carved and painted wooden toys which had pre-
viously come from Germany. Wooden toys such
as guns, ships, boats, etc. have of course been
produced in England for a long time, but to many
people, and children especially, “toys” stand for
dolls, boxes of bricks, and animals—from the more
or less complete Noah’s Ark of venerable tradition
down to the wooden horse on wheels; and as it is
in such things that artistic feeling for form and
colour is most shown, or the absence of it, one
naturally turned to this section of the exhibits to
see how they compared with the playthings of one’s
childhood. And if the volume of such was limited
the reasons are easy to understand. Workers have
been rapidly absorbed in the great industry of war,
while the price of wood, the material most used,
has appreciated enormously. Then there has been
a reluctance to set up expensive machinery, lest at
the close of the war the Germans should unload
their enormous surplus stocks. Those factories
which took their courage in their hands were con-
strained to one of two courses. Some set them-
selves merely to copy enemy wares, analysing them,
and devising machinery to produce the various
parts, with the inevitable result that they found
themselves competing with a product which had
already been before the public at a price far lower
than they could put the article on the market for.
They had everything to learn, concerning suitable
woods, colours, varnishes, etc., as well as the
question of machinery. In Germany the wooden

toy industry is situated close to the great wood
supplies, and has arisen out of that proximity.
The various materials have been tested by long
experiment. Everything has been closely organ-
ised, not excepting the supply of cheap and yet
efficient labour.
It is this question of the right kind of labour
which beset those manufacturers who, rightly
rejecting the notion of making their way by ex-
ploiting enemy goods, or of copying articles which
are often alien in spirit, endeavoured to strike out
a new path and produce toys which should be
national in sentiment, form, and colour. There
was also the difficulty of inducing the public to
buy toys of different form and appearance from
those to which they were accustomed.
But both those who copied and those who
invented were up against a difficulty which might
have been foreseen. We are not like the Eastern
European peoples who are spontaneously artistic
in expression. There, as the Special Numbers of
The Studio on Peasant Art have abundantly
proved, we find the peasants all gifted with a
feeling for decoration largely absent in our own land.
Therefore when our new manufacturers began
operations, they found with dismay how little art
power there was among their workpeople, even the
younger, who had received in the public elemen-
tary schools teaching in drawing and water-colour
once a week, given by teachers often less interested
in the work than the children. The handwork on
any toy must of necessity be direct in order to save
time. Especially the painting must be deft. Such
painting as we see on the cheapest foreign toys, as
the touches forming eyes and lips, or the decora-
tion of dresses by lines and dots, demands a skill
of hand, a sureness of touch only to be gained by
constant practice and the possession of a conven-


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“noah’s ark” toys designed and executed by noble brothers