Toy.
Among the more serious historical matters disinterred from the Egyptian tombs are a number of dolls and toys. The cut illustrates two of the latter. One of them is the figure of a man washing or kneading dough, and has joints at the hips and arms, so that the block in the hand is caused to reciprocate on the inclined plane as the figure is moved by the string. The other figure represents a crocodile having its upper jaw hinged, as in nature. The game of thimblerig occurs in a painting, and the illustration is from the work of Professor Rosellini. |
| Egyptian toys (Museum of Leyden). |
France and Germany are the chief competitors in the toy market, — the first for taste, and the second for cheapness. The peasants of Saxon Switzerland spend their winter evenings in cutting out the immense supply of farmyards and their appropriate animals, soldiers of every nation, and household implements of every kind, which, dispatched to Paris from Olbernau, in fragile wooden boxes, are sold for two or three francs. Beasts, covered with velvety coats, colored according to the animal, are made at Rodach, toys in porcelain at Ohrdruff; whilst the baby dolls, simply attired, come from Sonnenberg, Neustadt, and Wallerhausen. Men made in plaster are dispatched to us from Prussia, whilst leaden soldiers, measuring about an inch in hight, painted and heavily armed, come from Bavaria, Nuremberg, and Furth. Household utensils in china — such as pipkins, saucepans, cups and saucers, dolls' heads in china, games of lotto, penny watches, wooden wheelbarrows, spades, and rakes — are made in the departments.
The Quartier du Temple, in Paris, produces all other toys. The population of that curious old quartier are now wholly occupied by toy-making, and each workman has his speciality. For instance, the man who makes rabbits striking on a drum with their fore-paws makes no other toy. Of these there are annually 43,200 sold, prime cost, at four and sixpence a dozen. There are six manufactories of brass trumpets in Paris alone. 200,000 are monthly made in this city. Their prime cost is 1 s. 3 d. per dozen, and the supply never equals the demand. They are made of oak or beech; the wood employed is sent from Villers Catteress; the parchment from Coutances and Issoudun. Of dolls the number is legion. One manufacturer alone supplies the children of this capital with 50,000 per annum; and it would be impossible to detail the scores made of scraps of indefinite materials, put together by poor seamstresses living in garrets, to be sold by women still poorer crouched beneath a porte-cochere, now shivered by the bitter blast, and a few months hence scorched by the blazing sun. These dolls for the humble are made by no rule, but the bebes for the rich employ several separate trades. There are workmen who stretch the flesh-tinted leather with which they are covered, and nail it on boards, that it may acquire the requisite suppleness; others cut the skin into the shape required to cover legs, arms, etc.; others line these detached pieces with calico; others, again, fill the sewn skin with bran. A separate branch of the trade is that of adapting heads and arms to the bran-filled bodies. These heads, when in porcelain and paste, come from Germany, whereas waxen occiputs are molded and tinted in Paris. Wigmaking for dolls employs three separate trades, namely, makers of human hair wigs, of wigs manufactured from the Thibet goat, and those of lamb skin. Dolls' shoes have a trade to themselves. It appears that combs for these inanimate coquettes are only to be found in the Rue Acunaire, where is a fabrique of dolls' combs.— London Star.
The tin toys used in this country are now nearly all made in Meriden, Connecticut, where large quantities of tin household goods are also manufactured.
Wooden toys, of the less fragile kind, are largely manufactured in several Connecticut towns, and in New York and Philadelphia. These consist of children's wheelbarrows, drums, rocking-horses, carriages, carts, blocks, rail-cars, hoops, sleds, etc. The patentees of the new sensation toys, as the dancing negro, the returning ball, and Quaker popgun, are said to have made fortunes. The railway train, and several other new toys, have also had great temporary success. Red india-rubber balloons are made in France, and filled here with gas. Pewter toys, comprising soldiers, landscapes, trees, etc., are now largely made in this country, though many are yet imported from Germany. The stuffed bodies of dolls are made in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, as also the arms; but Germany still sends many. The arms of stuffed dolls are an especial article of commerce. They are not, like the legs, attached to the bodies, but are sold separately. The heads are likewise purchased, and are either of French porcelain and finely featured, of German china or papier-mache, of English wax, of American india-rubber, or of an imitation of papier-mache. This latter is of thin layers of muslin, coated with oil paint, which has the advantage of washing without injury, and is exceedingly strong, though by no means of fine finish. India-rubber hollow toys of every description, except balls, grotesque masks and birds, and men that squeak when squeezed, are among our own productions. [2606] Mechanical toys, such as imitation steam-engines, steamers, etc., are made here; as also kaleidoscopes. A negro jig-dancer, propelled by steam, is the latest Yankee notion. A kerosene lamp heats a small brass vessel full of water and shaped like a top. It revolves in its socket, and moves a wire which communicates with the figure. Clay marbles come exclusively from Saxony, and are prepared in molds by machinery, from a clay not found in other countries The material for agate marbles is obtained in the Hartz Mountains of Germany. A Japanese top has been lately in vogue, and several Chinese toys have been for years in use. Croquet instruments are made in Pawtucket and Providence, Rhode Island, and in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts. Maple is the wood principally used, though lignum-vitae is sometimes employed. For more expensive kinds boxwood is the material. Small balls, for parlor use during the winter months, are also made. The new game of martelle employs the same woods. The parlor balls are of ivory.— Commercial Advertiser.
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| T-iron. |
