My jaded exhibition palate had a couple of pleasant surprises recently. A small exhibition of Galt Toys down a trendy side street in East London. And a big exhibition on the Bauhaus in the Barbican. I expected to like the first; I was unexpectedly blown over by the second.
I grew up on a toy diet of Galt Toys. My Galt Post Office was very well used and probably explains a lot about my approach to book keeping as a freelancer. I had a very tattered box of Connect and an equally tattered Remember, remember with lovely Kenneth Townsend illustrations. It’s only in later life I put the name Ken Garland to the design of these toys and their packaging.
A small exhibition at the Kemistry Gallery recently put all of these on show. And more. And they let you play with them. And photograph them. Both a bit of a rarity these days. The exhibitions at Kemistry are always a bit random, Blu-Tak and slap-dash. Or as we call it these days: pop-up. But this one more than made up for that in quality of exhibit. Most of the stuff was from Ken Garland’s own shelves. Very nice to see it all, too. And they produced a wee booklet about the toys, designed by Ken. A nice touch and one that came home with me, of course.
The Bauhaus exhibition, currently on at the Barbican, is a cracker. Old skool exhibitionism. With a bit of everything the Bauhaus did, but not too much of any one thing. So: textiles, toys, puppets, pots, ephemera..as far as the eye could see. The designers of the exhibition Carmody Groarke have got it spot on with dealing with that difficult space. And there was a nice nod to German modernism in the exhibition graphics by A Practice for Everyday Life, particularly the blown up B&W imagery.
The exhibition was curated by the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, which I visited last year because it had an Erik Spiekermann exhibition on. You can tell someone who knows their stuff curated this. But they didn’t over-egg on the specialist knowledge front. So you just immerse yourself in nice things, get a smattering of the background to the movement and a juicy catalogue to find out more. Renewed my faith in exhibitions, so it did.
Oh, I would love to see the Galt exhibition particularly! I recently acquired a Galt catalogue, and recognised a lot of our childhood toys in it – some that I knew were Galt, and some that I had no idea! So I took photos of them – here on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39495180@N07/sets/72157629580585778/ and here in my blog: http://rebeccascollections.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/growing-up-with-galt.html I’m Australian, but my mother was English, and I think she – and perhaps my grandparents – ordered quite a lot from Galt catalogues 🙂
The exhibition is over, I’m afraid. Wasn’t on very long. The Galt Toys were considered ‘educational’ and my mother was a teacher so that was that, really. Although I moaned for, and got, Sindy and Pippa dolls along the way, too.
I haven’t thought about Pippa dolls for ages. But we had the Sasha ones before that, because they were educational too, i.e. came in a range of skin colours and wore dungarees.
Along with lots of Galt Toys – the one I most remember is the wooden construction kit where pegs slotted into holes. I think we got that from Tridias in Leamington Spa, who sold lots and lots of Galt.
I had the Sashas too, a baby, a boy and a girl. I loved them as much as Pippa. And they were bigger and easier to sew for. My brothers were never vicious to my Sasha dolls but they pulled and dismembered the Sindys and Pippas.
Pippas seem to keep cropping up these days. Must be the company I keep. The Galt logo is so familiar, but I can’t recall if I had any, I was a jigsaw/collecting/flower pressing boy…the shape of things to come. I remember a lovely big wooden train set in the window of Leicester’s Early Learning Centre in the late 70s early 80s which looked like it should have been by Galt.
‘Flower pressing’ – that explains so very, very much.
I think that photograph of the children looking in the shop window is just great.
I can’t take credit for the pic but it is a lovely image, isn’t it? So clever for a catalogue cover, too.