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Creative Playthings was an educational toy store and catalogue that was established by Frank and Theresa Caplan in 1945. The goal of Creative Playthings was to provide simple and beautifully designed toys to promote a child’s creativity and imagination. The original Creative Playthings store was located at 102 West 95th Street in New York City (which they eventually moved to Madison Avenue and 72nd Street). Initially, Frank Caplan made hardwood building blocks himself to sell in their store, often cutting and sanding the sets while parents waited in the shop. He then added animals, people, vehicles and other toys. Caplan believed that providing unpainted abstract forms that emphasized shape, color and texture, as opposed to lifelike details, would stimulate a child’s imagination. In collaboration with Martha New, Caplan also designed sets of large plain maple cubes that young children could rearrange into various forms and furniture. Known as "Hollow Blocks," these and other designs exemplified notions of “unstructured play,” in which creative usage could be shaped by the individual child instead of determined by the manufacturer. As Caplan wrote in the first Creative Playthings' catalogue in 1949: "Play has a basic role in the drama of a child's development. It is a serious business for the child, his true means of learning and growing...Every child should have a wide variety of play materials to evoke in him a spirit of inquiry; to develop physical manipulation to the fullest; to stimulate creative expression. He requires not only the miniatures of real objects in the adult world, but also building blocks, clay, finger paints, et cetera, that he can adapt to his particular needs."〔 ==Museum of Modern Art exhibition== Beginning in 1949, Creative Playthings embarked on a series of collaborations with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. In 1949, the children’s room and playroom of Marcel Breuer’s "House in the Museum Garden" (a model one-family home in the east end of the MoMA sculpture garden) was composed almost entirely of Creative Playthings objects and designs, including their "Hollow Blocks." The exhibit was a tremendous success and received considerable publicity, including praise from Eleanor Roosevelt, who commented, "I particularly like the children's playroom with nothing but those hollow blocks which could be made into furniture and still remain toys."〔 An article in The New Yorker also praised Creative Playthings' designs for their innovative and unconventional approach: "If the present kindergarten generation develops, when it has grown up, some rather horrid mass psychosis, I shall certainly be the first to blame it on the general vulgarity of the nursery decoration that our young exposed to. Parents who share my mistrust of cloying pink or blue color schemes, of the ubiquitous Donald Duck motif, and of the sort of furniture that looks like stunted examples of humdrum pieces should by all means investigate the nursery paraphernalia to be found at Creative Playthings." After the Breuer house, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Woman's Home Companion cosponsored another model house in the garden featuring Creative Playthings' designs, this time by Los Angeles architect Gregory Ain.〔 The modern "Hollow Blocks" and durable wood toy designs became much sought-after and in 1950 Creative Playthings was incorporated with Frank Caplan as president and Bernard Barenholtz as vice president. Incorporation allowed Caplan and Barenholtz to expand Creative Playthings in order to supply educational toys and equipment to schools. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Creative Playthings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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