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Toy story By Dalia Karpel Tags: art, Israel, toys A child has to be fascinated. Today this seems easier than ever, when the abundance of toys in stores includes colorful and illuminated objects operated by means of digital chips or small battery-operated motors. Moreover, children aged three or four already sit in front of the computer screen and play games freely. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was no simple challenge to enthrall a child with a toy. We recall Geppetto from the story of Pinocchio, who became a victim of the illusion that he had created, upon hearing that the piece of wood he had carved was crying, laughing and talking. Ancient fairy tales are full of mysterious boxes from which the toys emerge at nightfall and "come alive" - legends that aroused curiosity among children captivated by the magic of their toys. There has been a charming exhibition for the past two months at the Eretz Israel Museum in Ramat Aviv called "Nahum Takum and Friends," which brings visitors back to an old world of marvelous playthings that are like works of art. This is an exhibition that is not only the dream of children and their parents, but of collectors as well: handmade toys dating back to the 18th century, which move and twist, fly and crow, and even dance to American ragtime without any motors or chips. Advertisement Human hands have always operated and performed tricks with many of these items. In the large display area, for example, one can see the "Little Dancers," made of wood and horsehair in about 1870. The figurines begin to dance when you beat the painted drum: three little dancers in embroidered country dresses and a prince (or perhaps a king), accompanied by a troubadour who may be singing about unrequited love while plucking a mandolin. Next to it is "Ragtime Rastus," an industrial toy made of wood and wire, which was manufactured by the National Toy Company in the United States in 1916. The vibrations of a revolving disk make the figures dance to a ragtime beat; it is hard to tear yourself away from this marvel. One can easily spend hours taking in the exhibits, which will be on display until the end of December. So far over 60,000 visitors have done so. On the last day of vacation before school started, it was still crowded. The toys are in illuminated cases at a child's eye level (adults have to bend down) so that they can be seen as if on display in a shop window. Most of the toys on exhibit are made of wood and tin, and manufactured before the era of mass production of electrical and automatic toys. Some were apparently designed and made by laborers and farmers, who were also amateur carpenters, during their free time; hence, the identity of the creator is not always known. In times of economic depression or war, making toys at home was common in various parts of the world. Professional know-how was passed down from one generation to the next, at a time when one's furniture and kitchen utensils, one's bed and one's trade were considered valuable family assets. In video clips screened on the museum's walls, one can see the little toys imprisoned in the illuminated cases in action, life-size and close-up. Here, for example, is "Flying Bird," made of papier-mache, leather, metal and thread in Germany in the 19th century. Several girls are standing openmouthed, watching the film on the wall, in which the bird is seen in flight and heard operating a whistle while flapping its wings. And here are "The Green Horses" on film - a toy from the early 19th century that comes from Connecticut, and which moves and makes noise. There is also a similar toy from another part of the world, "The Turkish Chariot." On another wall "Acrobatic Clown on a Wheel" is projected. Next to the case it says that the figurine is made of wood and metal, but here, on the wall, it seems full of life. The little man's hat is in his hand and he bows with a smile. Such a clown performed 50 years ago in the Medrano Circus, which, beginning in 1952, came to Tel Aviv almost every year from Verona, home of its founders, the Casartelli family. But the clown in the exhibition lacks an identity, and its creator and provenance are unknown. On one of the walls one can see a life-size duck eating a worm - a toy with a simple automatic mechanism, like a watch movement. Although it is made of painted tin, it moves like the clucking hen next to it, which like it came from France and was made in the early 20th century. "Flip and Flop," the flying clowns, are an attractive wood-and-wire duo, designed by none other than Orville Wright, one of two American brothers who were pioneers of flight. This toy was made in 1923, and its designer apparently wanted to create a toy that was attractive as well easy to assemble and take apart; he succeeded. The patroness of the exhibition is Christine Armengaud, an ethnologist and collector from Paris, who for decades has collected thousands of children's toys from Europe, North and South America, Japan, India, China, Russia and South Africa. She did not skip over the poor neighborhoods in New Delhi and Rio de Janeiro, where she found toys that children assembled from "treasures" found in garbage dumps, and from which they created such playthings as "Pecking Hens," "Balancing Acrobats" and "Nahum Takum Dolls" (like Weebles - toys that can be tipped over, but never fall down). In the introduction to the exhibit catalog, Armengaud wrote: "Toys are a passing phenomenon, like our childhood, but not those displayed in this exhibition. They have succeeded, almost miraculously, in surviving, testifying to their unquestionable charm, which captures the hearts of children everywhere, and invites us to operate them and even to create new ones. A perfect revival of the traditional toy-making craft is no longer possible in our times, but the first step in creating a variety of inspired creations is to pay attention to the tradition and to record it." Armengaud, 61, said last week in a telephone conversation from Paris that her area of expertise, socio-anthropological research, and the fact that she is married to a pianist, have enabled her to travel a great deal all over the world. She has been collecting toys since she was a student of art history at the Sorbonne in the early 1970s. "I specialized in modern art and that explains the way I see these toys, some of which I consider examples of modern art," she says. "It also explains why the exhibition is screening a film about American artist Alexander Calder, who began his career by creating tiny figures inspired by a French circus. My ethnological research begins with modern art, and because that's my field of expertise, I was able to appreciate the aesthetic and cultural power of the ostensibly simple toys, some of which today resemble statues and works of art." After finishing her studies Armengaud began to take an interest in Japanese pottery, statuettes and clay toys. She then engaged in ethnological research for 15 years, mainly in southeastern France, focusing on toys made in the early 19th century, most of them of natural materials. After a while she expanded her research to all of Europe, and in the past 10 years to North and South America, India and China; she is currently trying to add to her collection of clay figurines, which are sometimes related to magical religious rites, and are sometimes considered to have curative properties. When did you actually begin to collect toys? Armengaud: "In about 1974. When I was a student I traveled to South America, where I found simple toys that were very pretty. My first purchase was in a small village, in a small fruit and vegetable store where they displayed clay toys, which the proprietor sold to parents who came to buy vegetables. I bought all 30 toys in the store for pennies. The owner was so excited by the fact that I was so impressed by them, that he offered them to me virtually free of charge. The toys were operated by means of wires; they had moving parts and were beautiful. They are no longer made. From then on I began to look for toys in every place I visited. In the 1970s you could find wonderful toys in small villages in Central Europe or South America, and the main thing was that you could get the people who made them to talk. Today it's impossible to find anything except in flea markets or antique shops." Armengaud explains that she became a collector because in France, there was no museum for children's toys: "It's strange. There were museums for dolls, for trains, for soldiers, etc., but not for simple toys, most of which came from poor and distressed regions. Now, when I have about 4,000 toys, some of which travel with me from one exhibition to the next, I'm trying to promote the establishment of such a museum in Paris." Armengaud keeps the other toys in numbered boxes, many of them scattered in her home outside of Paris, and says: "I get up in the morning and walk among the toys, and get into an exceptionally good mood." She has purchased a substantial part of her large collection, but there are also toys that she received as gifts from elderly people, whose grandchildren were no longer interested in their childhood treasures; they heard that Armengaud collected toys from the past for research purposes, contacted her and donated them. She found many items in rural areas in France - often informed about public auctions of the contents of family estates and was asked to come because whatever was left would be thrown out. "That's how it was until recently," she notes. "Now people understand the value of the toys and have begun to purchase them in antique shops, to display them at home as works of art or as decorative objects. In the United States there is greater awareness than in Europe of the value of these toys, and it's easier to find antique toys there that were originally made in Europe." Her research has already yielded five books, and the sixth will be published in April 2009 in French and in English translation. Armengaud has conducted ethnographic research in old-age homes and in geriatric departments of hospitals in Paris and its environs. "The objects interested me a great deal, but I didn't forget that behind every toy, there's a personal story and an entire culture," she says. Armengaud is well known particularly thanks to two of her studies, which focused on traditional cultures. One project that was exhibited in Europe was "Bread People" which was subsequently brought to the Eretz Israel Museum in 2001 from the Parc de la Villette museum in Paris, and featured loaves of bread that Armengaud studied and collected for years, from all over Europe. She found a way to preserve the bread so that it could be displayed. The exhibit included bread in various shapes and sizes, such as a sun, a vase, women with multiple breasts or legs, a snake woman, the Sirens and peacocks. Some of the loaves were designed for religious rituals and holidays. Another of her projects, "Sugar People," which was shown at the Eretz Israel Museum in the summer of 2004, featured a collection of sugary figurines made in honor of holidays (Armengaud is the permanent curator of the Sugar Museum in Tienen, Belgium). Among other things were items made of sugar from the Milad-un-Nabi (Birth of the Prophet) ceremony in Egypt and the Diwali festival in northern India; pendants for Christmas from Sweden; a Medieval soldier from Sicily; and colored skulls, animals and toys from the Day of the Dead in Mexico. "There is a connection between the three studies," says Armengaud. "All three represent traditional cultures - this is art for its own sake. All three types of objects do not survive, toys break quickly, so that these are three kinds of short-lived art, which is not preserved in museums, has thus not been thoroughly researched and, of course, has not survived, for the most part. These traditions are passed on from one generation to the next. The shapes of the bread, for example, are rather archaic ones created by people who did not study in university and did not visit museums - and they created wonderful art for decades. The same is true of the sugar and other toys: The sugar figures preserved their shapes because they symbolized something." During her own childhood, at the end of World War II, Armengaud didn't have many toys, she says, certainly compared to the quantities that children in the West have today. "I had a doll and there were a few other items that were not really attractive. My sister, my two brothers and I were supposed to occupy ourselves and create our toys by ourselves. We used anything we found in the yard. Later, my parents, who were doctors, wanted to give us modern toys, as a means to move forward: Traditional toys reminded them of the past, when they were poor. Thus I found myself between the modern age, represented by my parents, and the traditional past of our grandparents, who lived in southwest France." She loved to visit her grandparents during vacations because, she recalls, "it was like living in the 19th century. I lived between the two worlds and I developed an interest in modern art and in modernity in general. On the other hand, I never thought that what our grandparents represented was folkloristic or contemptible, God forbid. In fact, I liked them because they were knowledgeable about the toys of the past and the villagers who had made them. Today people are trying to reconstruct the toys of the past and are designing many wooden toys, but they are not like the traditional ones, whose creators did not consider the safety of the child, and which are therefore dangerous by today's standards." In May, Armengaud arrived at the museum in Ramat Aviv with several crates. "The idea was to display 'moveable toys' and 'primitive' works, in an innovative way. Many of the toys in the collection are suitable for scientific research and not for display to the public. Many do not move, and there are toys that have become old or broken, so that a selection was necessary. I wanted the exhibition to display toys in a series - for example, series of monkeys or birds, a series of dancers. When you display a series from the same family, the visitors at the exhibition will notice the differences between the toys, and their uniqueness. A disorganized abundance of toys, even the most beautiful and colorful, will not catch the eye of the observer or remain in his memory." The exhibit in the museum does in fact display series of toys according to subjects: toys operated by gravity, or with strings, springs or weights; push-and-pull toys; figures inspired by circus acts, puppet theaters and boxing matches; and other items included under the heading "From the spring to steam, and on to solar energy." The decision to place the toys in groupings, according to a common denominator and without regard to when or where they were made, reveals something about their development and about the similarities between one country and another. "You can find a similarity between a clown walking on a rope, made of tin and created in France, and clowns that play the cymbals and are made of tin, string and metal, recycled wood and paper, that were made in Egypt," wrote Armengaud in the exhibition catalog. "It's interesting to compare a clucking hen made of painted wood in Sweden in the 18th century, and crickets made of stamped metal and rubber in Japan in the 1950s. Until the 19th century, she notes, village craftsman who made toys did not try to create anything unique. "They made what they were familiar with and knew best, without a specific aesthetic point of view. And it is those simple things, toys that were made from a piece of wood or tin and painted by hand, which are related to modern art. The nature-oriented 19th-century craftsman discovered a new type of simple art, through African art. I claim that precisely in those three traditions that I studied - bread, sugar and toys - it is evident that their creators preserved aesthetics and simple methods. They were not interested in showing off."W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Unexpected guest Clinton cancels spot at Jewish groups' anti-Iran rally over Palin invite. Critique served cold Ex-IDF chief Ya'alon says the air force failed in the Second Lebanon War.

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