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Playe-things
Being a short discourse on period toys
from ECWSA collections

Christmas seems an appropriate time to discuss the playthings that seventeenth century children enjoyed. While few actual toys have survived from the period, there is quite a bit of pictorial evidence to tell us what they actually were.

Both rich and poor children played with similar toys, the only difference being the costliness of the rich children's playthings. Here are some of the most common types:

Dolls

Found in most cultures, and while rather crudely formed in the Middle Ages, by the Renaissance, dolls representing elegant ladies were becoming common. Made of finely carved wood, and had clasped hands and a conical or cylindrical base instead of legs. Contemporary pictures show English, French, Dutch and German girls with this type of doll, and always dressed elegantly in whatever the local fashion was. Dolls made some advances by the seventeenth century; baby dolls appeared for the first time (although before that, dolls were usually called "babies" anyway). Poseable, finely dressed dolls with real hair and waxen skin were made for the elaborate dolls' houses that became popular at that time. Major centers of doll making in the seventeenth century were Nuremberg, Holland and Flanders.

Hobbyhorses

Another universal toy, since they saw their elders riding everyday, little boys of the Middle Ages and Renaissance played at riding on hobbyhorses. This toy could consist of anything from the horse's head, to the head and forelegs, to (rather awkwardly) a whole tiny horse on the end of a stick. Often boys played at jousting with hobbyhorses and windmills (pinwheels) for lances.

Other, smaller popular toys included bird whistles, balls, tops, rattles, hoops and bubble-pipes. Brueghel's wonderful painting "Children's Games" shows these and other games children played.

For more detail and pictures, see Antonia Fraser's A History of Toys (Delacorte Press, NY, 1966), which is an excellent book, and probably the best single volume available on historical toys.