Marilyn Sassi:

 Marilyn Sassi has a degree in Fine Arts from Russell Sage, has taught at various local colleges, and has been involved with antiques for over 40 years. Her talk was on the history of toys. (Appropriately, she used what is now considered to be an antique slide projector.)

            Sassi first started with antiques when furnishing an apartment; she would encounter antique toys but resisted their allure, thinking toys are for children. Then one day a publication she wrote for sent her to cover a toy auction. The toys were in glass cases; champagne was served; and not a child was in sight. She was soon hooked.

            Sassi began by showing a 1674 Massachusetts mother-and-child painting, a stiff pair, illustrating how people then saw children: as miniature adults, requiring strict discipline because they were born in original sin. In contrast, though, a 1660 Jan Steen Christmas scene showed the Dutch treating children more indulgently, and this became the way of the future.

            But toys continued to be burdened with instructional missions. Dolls aimed to teach parenting. Rocking horses were actually originated to teach equestrianism. “Sunday toys,” Noah’s Ark being the prime exemplar, were intended to teach the Bible.

            It was noted that some of the early paintings shown by Sassi depicted young boys in skirts. She explained that boys were thusly clothed until fully potty-trained; it facilitated diaper changes.

            The nineteenth century, with its Industrial Revolution and so much product innovation, saw an explosion of creativity in the realm of children’s toys. The timepiece industry with surplus springs gave birth to clockwork toys. One particularly choice example was a figure of General Grant, who lowered and raised to his mouth a hand holding a cigar, emanating real smoke. Asked how the smoke was produced, Sassi said it wasn’t known [but I doubt today’s Consumer Product Safety Commission would approve – FSR].

            Then there were the mechanical banks, another hugely popular category of toys. One shown by Sassi involved putting the penny in the mouth of a dog – who then literally jumps through a hoop to drop the coin into a barrel. These toys encouraged kids to save their pennies, by rewarding them with a little show.

            Very important according to Sassi was the zootrope, brought out by Milton Bradley in 1867. This involved running a strip of sequenced images through a circular carousel operated by a crank; viewed through a slit, the result was seeming motion, the forerunner of animation.

            And of course: the Teddy Bear. Its origin was in news reports of a sickly bear that Teddy Roosevelt compassionately refrained from shooting. Some enterprising seamstress made a toy bear and put a label “Teddy” on it. The rest, as they say, is history.

            Throughout the Nineteenth Century, upon which Sassi focused, the epicenter for toy innovation and production was Germany. Indeed, Germany was then the epicenter of civilization itself, its outpouring of endearing children’s toys being emblematic of a deep humanism also reflected in German literature, pedagogy, and philosophy. That this same nation, a couple of generations later, could do what it did, is a sobering lesson.