London, a place where I have been spending a lot of time recently, is full of things to see and do. Unfortunately this fact is well known and so it is also full of people, who are wont to get in the way and detract from the whole experience. It is rather harder to appreciate a painting if there is a crowd three-deep in front of it, for example. I have therefore been trying to seek out the less obvious places to go in an attempt to escape the hordes of tourists.
One such place is Pollock’s Toy Museum, situated just off Tottenham Court Road just west of Goodge Street tube station. Despite containing hundreds, if not thousands, of toys, this is not a museum aimed at children. Walking inside is like entering an Angela Carter novel and can be rather disconcerting. Eyes stare at you from everywhere: from the cracked wax face of an ancient doll, the threadbare head of a long-dead child's prized teddy bear, the maniacal glare of a wooden Punch puppet. A place not of dreams but of nightmares.
The building itself adds to the mood. Despite being two houses joined together the feeling is one of claustrophobia, with narrow twisting staircases leading to a maze-like collection of tiny rooms. Every bit of wall holds a display case, the contents collected together in themes which vary from room to room. There are doll's houses, wind-up tin machines, toy theatres, board games; toys from Europe, the Far East and Africa; soldiers, castles, farmyards. I especially appreciated a beautifully-made wooden Noah's ark in which the grasshoppers were the same size as the lions.
It is both fascinating and frightening, it makes the visitor feel both illuminated and ill at ease. But most of all, it makes you wonder why our ancestors insisted on making children's playthings that were so downright creepy. Then again, with things like Bratz dolls currently being hugely popular, maybe all kids want is to be given the heebie jeebies...
Image by user Mupshot on Wikimedia Commons
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