Ann Macbeth

“ THE PLAYWORK BOOK Far enough below the surface, in every one of us there lives, very often almost forgotten, the child, who, like Peter Pan, "never grows up." It is this everlasting child in us that keeps the keys which open for each his Kingdom of Heaven, and sad it is for those of us who have lost sight of the keeper of the keys. The sweetest and loveliest things in our lives are the simplest things. They do not abide in the excitable enjoyment of luxuries and entertainments to be bought with money ”

“ Our trades and our crafts have all their beginnings in the immature constructions we make as children. We build houses, we furnish them, we make instruments of music (and un-music) , we make ships, we fashion vessels of clay, and wood, and metal; we weave and we paint; we dimly foresaw the days when men should fly like birds, and we made kites. ”

“ If we can see any way in which any work can be improved or altered, or beautified by some change in its treatment, we must be bold to try it, for only by courage and bravery of thought does the work of the world keep itself fresh and ever renewed and changing towards better things. ”

“ The marvelous crafts passed on to us from ancient days in every land were never the result of training in schools, they partook more of the qualities of what I would call "constructive play," passed on from parent to child, each new thing a little different from any other, changing and varying in every age, yet all through a pleasure and a joy to their makers. ”

“ A good table can be made as in Figure 114, which is made by using a lid of a small box, and to the inside of its corners glueing the legs, [142] and then the larger top of thick cardboard can be fixed on with mucilage. The little shields for the corks of bottles, made of pleated lead foil, make very pretty pots and kitchen vessels in such little houses. Rugs can be woven of wool and string, and cushions, etc., to furnish the place. But there is no end to the things a child can make for a doll's house if imagination is encouraged to work the hands. ”

“ The artist craftsman is too often too conscious of his art, and does not subordinate himself sufficiently to modern ways and conditions. It is not the fault of the machine that much of our manufactured output is inartistic, it is the fault of the artist that he has not managed to control the machine. ”

“ Use a nice smooth cork for the body, and cut out a little saddle in colored paper, and glue it into place, bind it round with a piece of tape or ribbon for the girth, and you can make little stirrups out of wire or silver paper and hang them on from this. The head is a small cork out of a medicine bottle, with brown paper ears, cut just like the rabbit's but much smaller and with only one fold. The mane is of loops of black wool sewed on to tape, and bound firmly down to the match that makes the neck. The tail is also of black wool, and the stand or base can be either a cork or box lid ”

“ A reel sawed in two makes a good plant pot for these.
The sheep illustrated here is made of a cork, with legs of matches. Its head is a tiny bean fixed to the cork with a pin, both neck and body are wrapped in cotton wool, and it is neatly fastened on with white mending yarn. The lamb is made of a large bean and a small one, with legs of pins; the beans must be soaked before setting in the pins. Noah's ark animals can be used to increase the live stock of the farm. Fields can be made of green crinkled paper, and a piece of glass or a tiny mirror can be used to make a pond. ”

“ Yet does not this very power of creative thought amongst even the humblest of us constitute religion of the most living vitality? This Holy Spirit moving, and living, and creating anew in every trade and craft, and in every place where men are busy, should be better realized by us, and more respected ”

“ Boat-making is a most interesting thing for both boys and girls, and can be carried to great perfection by them, if they have perseverance. I see no reason why the making of model boats and mechanical toys should not be the special work of boys' manual classes, nor is there any reason why a great quantity of the craft-work and needlework in day and evening schools should not be commercialized, and disposed of by the educational authorities, both to the advantage of the teachers and the pupils. ”

“ Never use gum or mucilage for a kite, good strong paste is best, if it is to be made of paper. Now at the three points where your "balances" are to be attached to the kite, paste on a little square patch of cloth so that the string or "balance" as it is called does not tear the fabric or paper, and fasten the ends of your two strings through the two upper patches and knot it firmly round your wooden framework. The loose ends of your balances must now be run through the third patch and fastened to the vertical spar of the frame. ”

“ The inventive minds among us are indeed our prophets, answering to the call of those whose labor is too long and heavy, and producing what will lessen the burden. Answering again the call for more light, more beauty, more music in the world, and producing our arts and our playgrounds, our games, our schools and colleges. ”

“ How charming it would be if municipalities would have in every museum a section of "modern craft work," independent of the collections of antiquities we store up. For we also have beautiful things being created amongst us, no less beautiful because they result from the demands of modern needs and usages. ”

“ This moving of the Holy Spirit over the chaos of the world, in our businesses, in our workshops, in our shipyards, in our buildings, in all craftsman's work in our factories, is probably never realized by the churchmen among us, and only vaguely apprehended by the educational authorities. ”

“ The houses we see in pictures of foreign lands give great interest, and many are so easy to make that it is quite possible to illustrate the history of home building by means of a series of toy houses. The darker side of life has even invaded our nurseries, and they too have shown the games of the trench and the guns: and it will be good to plan in our playwork now for the rebuilding of the world in the ways of peace, for it is these children of ours who must lead the world back or forward, for better or for [143] worse. ”

“ Take a narrow piece of stiff cardboard, or a flat stick about five inches long and about one inch wide, and make a slit at each end: between these two slits stretch a piece of thin string and then, about the middle of the strip of cardboard, wind the wool over and over till it is like a ball. Do not allow the wool to spread too far along the cardboard. When the ball of wool is two, or two and a half inches in diameter, loosen the string from the slits, and slip out the cardboard carefully from the ball; you will not have a bundle of wool with a string running through all the loops. ”

“ When the first row of lashings is done lay on the second pair of crossbars, and if there is any difficulty about lashing the string a large darning-needle may help you, but if the lashing is done in the right direction this is not needful. If a mast is wanted, a reel, or a cork with a hole in it, may be lashed down to the raft as in the diagram, and the mast can be set firmly into this. ”

“ This is especially the case in cities, and the suggested constructions for the playwork subjects in this book are almost all made out of the waste materials the children may readily find at hand, and they are put together as far as possible, without any particular need for skill, and with the fewest and simplest of tools. In the country there is always an immense wealth of superfluous material to play with, and the country child has a far greater treasury from which to supply the need of hand and mind than his neighbor of the city. ”

“ A threefold cord is much fuller and firmer than a twofold one. Cords can be made of wool or silk or any kind of thread, and must be made of few or many strands according to the thickness required, and according to the thickness of the strands used. Thin woollen cords are very nice to run into woolen garments as drawstrings, or into bags; thick ones made of knitting yarn are splendid for dressing-gowns, and the ends can be finished off with tassels. ”

“ This power to create, this moving of the spirit to make something out of chaos, is in all healthy human beings, and it is the happiest faculty we have. It is, in fact, one of the most vital sides of religion in us, and perhaps the most important to us. It brings us into direct kinship with the Great Creator of all things. ”

“ There is a great education before art teachers, and they must realize that they must come into touch with science and mathematics and general constructive work. They must watch the changing needs and fashions of the day, and realize that not only in classic times was the art of the people a beautiful and desirable thing. ”

“ For example, if a child has one lesson at decorating a piece of pottery with a brush dipped in glaze paint and decorates it with nothing but a line of dots or strokes, he can have this fired and fixed and use it, and he also at once looks at every china shop with a sharply discriminating eye. In a very short time he will be able to choose between good decoration and bad, he will [18] understand economy in production, he will very soon demand from the trade a higher class of design, and he will be willing to pay for better design because he understands the working of it. ”