Peer into the past: 19th century Japanese toy drawings

3:00 PM on 07.07.2009   |   Colette Bennett

What, did you think I was going to show you primitive sketches of Ikki-Tousen figures? No, what you see above and in this gallery is something far more intresting than that: selections from the Ningyo-Do Bunko database, which contains over 100 albums of toy design sketches that hail from the late 19th/early 20th century.

What's most interesting about these sketches is that some of them would probably be considered frightening-looking to American children if they were real toys, but a Japanese child wouldn't blink twice at the sight of a red face with a furrowed brow. What do you think of these designs? I wonder if these artists would roll over in their graves to see how toys have changed...

[Drawn Via BiblioOdyssey]

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