A toy is one of the brightest manifestations of mass culture.
The traditions of crafts and the art of toys are passed on from generation to generation, and ideas about life, work, and beauty are passed on to the people. The toy is close to folklore and creates a feeling of the peculiarities of national folk art. The oldest clay toys found by archaeologists in our country date back to the Bronze Age, to the 2nd millennium BC. These are small clay hatchets, dishes, rattles, etc. - probably cult objects. A clay toy was found in excavations of the 10th-17th centuries. (Moscow, Ryazan), these were whistles: horses, birds, figures of people. They are sculpted from clay, fired, and sometimes decorated with painting and glaze. It is known that the royal court under Alexei Mikhailovich purchased toys at the Moscow Market. Toy production in the XVII-XVIII centuries. reached great heights. Rich families ordered expensive toys, and the royal family also bought them.
Bought in Moscow at a trade of various toys for Empress Princess Natalya Petrovna and the Grand Duke and Princess - three cows, two horses, two deer, four rams, two pairs of swans, two roosters, one duck, with three children, a city with soldiers. Paid for everything 4 rubles 9 altyns two money
book of expenses of Empress Catherine I for 1721
In the XVIII-XIX centuries.
The production of clay toys reached an unprecedented peak, and the main buyers were ordinary people. In all areas where pottery was practiced, small rattles (“rattlers”) and whistle figurines were sculpted. Whistles were especially loved, as they could be given any visual image and, moreover, used as a kind of musical instrument. Toys were made by women and girls starting from 7-8 years old. They did this in their free time from rural work - mostly in winter and spring before mowing. Of course, making toys from clay was not the main craft, but a secondary one, for children or “for fun.”
Although, it is worth noting that until the beginning of the 20th century, “rattles”, “sharkunki”, “ratchets”, in addition to entertainment purposes, also served to call good spirits or protective angels to the child. Using the basic principle of magic, which is universally associated with the principle of similarity, expressed in the fact that a model or image in a certain sense replaces the original, a rattle or ball depicting the “Heavenly World” in the hands of a child was supposed to protect the child from dark forces. They seemed to connect him with the forces of good. Let us note that in Russian traditional toys there are no images of negative characters, since it was believed that such images could bring harm to the child, in other words, connect the child with the original images. Various whistles served the same purpose.
Whistles often depicted one or another animal, since the image of animals was a traditional theme of Russian folk toys. In the Tula region there are beliefs that by whistling into a clay whistle and saying “Let the damage pass on to the one who sent it,” a person will recover, and the one who sent it will get sick. Depending on the illness, one or another whistle was used. In normal times, they stood in front of the window, “not allowing” illness and evil to reach the child. An ancient ritual associated with a toy whistle and dedicated to expelling evil forces and attracting good ones, was recorded at the beginning of the 19th century in Vyatka.
This holiday was called "Whistling" or "Whistling Dance". In early spring, children and adults whistled into zoomorphic clay whistles for several days, danced and had fun. Over time, clay toys became a selling item. They began to be made specifically for spring fairs, whiling away the long winter evenings by making whistles, horns, horses, ladies, horsemen and other clay armies. Entire families began to make toys, passing on the secrets of making, preparing and firing clay from generation to generation. Each master developed his own style, his own manner of sculpting and designing products.
Today there is more and more talk that the use of toys should be controlled by parents, teachers or psychologists, since the impact of toys can negatively affect the health and psyche of the child. Aggressive content, the image of a particular character, not to mention the environmental friendliness of the materials, sometimes pose a serious danger to modern children. At the same time, the traditional toy reflects, first of all, those poetic views of the world with which folklore, fairy tales, epics and Russian peasant holidays are so full. Her philosophy and aesthetics are initially tuned to positive emotions, they are permeated with a festive mood and bright colors, aimed at goodness and goodness. Behind it stands the age-old wisdom of many generations, moral responsibility for what was created, therefore, something that would not correspond to the primordial way of life and traditional ideas about beauty could not appear in folk art. Any innovation was corrected by the team, and the alien was swept away by itself. The phenomenon of folk toys is inextricably linked with the home, where craft production and peasant labor, complementing each other, contributed to the life support of the family and its well-being. The toy was a kind of model of the world, which contained the basic ideas about nature and man. Children thus accepted the value system from their ancestors. This is an element of the educational process. Through play and toys, a child learns about the world and is socialized in society.
Is it worth introducing some new stories into a traditional toy?
Why not, but if this is new, it is the work of the hands and soul of a real artist who has taste, a sense of proportion and tact in relation to tradition. After all, art cannot be preserved. This is an interweaving of accumulated experience and creative search, in which, one way or another, tradition is reflected. In the search for new forms of folk toys, both the image and the painting technique are improved many times. Folk crafts today are experiencing serious difficulties, as the modern world dictates its own conditions for survival.
Preserving and developing the traditions of making Russian toys is a very important task. In recent years, interest in traditional crafts has revived, and folk toys have again become in demand. Old commercial forms of these products are being revived and developed, and new ones are being developed. But by remaining indifferent to these processes, we contribute to the gradual loss of our national traditions, exchanging the heritage of our ancestors for “overseas consumer goods.” This, of course, does not mean that everyone must necessarily be ceramists or master other traditional crafts, but understanding the value and instilling in your children respect for the work of craftsmen is a completely feasible task. Well, not passing by at the next fair, but buying a handmade product for a nominal fee would also be a good deed. A folk toy is an inexhaustible source of humor, accurate observations of nature, animals and people; it is a memory of sacred knowledge and mythological ideas of our ancestors. And each of us is responsible to ourselves and the next generations for preserving the memory of national crafts and traditions of our native land.
The article was based on materials from:
the site “Slavic Culture” (slavyanskaya-kultura.ru);
ceramic artist Igor Khomyakov ( https://sites.google.com/site/ilustristo/home ).