GIRL GUIDES

Waipa Post, Volume 49, Issue 3554, 6 December 1934, Page 7

GIRL GUIDES

EXHIBITS IN LONDON'. After being on show at the Girl Guide headquarters in London, Jemima Puddleduck, Peter Rabbit, the British Lion, and all the rest of them are off to Adelboden in Switzerland, where Girl Guides from twenty countries are sending their handicraft for an international exhibition. The British exhibits are not only excellent in themselves, but have moiit interesting stories behind most of , them. The British ETon, for instance, was made by a crippled Birmingham Guide, who has already earned £3OC by her models, and has now been appointed designer to one of our biggest toy factories. .... Jemima Puddleduck and Peter Rabbit are also"the*work of a crippled girl., Paralysed from her waist downward, she yet manages to run her own toy industry and also a Girl Guide company. Sea Rangers are showing a model of Drake’s Golden Hind, copied from a 16th-century shipwright’s drawing. There is a bib worthy of a prize baby, for it has already won the Gold Medal of the Royal Amateur Art Exhibition. There are smocks made by a crippled Ranger trained at the wonderful Heritage Craft Schools at Chailey, and scarves woven by Glamorganshire Guides, all daughters of unemployed miners. We must pass over many other charming and well-designed things, because we want to get to the Brownie Feast Table. Never were Brownies more true to their name and nature than when they laid this elfin ' table. It is only 18 inches long, and everything on it is. in their own words, “made of all sorts of things - from the woods and gardens.” They collected all the autumn and sat round making during the winter Pack

meetings. Cutlery, dishes, glasses, all . are silver, having been dipped in silver paint. The. wineglasses are made from tiny poppyheads; bigger poppyheads make the dishes. The saltcellars, with lids that take off, are baby Holm Oak acorns. The spoons are made from hogweed seed, while the hollow stalks of hogweed.provide the table napkin rings. Shepherd’s Purse fruits are in the vases,. while the cheese biscuits, so tempting in their -tiny dishes, are cut from maple leaves. In the- book the Brownies wrote about their table they said: “Lots of things broke, so we made some more.” But the finished table is quite strong enough to' be played with, and a more fascinating toy it is impossible to imagine. We like to think of these little Brownie elves, whose average age is nine, ticktacking away at .their work on winter evenings, and producing their feast table fit for the King of the Elves himself.