China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Toy museum gives play to fun over the centuries
The latest museum in Athens to open its doors to the public this autumn, the Benaki Museum of Toys, has already won the hearts of locals who flock there to enjoy a journey through childhood over the centuries.
Housed in a fairy-tale mansion resembling a castle, the Benaki museum was built in 1900 in a neo-Gothic style in the southern suburb of Faliron. It overlooks the Saronic Gulf and is home to thousands of toys, games and reconstructions dating from antiquity to the present day.
A wooden rocking horse that early 20th-century Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos had given to his grandson greets visitors at the entrance.
Wooden and tin mechanical toys made in Greece and around Europe in the 19th century, dolls from Africa and the United States, shadow-theater figures from the Mediterranean and puppets from Asia fill the halls of the mansion, which was donated by the family of late captain Athanassios Koulouras.
The museum’s collection, which includes donations from toy collector Maria Argyriadis, comprises toys and books associated with childhood, literature and education from around the world, as well as archives.
The collection — which has around 20,000 exhibits — is ranked among the 10 best in Europe. It was donated in the 1990s by Argyriadis to the Benaki museum, which founded a special department for childhood, toys and games at the time.
Exhibits from Greece include handmade toys for infants and older children made between the 18th and 20th centuries, replicas of toys from ancient Greece, and toys made by retirees based on memories of their childhood games.
Objects from around Europe consist of popular toys from the same period, mainly from Britain, France and Germany.
Until 1991, the toys lay crowded inside Argyriadis’ home and in boxes in her basement. “Something was missing. I would tell myself that it wasn’t right that only my family were able to admire these toys. The toys should find their way outside, into the world, for all children to see,” Argyriadis says.
She started collecting toys in the 1970s. “This is how I started the collection: from a yellow teddy bear I found thrown in the garbage. This was the start of the collection, because I remembered a similar teddy bear I had as a child,” she says.
Her passion for preserving toys developed during child- photographs and hood. “It all started when I was young, 5 or 6 years old. My parents could not afford to buy many toys for me at Christmas. Just one,” she explains.
She remembers her mother making new dresses for her old dolls and placing them under the Christmas tree in brand-new boxes.
“My mother used to say: take care of your toys, hug them with love, be careful with them and never throw them away,” Argyriadis recalls.
Asked to choose one toy out of the collection of 20,000, she starts making a long list. It is impossible, she says. Each one bears testimony to a period of history and the daily lives of children throughout the centuries. Each one has a story to tell. Argyriadis points to a set of small wooden sofas and chairs just put on display at the museum as a characteristic example.
“A miniature set of living room furniture made of cheap wood that a mother made for her daughter’s birthday during the Nazi occupation (of Greece in the 1940s) ... She brought it to us herself and told its story. This toy has a special significance for us,” she says.