All toy families

The great craft traditions of the world's folk toys.

Traditional toy-making across the world groups into about twenty distinct craft families. Every one of these is still practised in living workshops today.

Wooden & lacquered toys

Wooden and lacquered toys are the oldest folk-toy tradition still practised worldwide. Soft hardwoods, chosen for their easy turning and gentle grain, are worked on a hand-lathe or by knife into rounded shapes — animals,...

Carved figurine toys

Carved figurine toys are wooden figures shaped by hand with knife and chisel rather than turned on a lathe. Unlike smooth turned pieces, carved figures carry the maker's marks — visible tool cuts, deliberate faceting, sm...

Clay figurines

Clay figurines are shaped, dried or fired figures made from local river or hillside clay — one of the oldest continuous toy traditions in the world. The process begins with kneading and preparing the clay to remove air a...

Clay whistles

Clay whistles are small hollow fired-clay figures — usually birds, animals or human forms — that produce a whistling note when blown. Each whistle is shaped by hand, hollowed inside, and provided with a carefully cut air...

Nesting dolls

Nesting dolls are sets of hollow wooden figures of graduating size, each one fitting inside the next larger. A set may hold as few as three or as many as fifteen dolls, all painted to a matching theme. The craft requires...

Shadow puppets

Shadow puppets are flat translucent figures — usually cut from tanned buffalo hide, thin leather, or thick paper — mounted on bamboo or horn rods and moved between a lamp and a stretched cloth screen. The audience sees t...

String marionettes

String marionettes are carved wooden figures controlled from above by strings attached to a hand-held wooden control bar. A typical marionette has anywhere from five to twenty strings, each controlling a specific movemen...

Kites

Kites are lightweight framed structures — traditionally bamboo or reed spars covered with paper, silk or thin cloth — designed to be flown at the end of a line by wind pressure. The basic idea has been shared worldwide f...

Spinning tops

Spinning tops are hand-turned wooden objects with a rounded top and a sharp point, designed to spin upright on their tip. A cord is wound tightly around the top's body, then thrown with a sharp release that unwinds the c...

Cloth & rag dolls

Cloth or rag dolls are dolls made from fabric — traditionally hand-stitched from cotton, silk, or wool, and stuffed with cotton wool, rags, kapok, or straw. Faces are embroidered or painted, and dolls are usually dressed...

Papier-mâché toys

Papier-mâché toys are shaped from layers of torn paper glued together with paste or resin, moulded around a form and dried into a hard, light, paintable shell. The technique is centuries old and still practised worldwide...

Bamboo toys

Bamboo toys are made from split, cut and shaped bamboo — a material that is straight-grained, light, strong, and abundant in tropical regions. Traditional bamboo toys include whistles, flutes, small water-wheels, jointed...

Mechanical folk toys

Mechanical folk toys are traditional toys with moving parts — usually driven by strings, cams, gravity, wind, or the heat of a small candle. They are the folk ancestors of modern automata. Classic examples include figure...

Traditional masks

Traditional masks are shaped face-coverings — carved from wood, moulded from papier-mâché, or built up from clay, cloth, or leather. They are used in dance, drama, ritual, and festival. Many folk-mask traditions are also...

Wire & recycled-material toys

Wire toys are model vehicles, animals, or figures made from bent wire — often combined with bottle caps, wheels salvaged from broken toys, and small pieces of tin or plastic. Children build elaborate model cars, motorbik...

Traditional stuffed toys

Traditional stuffed toys are soft toys made by cutting fabric into shaped pieces, sewing them together, and stuffing them with cotton wool, straw, kapok, or wool. The oldest continuous soft-toy traditions predate the mod...

Ritual & festival toys

Ritual and festival toys are objects made specifically for cultural or religious festivals, but received by children — and adults — as toys. The line between toy, gift, and ritual object here is deliberately blurred. Com...

Traditional board games

Traditional board games are played on wooden, cloth, or drawn boards, with pieces made of wood, stone, bone, seed, shell, or terracotta. Many are thousands of years old and are still played daily. The category includes s...

Traditional ball & shuttlecock games

Traditional ball and shuttlecock games are played worldwide with woven rattan balls, hand-shaped leather balls, feathered shuttlecocks, wooden bats, and simple counted lines drawn on the ground. Most are informal — needi...