It is observed from the very beginning that occasionally toys have been placed in the museum. In 1812, Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary donated a French game set with chips to the Hungarian National Museum which was believed to have once belonged to Gábor Bethlen. Other collections also contain valuable toys. For example, archaeological finds include bone toys and a carved fragment of a nine men's Morris board, but the Goldsmith Collection and the Miscellaneous Collection also contain such objects.
The Toy Collection only began to grow slowly in the 1930s. It was in the 1950s that the Children's Toy Collection was established. Previously the collection had only occasionally received an object of cultural and historical value, it was then that a methodical, planned collection of toys began.
Contact: Éva Dúzsi, duzsi.eva@mnm.hu, phone: +36 1 327 7716 (secretariat)
Structure of the toy collection
The collection consists of around 2,500 items (~12,000 pieces), and its current composition is as follows:
Dolls, toys related to dolls. The collection contains around 240 different dolls and almost 5,000 doll clothes documenting the history of clothing and fashion in different periods. The dolls also need somewhere to "live", so dollhouses can also be found in the warehouse.
Teddy bears. Teddy bears as children's toys came into fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. The collection includes teddy bears with the trademark of the creator of plush teddy bears, the Steiff factory.
Jew toys. The collection preserves a good number of toys made especially for boys: painted multi-towered toy castles, wooden, metal, papier-mâché and cut-out paper soldiers who took part in the big battles. The objects prepared the minds of children preparing for a "manly" career.
Technical and optical toys. These structures were miniature replicas of a wide variety of technical devices. We find steam engines, typewriters and a number of optical toys.
Mechanical toys. Toys with musical or more elaborate mechanical mechanisms were once a special attraction at the courts of princes. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, toys of this type appeared in masses, such as the simpler in structure William Tell toy, which is preserved in the collection.
Toy toys. The most significant unit of the collection is the wooden toys of the Undi collection, mainly German and Czech fairground and domestic toys.
Building and construction toys. Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), a renowned educator, was the first to consciously engage children from pre-school age with construction toys. We have received as a gift a building set made according to the Fröbel system. In 1880, the Richter company patented his Anker-branded brick-building toy, of which the collection has several fine examples.
Paper toys. The card game probably appeared in Hungary during the reign of King Matthias. The earliest piece in the collection bears the date 1784. Paper actually became a quality raw material for toys in the 19th century, and with the development of printing techniques, it became a mass commodity, but still available to consumers in a variety of sophisticated forms. The collection preserves a wide variety of games - paper theatre, picture puzzles, mosaic puzzles, board games.
Board games. Games of ancient origin were also played by prominent Hungarian historical figures, including Lajos Kossuth, whose chess board is in the collection.
The two-storey, 11-room white dollhouse takes us back to the bourgeois world of the turn of the 20th century. The first owners were Mariann Krasznay and her sister, the daughters of a textile merchant from Novi Sad. The first pieces of furniture were bought by their mother in Paris in 1880, and were then installed in a two-room dollhouse. The house was crafted for the children by a local carpenter between 1912 and 1914. It had a balcony but no roof. The ground-floor section, the kitchen, pantry and living room were added later. The dining room set and some dolls were bought from the renowned Viennese toy dealer Mülhaus around 1915. On birthdays, they could visit Uncle Liebner's shop in Budapest and pick out a few items, and for years there was always something in the dollhouse as a Christmas present. In 1957 the Kasza family became the new owners, and they had the glass door installed to protect the objects from dust.
Construction games became widespread and popular with the advance of pedagogy. Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852), the famous German pedagogue, was the first to consciously engage children with building games from pre-school age onwards, emphasising the educational effect of play and the importance of constructive, creative activity in developing creativity and independence. In 1880, the Richter company patented its brick-building set named Anker.
The wooden box contains a coloured stonepowder building kit and illustrative coloured pattern sheets. On the inner side of the top there is a colorful list with a drawing of how to place the stone building elements in the box. Renowned 20th century architects have testified that it was the defining toy of their childhood.
The historical origins of the picture puzzle mosaic, today's puzzle game, go back to the wooden block, bone-tile picture puzzles. In its present form, as a flat puzzle made of pieces bounded by a curved line, it was invented in England around 1760 to practice cartographic skills. Initially, the design was printed on a sheet of paper and glued on a wooden board, then the elements were cut out with a fretsaw, later made from pressed paper. The pieces form a particular picture, map or popular painting. The museum owns two early German toys from the 1840s, made from a tinted lithographed print.
In the 19th century, wooden dolls started their career from the Tyrol, in the valley of Gröden, and were cherished by little girls in villages and royal courts alike. The shapes of the torso were formed by turning, and the hands and feet moved separately. This style was also adopted by Czech craftsmen. The lady doll in our collection is perhaps of Gröden origin, but with a more sophisticated design; her pretty face and hair style preserves the fashion of Napoleon's time.
From 1880, German-born seamstress Margarete Steiff started producing soft, textile and plush animals that captivated children's hearts. Her first figure was an elephant. The teddy bear came into fashion as a children's toy in the early 20th century. Most of the teddy bears manufactured by the Steiff-company which by then had expanded, were sold between 1903 and 1908. After the First World War, in 1921, the factory resumed the production of teddy bears, from then on their eyes were no longer made of shoe buttons but of glass, like the Messik children – János, Klára and Judit's white and brown teddy bears with movable limbs of
After the surrender at Világos (13 August 1949), Kossuth went into exile. Leaving Turkey in 1851, he stopped over in England on his way to America to use his popularity in 1848–1849 and his personal rhetoric to strengthen sympathy for the Hungarian cause among the islanders. It was probably at this time that he was presented with this elaborately crafted board. It is book-shaped wooden box covered with brown leather. The spine of the book has Hist. Of England Vol. 1-2. When opened, it is a brown and black fielded chess board accompanied by white and red turned ivory chess pieces. The interior is also leather-covered, pressed, coloured patterned backgammon board. The discs of the game are missing. Chess was a favourite pastime of Kossuth. As the author of his biography wrote, " he is so distinguished in this, too, that in London he can scarcely be equaled."
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The four aces of the French series whist card are decorated with views of Pest-Buda and famous buildings, including the Hungarian National Museum. The upper figure of diamonds holds a Hungarian coat of arms with the crown, the upper figure of clubs holds a national flag with the inscription "patriot". Signed by István Zsíros, master card maker in Pest, between 1850 and 1869.
