I cherish the memories of my childhood. Not all of them. But the best and warmest times I remember are the ones I’d spent in my grandma’s country house. I must have had some toys but the brightest memory of all relates to when I played in a hand-made sand-pit building the sand castles for the princesses and kings whom I would make of the flowers. Princesses were made of roses and the dandelions were destined to be maids.
“Toys are an essential part of the childhood” I thought walking through the doors of Pollock’s Museum at 1 Scala Street in Fitzrovia, having some hope to find some inspiration for future purchases for my one and a half year old.
The Pollock’s Museum didn’t disappoint. It’s often described as the “quaintest and quirkiest museums” and attracts more adults than children. Later are unable to touch the toys which despite being visible from the ground are stored behind the glass. Following the success of Pollock’s Toy Theatre shop near Covent Garden, the Toy Museum was started in 1956 in a single attic room by Marguerite Fawdry and by 1969 the outgrown business moved to two adjacent freehold buildings, one built in 1880s and another – in 1780s, in Scala Street.
However, the history of Pollock’s Museum did not start then. It started exactly 100 years before that, when Benjamin Pollock was born in Hoxton, a poor quarter of London. Having married Elisa Redding in 1877, Benjamin later inherited the business from his father-in-law, John Redding, and became involved in “conserving theatrical history and in catering for a home entertainment” himself. Within next 60 years Benjamin Pollock kept alive “the traditional English toy theatre, with its folk-art designs, bright hand-colouring, and lowbrow but rumbustious repertoire of plays retreated to the little known district of Hoxton”. It attracteddifferent 'celebrities' of that time, starting from Robert Louis Stevenson, who in his essay "A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured" from Memories and Portraits, first published in 1887, concluded 'If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's or to Clarke's of Garrick Street'.
In 1968 the existing private museum, founded by Marguerite Fawdry, was turned into Pollock's Toy Museum Trust to work in conjunction with Pollock's Toy Theatres Ltd. The newly formed educational charitable trust received no government funding and was supported by admissions and the proceeds from the toy store downstairs. From 1969, donations to the museum and new purchases were vested in the Trust, and exhibited alongside toys from the Fawdry collection, while the shop was operated by the company, whose assets include an archive of 19th century printing plates mostly from the publisher J. K. Green (read here).
In 2004 the Trust ceased to play a role in the administration of the museum but the bulk of its collections remain on display there, apparently pending the resolution of negotiations leading to alternative arrangements.
I met Eddy Fawdry during my botht visit to the museum. He wasn’t very keen to talk. “All information about the museum is on the web-site” he said.
In 2004 Emma Griffiths from BBC made a news report on Pollock’s Museum in which she raised the issue of potential closure of the museum due to the lack of funding to buy the freehold and upgrade the building. The recession which started in 2008 didn’t ease its financial situation.
Eight years after and the Pollock’s Museum is still where it was before, at 1 Scala street, attracting his visitors and customers by the painted facade which won the museum a Brighter London award in 1973. “Eddy saved the museum”, mentioned the sale manager of the Pollock’s and added that “the story there was quite unpleasant”.
The museum itself has a unique spirit and is a place which attracted very unique people including “Yootha Rose, a theatrical designer turned toymaker; John Noble, an ardent doll lover who for many years was curator at the Museum of the City of New York; and Jacques Brunius, the French poet, filmmaker and critic who had a splendid collection of optical toys”.
Peter Baldwin, the British actor best known for his role of Derek Wilton in the UK soap opera Coronation Street, was one of the many people who visited the museum and simply couldn’t keep away. In 1988 he became manager of the second small shop opened by Marguerite Fawdry on the first floor of the newly renovated Covent Garden market and took over the business in 1988 with his brother Christopher. He now co-owns the shop with Louise Heard, a toy lover, who “strives to keep the Aladdin’s cave stocked with unique toys”.
I met with Simon Seddon, the manager of Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop. A little more than an hour I spent was obviously not enough. Simon is fully devoted to Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop and toys themselves. “It’s a pity that nowadays people don’t appreciate toys. We live in the world where you can buy everything you want, and it’s all very accessible. So children stop appreciating the uniqueness of the toys. They play with a new toy for 5 minutes and then throw it away and forget about it”.
Despite its rather small size the shop offers a lot. If you are an average pocket money spender, you can buy some traditional toys, but it also offers “more expensive frivolities” if you wish to spend your money. But their main selling feature remains to be toy theatres. Simon showed me the sample of Sleeping Beauty which came out of print and which they hope to revive and get back into printing.
Why there are not many museums like Pollock’s remain in the country?
Well, it’s expensive to run the business like that where there is no significant profit made. The stock itself is worth thousands of pounds, as collectors are very keen to put their hands on some of the unique items. So some people, who are not toy lovers and inherit the businesses, prefer to sell to make money. Potter's Museum of Curiosities is one of the few examples. The museum which staged the eccentric works of Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, in which stuffed animals mimic human life, closed in the 1970s, was relocated and briefly re-opened at the Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor, in 1984, where it attracted over 30,000 visitors a year. In 2003, the exhibits were put up for auction. The artist Damien Hirst offered to buy the complete collection for £1million, but auctioneers Bonhams sold each piece individually, raising only £500,000. The buyers included Pop Artist Peter Blake, photographer David Bailey, and comedian Harry Hill (more information here).
The other reason is that many of the museums only leased the buildings, and required significant financial investments to satisfy the new building regulations. The notice of the Pollock’s Museum website provides an apology for lack of accessibility due to the architectural aspect of the building.
“Toys are not bought by children”, once said John Noble in his interview with The New York Times in 1998, “They are bought by parents who had social standards”.
My parents kept very few toys which belonged to me and my brother, citing the lack of space in our apartment. Thinking about it now, I regret not having the little pink-gradually-becoming-grey puppy Chappah. I wish I could give it along with some other toys to my son now. And it also makes me think grateful to people like Eddy Fawdry who keeps the story of our childhood alive, even that it's being stored behind the glass.
Vasha Tasha...
