Just when you think the planet has been taken over by Nintendo and Wii, along come two more reminders that we are still in love with a simpler age.
Today a major art exhibition focuses on the illustrations used in the much-loved Ladybird books. A splendidly evocative new book celebrates the ultimate boys’ toy, Meccano.
Both hark back to an age when little boys wore shorts and played with hammers and spanners, while little girls wore frocks and played with dolls and baking powder.
Ladybird artist Martin Aitchison whose work is on display at Newby Hall, Yorkshire, captured it in his memorable images of Peter and Jane at play. The children were the creations of a former headmaster, William Murray.Original Ladybird prints sell for hundreds of pounds. Old Meccano sets are collectors’ items. So what is the attraction?
There is, as art writer Ian Herbert admits, “a yearning for the blissful and ordered world Murray created.”
It was the safe, stable world of blessed memory. A world of glorious summers, crisp white winters, outdoor games and, above all, settled happy families of Mum, Dad and the children (never kids).
Did it ever exist? Or are these healthy, carefree days of Ladybird and Meccano no more than wishful thinking?
If I am honest I had no more than a passing interest in either. In the case of Meccano, passing became particularly important.
But whatever the reality, no-one can doubt the appeal of such images.
Ladybird is a great British institution. The company, based in Loughborough, Leicestershire, began to publish “pure and healthy literature” for children after registering the Ladybird trademark in 1915.
The early books would raise some politically-correct eyebrows today. In the ABC Picture Book, ‘A’ stood for Armoured Train.
After the Second World War, Ladybird commissioned well known authors and artists to write and illustrate books on nature, science, geography, history and religion.
The presenter of radio’s Children’s Hour, Derek McCulloch, better known as Uncle Mac, wrote the first: In the Train with Uncle Mac and In the Country with Uncle Mac.
William Murray came on the Ladybird scene in the 1960s with the Key Words Reading Scheme. More than 100 million copies have been sold round the world.
Although Martin Aitchison was a celebrated Ladybird artist, the definitive image-maker for the company was the West Midland artist Harry Wingfield who died in 2001 aged 93.
Picture an idyllic English summer holiday, a dance lesson or a day out with Gran and the chances are you conjure up those wonderful Peter & Jane pictures by Wingfield who lived in Little Aston.
His books Going to School (1959), The Party (1960) and Happy Holiday (1964) capture a golden age of childhood when children were neat, beaming, well-scrubbed and well-behaved. At party time, they wore bow-ties or pretty frocks. In the park they were clad in smart little coats, white socks and gleaming shoes. Wingfield’s work, including the ageless Peter & Jane series, are more than pure nostalgia. They are recognised as part of British design culture of the 1950s and 1960s and have been praised by academics for the insight they offer into domestic life and attitudes of the period.
Inevitably, some have criticised the Ladybird classics as reflecting a white, middle-class view.
But Wingfield made no apologies. He once told me: “They were just ordinary children, based on children we knew, and the houses they lived in were really quite ordinary. Anyway, you can’t show dustbin kids all the time, can you?”
Meccano, that other great icon of a golden age, is celebrated in a new book, Factory of Dreams.
Meccano was registered as a trade name 100 years ago in September 1907 by Liverpool businessman Frank Hornby who also created Hornby trains and Dinky Toys.
Meccano is a made-up name, believed to be a contraction of the phrase “Make and know.” Kenneth D Brown’s excellent book traces the history of the firm from its foundation, through it pre-war heyday to its collapse in 1979.
Some boys were utterly fixated on Meccano, bolting together giant cranes and ocean liners with infinite patience.
My only memory of it, aged about four, is swallowing a Meccano nut and my mother being assured by the doctor that it would pass and reappear, in time. Oh, the humiliation.
I bet that never happened to Peter and Jane.
l Factory of Dreams: A History of Meccano Ltd 1901-1979 is published by Crucible Books at £20. The Martin Aitchison Art Exhibition is at Newby Hall near Ripon until September 2
2 Comments
Get a life
They have one and it’s better than today’s. Stupid commenter. I think other stupid people have trotted that expression out before. Very original mary jane.