A Selection of Toys from MAO Collection

Child’s play is an activity performed for the sake of itself; it changes the child’s relation to reality; it is intrinsically motivated, free, and pleasant for the child.1  It represents the most important learning method for the child, and forms the basis for the cognitive development. By playing, children learn and more easily understand, connect and give meaning to all what they have learnt through their ideas, feelings and interactions with others.2  Toys are the backbone of child’s play – they give it substance and act as source of ideas, which is why the quality of toys, especially in our modern consumer society, is very important.

The toys presented at the exhibition come from the MAO collection and represent an important chapter of the Slovenian design heritage. Acquired in the period from the early stages of the Biennial of Industrial design (BIO) in the 1960s and all the way through to the end of the 1990s, they were all displayed at the biennial, with many of them winning awards there.3

First Slovenian breakthroughs in the area of well designed toys were made by factories Ciciban from Miren and Mehanotehnika from Izola in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with designers Oskar Kogoj and Sergio Gobbo deserving particular mention. Their toys were considered good toys and have won many awards, in Slovenia as well as abroad. 4

The toys held in MAO collection are primarily those intended for functional play (rattles, buckets and spades, etc.), for the stimulation of motoric skills (Little Cart, Ciciban scooter, Square, etc.), and for constructive play (puzzles, Inserting Screw, Wheelbarrow, etc.), which all challenge child’s imagination, creative thinking and the sense of exploration. One such toy is the award winning5  Square by the design studio Oloop, a playground where children, through play, develop the sense of their body and its relation to space.

The criteria for the evaluation of quality of toys are complex and numerous. They are connected with psychoeducational requirements for the adequacy of toys in terms of their educational nature and different possibilities of play. Also important are requirements concerning the technological and hygienical safety of materials, the structural design of the toy, its outward appearance and compliance with aesthetic criteria. The degree of innovation and aesthetic quality, the feasibility, usefulness and applicability, emotional content and ergonomics also feature prominently among the requirements for good toy design.

The beginnings of evaluation of toys go back to 1954, when an expert board for the evaluation of toys was founded in Ulm in the Federal Republic of Germany, which still today awards toys with the »Spiel Gut« quality label. The German model of evaluating toys was soon followed by other European countries. In 1958, the International Council for Children’s Play – ICCP was founded in Ulm, with Yugoslavia joining as one of its members.

The Slovenian expert board for the evaluation of toys was founded in 1984 and is still active today. It acts as an interdisciplinary platform between different institutions and experts, and awards the »dobra igrača« (i.e. good toy) label, among other things.

The exhibition will present more than twenty toys from MAO collection, among them the prototype of a wooden didactic toy designed by Niko Kralj in the early 1980s, the drawings for this prototype, and photographs by Janez Kališnik and other authors.

In the preparation for this exhibition we enlisted the collaboration of children from Nove Fužine and Jože Moškrič Primary Schools, together with their arts class teachers Jelka Flis and Sabina Mattersdorfer. They used the toys from their childhood, and toys from MAO collection, as an inspiration for working with different media. In two workshops organised by the museum, the children worked with geometric shapes and bodies to make dominoes and chess.    

MAO’s Educational Department pays particular attention to child’s play, and for over a decade children have attended its creative workshops where they used their own creative potentials to discover the many different faces of architecture, design and photography. The programmes are designed with the purpose to cover the widest population from preschool children, to schoolchildren and adolescents, and families. The museum also organizes thematic workshops for students and adults.

Play is a constant in our life – or as Friedrich Schiller wrote: Man is only completely a man when he plays.

Natalija Lapajne, curator of the exhibition

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1 Kurikulum za vrtce (Kindergarten Curriculum), Ministrstvo RS za šolstvo in šport, Zavod RS Slovenije za šolstvo, 1999.
2 Ljubica Marjanovič Umek and Maja Zupančič, Psihologija otroške igre: od rojstva do vstopa v šolo, Znanstvenoraziskovalni inštitut Filozofske fakultete, 2006.
3 BIO 1, 1964: gold medal: 16 paper and wooden animal puzzles, designer: Enzo Mari, Italy.
   BIO 2, 1966: gold medal: Animal assembly kit in turned wood, designer: Ante Jakić, Yugoslavia.
   BIO 2, 1966: honourable mention: Plastic animals, designer: Libuše Niklová, Czechoslovakia.
   BIO 6, 1975: honourable award: Wooden and plastic toys (Raglja, Družina, Hop v luknjo, Katjuše, Klik-klak, Krogla za šivanje, Ropotuljice, Skiro Ciciban, Steklenice za dojenje, Ura, Vijak vtikač, Vlak Ciciban, Žogi, Aspirator, Duda za igro), designer: Oskar Kogoj, Yugoslavia.
BIO 6, 1975: commendation: Plastic toys, designer: Sergio Gobbo.
BIO 7, 1977: commendation: Two balls, designer: Oskar Kogoj; manufacturer: Ciciban, tovarna obutve in otroških potrebščin, Miren pri Novi Gorici, Yugoslavia.
BIO 8, 1979: honourable award: Tower A – children’s playground equipment, designer: Sergio Gobbo.
BIO 8, 1979: commendation: Collection of toys (Ciciban’s Little world, Little boat, Little carriage, Little car, Little cart), designer: Sergio Gobbo.
BIO 14, 1994: honourable mention: Children’s Animal farm, designer: Heinrich Roth, Nemčija.
BIO 17, 2000: quality concept award: Rocking horse wheel-chair, designer: Alja Novak, tutor: Vladimir Pezdirc, Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
4 The toy »rdeči predmet« (Red Object) by Oskar Kogoj was awarded in Milan as early as in 1969 on proposal from the Abitare magazine, and in 1973 it receiwed an award in Ulm in Germany. Two years later, individual wooden toy designs by Sergio Gobba were selected in Ulm as best European toys.
5 The product was the winner of the Red Dot award: (Design Concept: Best of the Best: Education 2007).
 

Location

MAO
Pot na Fužine 2

Admission

free admission

Info

infobio(at)mao.si
01/ 54842 74

Organization

MAO