PRIMITIVE TOYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22402, 24 April 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

PRIMITIVE TOYS

NATIVE CHILDREN'S WORK A Burmese lady who recently arrived in London has a skirt made of an old bill-of-lading I She is at the Institute of Medical Psychology, where she dances in company with a red-coated Burmese priest. The strings which move the logs of these puppets are worked by Mrs. Stopford Douglas, who is making a wonderful collection of toys from the primitive parts of the world. The Colonial Office has sent circulars to teachers abroad asking them to collect what they can from native children in tho schools, and the toys aro to bo exhibited to the public if money can bo found for showcases. With tho Burmese lady there arrived also a hollow basketwork ball, some toy templegongs, and a puppet horse which prances about and tosses its head. One consignment is from Zanzibar, and here Western influence is beginning to make itself felt. A flying-ground suggested a toy of cotton-reels and revolving propellers, while it was an ingenious child who evolved a primitive piano from steel umbrella ribs. The scooter with its home-made klaxon might well have come from any poor street in England, but only a native child could have made the rattles oX African nuts and seeds. We all know tho toy telephone oT two tins and a length of thread,' but who knew that bits of deerskin stretched over Baobab shells make excellent receivers of sound when cotton is stretched between them? When visitors have looked at Omar Abdullah's aeroplane and another child's model millstones they can admire a clever pith model of one of tho elaborate front doors of which tho natives of Zanzibar are so proud. The native child can bo very practical attunes, and it would be interesting to see him using the wooden pattens he makes to keep his feet dry in wet weather; he holds them on by winding his big toe round a peg.