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| Museum of Bringuedo Sintra, Portugal |
Toys are fairly central to most childhoods, whether a simple
piece of wood, a rag doll or some sophisticated western what not. No matter
what your childhood economic circumstances, we treasure those moments of pure
imagination, when we could create our own world and people it accordingly.
Years ago I had visited a Money Box Museum in Amsterdam, all very Dutch, but
still I was surprised to find a Toy Museum in Sintra, Portugal, so people
establish museums for all sorts of things.
The Museum of Bringuedo in the centre of Sintra, possesses a
very fine collection of some 40,000 toys ranging from 1930’s Hornby train sets,
lead soldiers, dolls, and every other kind of toy imaginable. Collections of
any sort must reflect to a great extent the interests of the collector, and
when I cast back into my own memory and recall the World War II battles I
played out under the dining table, because an uncle of mine had lent me his
collection of 1930’s German lead soldiers.
The owner and founder of this museum turned out to be an elderly
gentleman, now unfortunately confined to a wheelchair due to a recent stroke.
This however, did not stop him from doing the rounds of “his museum”. Luckily
he was very talkative and only too anxious to talk about his passion. He had
been collecting all his life, and had
set up a repair and restoration workshop in the museum where children of all
ages could bring their treasures for renewal. Many toys are discarded, and he
felt it was his duty to give them new life. Everything in this world has memory
that has witnessed different time frames. I am sure if this establishment had
been around during Hans Christian Andersen stay in Sintra, he would have felt a
great affinity. The owner had built a special playroom with puppets and story
tellers, so each child could relive their own make-believe worlds.
Apart from this great collection of lead soldiers from every
corner of the globe, he had acquired a few ancient bronze toys from Syria some
3000 years old. There were also a few carved marble toys, also from the Middle
East. I believe simple moulded clay toy animals have been found in Anatolia
dated 6000BC. It is a great pity that as adults, we tend to forget the joys of
childhood when time is always the present. When anything is possible, and we endow
our toys with a life of their own, and the only restriction is imagination. I
often wonder whether in this contemporary world of were children are fed a diet of preprogramed toys,
and technological wonders whether children are the real losers in their
inability to entertain themselves, were everything is in the fast lane, and
there is no time to think and dream.
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