Catherine Howell: The Zoo Zag jigsaw is actually quite an important object for us. It was actually made by a company called Abbat toys. And the thing about the Abaats.. it was a couple called Paul and Margery Abbat, and they were toy designers, makers sometimes, or they got other people to make the toys for them. And they opened one of the first proper.. well no not one of the first toy shops in London.. but they had a very famous toy shop in London. And they employed artists and architects and people who design toys for children with special needs, and they were very into educational toys and wood and that sort of thing. The thing is that we have the archive of the Abbats in the museum, which is part of our British toy-making archive project. And so any object that comes in that's sort of linked to that we immediately jump on. And this particular one was actually designed by a man called James Galland– as you can see – lots of letters after his name, he was actually quite a well known artist and designer in other fields as well but he did quite a lot of things for the Abbats. Pity its not complete, but its a very interesting design. The Abbats did a lot of these tray puzzles of different sorts. That one, you have the names of the things and you have to slot in the animals, and you have to recognise the animals and be able to read the names. Other ones were much simpler, and you just have a town scene, or a seaside scene, or a zoo scene – I had one when I was little – and you had animals and people, and they were just cut-out shapes in the scene, and you just had to put them in so its very.. they were for very small children whereas this one is obviously for a slightly older child. |