1999

22.1

Jon Donlon

Tradition and Change in the Wire Toys of Southern Africa

I was fortunate to follow two decades of curiosity, reading, and study about Africa with a year-long stay there from 1997 to 1998. Generally, I wanted to examine some of my ideas related to cultural diffusion and the process of hybridization. In particular I was able to do a great deal of field work in Botswana and Zimbabwe investigating cottage industry responses to tourism and similar topics. (My field work partner, Jocelyn Hazlewood Donlon, is currently finishing work on her book project, Swinging in Place: Porch Spaces in Southern Culture.)

While doing a series of interviews with professional hunters in and around Bulawayo (the so-called second capital of Zimbabwe) we were able to meet and spend some time with contemporary wire toy makers. These toys, or pull-push toys, have a well-established history in the region extending in a broad swath down into South Africa and to the Cape. Based on our preliminary inquiry, the artisans seem willing, and are certainly very able, to press new materials into the fabrication of these traditional types. Because the materials vary so widely, in fact, and because the pressure to change is so variable, its not difficult to find a range of toy forms in use—or for sale—at the same time.

A survey of the African art books in the Louisiana State University Library in Baton Rouge failed to uncover much interest in the wire crafts of the region embracing northern South Africa, especially not Botswana and Zimbabwe. Although these objects are commonplace, one even being incorporated into the opening scene of David Attenborough’s powerful film Cry Freedom (1987)—a child pushes a wire car through the welter of shanties and shebeens—only a handful of references are available. Interestingly, such mentions which seem to exist generally refer to regional artists who have appropriated the folk motifs and methods to make fine art (objects claiming elite status and action of an individual creative process. For example, Sierra Leone born Abu-Bakarr Mansaray is discussed and his wonderful Isomerism (1992) and The Caterstrophy (1992) are illustrated in Andre Magnin and Jacques Soulillou ‘s Contemporary Art of Africa (1996). Actual examples of wire toys from Katlehong township are explicitly described in the Oxford, Museum of Modern Art exhibit catalog Art from South Africa (1990): 83. However, such printed documentation is rare.

While the examination through field work documented in this article was limited to a relatively small region, there is no realistic reason to think that the typical craft items mentioned are restricted to the sites individually visited. Images of the toys were commonplace

in "primitive" paintings, on note cards, and seriographed on t-shirts.

For convenience here, it can be said that two general areas of fabrication seem to exist: the domain of those items which are made for indigenous in situ use and the domain of items which are essentially market-driven, largely by tourism. Both of these categories can reflect traditional and contemporary production. While traveling in the region, we encountered both what might be called "traditional" objects—baskets, containers, "coasters," decorative vessels made with either flat or round metal wire, and sometimes with both. One sort of woven wire vessel was a copy of a reed basket, yet fabricated with metal. Importantly, by virtue of being vessels, these objects exhibited intrinsic utility.

A second, and growing cell of cottage industry (presumably stimulated largely by tourism growth) is the hand manufacture of objects explicitly designed to be wire wrought and to appeal at least in part to European design notions. Simple comparison-contrast allows one to see the difference between decorative, tourist-driven objects and useful toys. These main categories converge (as when the wire object is just as likely to be played with by a local child as collected as a gee-gaw or bibelot by a visitor) and they diverge (as in the case, we assume, of cute wire objects unlikely to be "playful," such as fish shaped soap dishes). Children’s toy push cars, made of wire but free of any commercial concern, are easily observed being played with apparently everywhere.

The replicated toy "push" cars are so common that we even saw them rendered on note cards as a sort of shorthand marker for the local color of the region—exactly as one would find shrimp boats on gift cards in South Louisiana, the skyline on cards from Manhattan, or t-back- garbed beach bunnies on cards from Miami. But as for the cars themselves, we saw them for sale only once in an outdoor tourist market in Botswana—so its hard to imagine them being "market driven." These indigenous toys can be quite simple, much like a gesture drawing, or rather more complex. A simple example might be little more than a few roughly bent wires and very basic wheels.

The wire toy autos that we noted being played with on the dusty walkways usually

featured long, usually scrap metal, rod push-handles, connected via rubber band fragments to bell-crank functioning steering. Importantly, the children can walk upright, holding a big loop of the stuff, which accurately represents—and functions exactly like—a real steering wheel. This same feature renders them virtually un-salable as export items. The complexity of wire construction on some examples is obvious: head rest, steering wheel, and even a windshield wiper and radio antenna. There might also be a spare in the "trunk" (there, "bonnet").

Toy wire car wheels are usually made by snipping off the top and bottom inch or so of aluminum beverage containers. Truncated ends of the former drink can are then pushed together. Sometimes the wheels are covered with rubber; textured scrap strips are wrapped around the thick disk and sewn (or laced) onto it with thin copper wire, apparently recycled from multi-strand small appliance electrical cord. Finally, the completed wheels are plunged over the ends of bent-wire steerable linkages. No examples of either threading or soldering being used were uncovered in our fieldwork survey.

Older-style toys co-exist with presumably more contemporary versions. In general the oldest looking toys incorporated a great deal of wood and tended to use wire as hinges, axles, or fittings only. Many of these older-style toys were identified as special: they were often displayed in cultural centers, or given pride of place in people’s homes. The contemporary versions rely almost entirely on a wire structure, though some of them incorporate bits of cork, rubber, wood, and loose or stuffed cloth.

One push toy of two washerwomen (or perhaps grain pounders) shows a kind of "intermediary" between the old and contemporary methods of fabrication. It uses a good deal less wood than the older versions of push toys and has nothing in the form of nails or screws. Instead, very cleverly, the wire armature is forced through the wooden sections and turned back almost like thick staple pins. Thus the action "take off" (a crank rod from an acentric point of the wheel) also binds the pieces together. The two women take turns bending to their work; their brightly painted wood silhouettes include the seemingly invariable lump of an infant tied to their backs.

Forms entirely created in formed wire represent a style largely, if not solely, market driven by tourism pressure (or commercial opportunity, if one prefers) in Southern Africa. These replicated or "cute" items are easy for a skilled, practiced craftsman to manufacture, and they are easy to ship. One example we collected is a figure on two wheels whose turning articulates the figure’s arms to beat on a "drum." The toy indicated a witty use of empty shoe polish tins generated by craft colleagues of the clown drummer maker—the wooden animal carvers. Carvers, who market their wares through essentially the same market outlets, use shoe polish as a finishing material. This practice creates an ongoing supply of flat metal cans. Such an opportunity tends, in turn, to "push" the possibility of an articulating motion which employs the tins—as in the case of the clown drummer. In a similar way, the tiny containers of enamel used to sell small volumes of paint, once empty, become the kettles for the reciprocating washer women/ grain pounder figures.

These cottage industry goods are sold through craft shops and open-air tourist bazaars. We were able to interview a craftsman fabricating a Volkswagen bug (or perhaps a deux cheveaux), while holding a clown drummer looped over his arm. The long wire push handle clips into one of the wheels to make a tote. This looping is designed, apparently, to make the toys easy for tourists to carry; it was commonplace in a range of toy forms. That feature alone makes them much different from the unwieldy steering wheel of the indigenous, local-use toy push car, which is designed for the enjoyment of the child walking behind it and would be a powerful impediment to efficient retailing. In fact, men who are fabricating contemporary style wire toys for the tourism market are fairly free to wander about with coils of their raw material conveniently hung about their necks and a couple of needle-nose pliers slipped into slacks pockets.

The general idea of the push toy is a dominant one in Southern Africa. It co-exists with "cute" objects, such as the wire Volkswagens (?) that we saw, and a progression seems to be evident from a materials standpoint. We noted that toys mostly of wood were frequently, perhaps intuitively, viewed both by regional residents and by visitors as "precious"; push or replicated toys, on the other hand, were presented as expedient generators of currency. What might be called the middle group of toys indicates the use of wire as a stitching or fastening medium—panels of wood support figures largely composed of wood, carried on wooden wheels. The mature style involves very clever used of thick, malleable (often aluminum) metal to form base, body, and wheels. Other materials are used, but typically only as decorative elements.

While taking field notes in several locations in Eastern-Central Southern Africa, we observed apparently objects which seemed to represent merely a material change. And we were able to observe locally-created craft objects which seemed to hint toward a history of modification and mutation. The sense, or conception, of what a toy should do was maintained, but the material used in turning the idea into a tangible object may have changed as new materials were introduced.

Jon Donlon
Center for the Study of Controversial Leisure
5261 Highland Road, #154
Baton Rouge, LA 70808

Magnin, Andre, and Jacques Soulillou. Contemporary Art of Africa. New York: Harry Abrams, 1996.

Meyer, Salome, and Peter Comley. Botswana. Lincolnwood, IL: Passport Books, (1995).

Oxford Museum of Modern Art. Art from South Africa London: Thames & Hudson, 1990.