Monday, June 18, 2012

The Art of Play: The Structator, 1912-1913

The Structator
1912-1913
The Victoria & Albert Museum




This is ostensibly an erector set—designed to encourage a child to discover how to assemble logical structures and machines. “The Structator” was made in France for a German toy company between 1912 and 1913. Housed in a box of cardboard covered in printed paper, the set also contains a booklet of instructions which amounts to about eighty pages. Curiously, the instruction book is printed in Italian.

The other contents of the box are pieces of steel which have been slotted and drilled with holes. Other pieces and screws allow the child to build a variety of machines, models, and…well, whatever he or she could think of.




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