FIRST COLLECTIONS

1987. 160 pages. Introduction by John Darcy Noble. Bibliography. Commentaries by Bradley Smith, Ajit Mookerjee, and Tsune Sesoko. Photography by Bradley Smith. ISBN No. 0-914155-05-9.

From our previous exhibition, FIRST COLLECTIONS — Dolls and Folk Toys of the World. Guest-curated by John Darcy Noble, former Curator of Dolls and Toys at the Museum of the City of New York.

FIRST COLLECTIONS is a major exhibition of broad and universal appeal. Dolls and folk toys in many media—wood, metal, fiber, paper, etc., dramatically illustrate the rich variety, quality and beauty of these cherished objects. The exhibition is drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, and supplemented by loans from other museum and private collections.

Excerpt from the book

PREFACE by Martha Longenecker, Director

The seeing and handling of dolls and toys is one of a person's first and most intimate contacts with a work of art—a beautiful and tactile object! Appealing in line, form and color, these delightful and imaginative FIRST COLLECTIONS are enhanced by their manipulation in play, stimulating a child's creative powers. It is said, "Play is the work of a child, and toys are his tools."

Dolls and toys are often made for a particular child by family members or friends—the intensity of their love for the child heightening the expressive quality and appeal of the creation. Among these dolls and folk toys are to be discovered the pure expressions of human beings at their best.

Almost any material can be used for the making of dolls and toys—straw and other natural fibers, bits of string, scraps of wood, cloth, paper, leather, wire and metal, as well as common clay. The challenge of working with these materials is the same as in the creation of any art object, requiring imagination, inventiveness, aesthetic sensitivity and skill.

Dolls and toys, in some magical way, awaken in us a quality of wonder. Enchanting and amusing playthings, they seem to reflect the realm of the Muses—that world in which things of daily life correspond to the eternal, transcendent world which one can only refer to obliquely through suggestion or intimation.

DOLLS AND TOYS - OUR FIRST LOVES

by John Darcy Noble

Curator Emeritus of Dolls and Toys at The Museum of the City of New York

On Mount Olympus, the Gods of classical antiquity passed their days in play. It was an arduous task indeed to secure their interest in the dull and adult concerns of mortals. Play was their godly occupation.

Throughout the animal kingdom, it is the more highly evolved creatures who delight in play, often flinging themselves, as do otters and dolphins, into the physical expression of their joie de vivre. Only Man, with his anxieties and his self-consciousness, rejects play as childishness, relegating it to his children, and expressing this most innocent and holy of urges only in the cupidity of card games, or the evasion of spectator sports.

There are, of course, exceptions. Primitive races, untouched by the dubious involvement of civilization, play happily, while among the cultured ones, it is the highly evolved artist, amongst others, who devotes himself, with religious fervor and single-mindedness, to a lifetime of play.

The urge to collect is not divine, but it is widespread among men. A few animals, apes and magpies and even some wayward cats, collect the bright and shining objects that touch their fancy. The urge to collect can be seen to have, at least, a mystical quality, if not a godly one, being, as Vivien Greene has so aptly quoted "inspired by a curiosity that helps to defeat the profound sadness of life."