THE CHARMING WORLD OF SWEDISH WOODEN TOYS IN THE BARD GRADUATE CENTER GALLERY, NY

Swedish Wooden Toys represents the first in-depth study of the history of wooden playthings in Sweden from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Featuring remarkable doll houses, puzzles and games, pull toys, trains, planes, automobiles, and more, this exhibition explores Sweden’s long and enduring tradition of designing, making, and consuming wooden toys—from the simplest handmade plaything to more sophisticated, mass-produced forms—and examines the cultural embrace of the wooden toy as a sign of timelessness and quality. Sweden’s forests provided an abundant natural resource for the toy industry and for amateur toy makers, but the veneration of the wooden toy was, and has remained, international.

 

Through ten thematic sections that highlight the materiality of wood and the development of popular forms in Swedish toys, this exhibition not only reviews the production of Sweden’s toy industries but also explores the practice of handicraft(slöjd), the educational value of wooden playthings, and the vision of childhood that Swedish reformers have promoted worldwide.

 

These themes include a study of the painted Dala horse as a toy and as an emblem of Sweden itself; a selection of puzzles and games that show how designers and manufacturers directed both children and adults toward the acquisition of specific abilities; and an examination of popular culture’s influence on Swedish toymakers in the twentieth century. Swedish Wooden Toys shows that from the handmade objects of the rural farmstead to the mass-produced products of major firms, Swedish toys not only reflect but also inform the changing social and cultural values of their time.