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In the catalogs of toys of french " Grands Magasins " , between the two world wars, it is often stated of " Toys made with the Disabled ex-service men ". On this subject, we propose you a very wide extract of Mr Edmond POTTIER's article, in the rare buletin published in 1916 by " L'Art français Moderne " (The Modern French Art ). |
« Is it well the hour of occcuper of toys? When millions people cut one another's throats, when bereavements press on so many hearts, when the mothers cry, what irony to think of the means to amuse the children !
« Let us answer at first this objection of feeling by a reason of feeling. The child, with the smile and the big confident eyes, does not he have to stay except the sadnesses which besiege us ? Moreover, is not it the one who consoles all the sorrows ? The cheerfulness guarantees our force.
« Let us give also reasons of professionalism and current events: toys are a business which lives, in these difficult hours, many women and wounded persons, which feeds number of underprivileged artists whose hideous distress hides from the eyes of the world. The toy, finally, is an element of our industrial activity....
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« That's why the " Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs " ( Central Union of Decorative Arts ) took, in full war, the initiative to organize an exhibition of toys in " Pavillon de Marsan "
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« A whole hospital of wounded persons, maimed persons, who, having made for the homeland the hard sacrifice of their sufferings and their mutilations, saw each other rejected in the life, without profession, without resssources. Brave and charitable souls were moved; they created this workshop which the " Union Centrale " took under its protection, they provided in the rehabilitation of all these unfortunates, they made artists of them, skillful decorators, under the behaviour of the excellent bosses whom we named. How not to be touched by this beautiful and generous initiative ? How not to admire the unhoped-for results which are owed to her ?..... Let us buy these toys made with the hands of French wounded persons, by thinking that they are hands wichwielded the rifle or fired the cannon of the Marne, Yser, Champagne, the Somme and Verdun. |
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This impulse for the benefit of the big disabled persons of time was strong enough and porter of hope so that we find, in the course of the various " Catalogues d'Etrennes des Grands Magasins " ( catalogs of New Year's gifts of Department stores ), numerous toys of this same workshop , and it, to after 1935.
It seems although these disappeared gradually when disappeared the wounded persons themselves, the last ones of them having been flooded in the second big conflict which ravaged again Europe from 1939. |
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The " Jouet de France " presents the type of the modern factory and model. It is established in the gates of Paris, at the end of Puteaux's bridge, in the picturesque landscape of this suburb which blends trees, prairies, huts with the suburban streetcars and with the long smoky chimneys of the industrial factories. It is a big and pretty building in reinforced concrete, in walls ingeniously decorated, similar to a nef of cathedral without limping, with buttresses and artistic gargoyles....
All the staff is consisted of mutilated by the great war. The workers are distorted, amputated with an arm, with a leg, with a hand. Circulating in workshops pressed on two crutches, Mister Matthieussent, wounded person to Saint Mihiel in September, 1914, steers these people who are organized in cooperative. In a pretty dining hall, it is able to have for 2 fr, 25 a consisted meal of: hors d'oeuvre, meat, vegetables, dessert, a quarter of wine, coffee, bread with discretion. They will have soon baths and library. It is a model of installation. They are paid 1fr75 by hour. Here is the system which is to teach the mutilated a profession, to organize them industrially and not to let them count on the charity of a pension which will be necessarily insufficient.
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Everything is made on the spot. Trees arrive in raw trunks, and first work is to saw up in boards the wood in trunks. A special machine seizes the oblong stalks which cut the saw and restores them in shape of round sticks of all the calibres which one wishes.... The wood being ready, polished, details are assembled. The ended toy is decorated and painted then either in the hand, or with the electric graficspray. What takes out of these multiple workshops where one sees nickel hooks replacing hands and arms; where the turner was before the war a waiter, and this decorator, a coachman of hackney cab? |
Because they are all artisans of fresh date. No one had made this profession. Each learnt the using of machines and devices invented for mutilated. And they are fast real experts... Work is finished, well-kept, deserving of models which are proposed. They are of the prodigious variety, the unforeseen novelty, the indisputable artistic feature, so much for the grace of forms and lines, spiritual stylisation which interprets nature, which for the charming harmony of colours, the elegance of decorations. Cupboards of dolls have even ordered and executed as furniture for apartments and were to please so that a studio of furniture for grown-ups is going to be added to the workshop of toys! " LEO CLARETIE |
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Léo CLARETIE is not the only one to be made echo of the work of disabled ex-serviceman. In a charming work " Very veracious history of Nenette and Tintin visiting the Village of the Toy " (in the Exposure of 1925) Henri of GERMANY, under the pseudonym of " Henry Rene of ENGAMELLA " , maintains us one of the stands (in the form of " maisonnettes " ) which presents the toys of Mutilés. Poupendol is happy of being able to give you broad extracted:
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Hélène BUGAT-PUJOL Thanks, ![]() confectionnés "à l'arrière" en 14/18
Any reproduction rights (text and photos) even partial, rigorously reserved ![]() |