Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Children's Toys from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

From Irish Archaeology:
The toys were described as ‘street toys’ and a quick review of the collection certainly brings to mind a hustle and bustle of rowdy out-of-doors play. The broadly contemporary painting The fight between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Brueghel the Elder gives a vivid impression of toys like these being used in a busy Dutch street (see previous image). Additionally, the same artist has left us a fascinatingly insightful inventory of as many as eighty types of games played by contemporary children in Holland his painting Children’s Toys. Interestingly, the church where the toys were found is located right next to a Grammar School which was in existence at the time the toys would have been used. This gives an idea as to the source of toy-owners; but how did the toys come to be blocked up in a disused stairwell? (Read entire article.)
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