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January brought the start of a new year and also the start of a new project. I began to inventory and process the Mayfair Games archival materials that were donated to The Strong museum in 2017. In an effort to learn more about the company, I started reading about the board games, card games, and role-playing games it produced. I quickly learned that Settlers of Catan, one of Mayfair Games’ most recognizable titles, not only ranks as an awesome game, […]

Continue Reading about Building a Settlement: German-style Games in North America Published on:
April 2, 2020

With many of us spending more time at home right now, it’s likely that our screen time—time spent in front of our televisions, laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.— has increased a bit.
For those of us who grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term “screen time” wasn’t a thing yet. In homes across the country, parents worked and entrusted many of us kids to look after ourselves for a couple hours after school, eventually earning […]

Continue Reading about Screen Time…Then and Now Published on:
March 31, 2020

Spending most of my time at home with my young children has revealed that I’m not especially innovative when it comes to crafts. Thankfully, there are people willing to experiment with materials to develop activity kits and craft ideas for kids. Their work has resulted in some notable successes, as well as a few questionable developments over the years.
In 1909, Alfred Carlton Gilbert founded the A. C. Gilbert Company. The company, guided by Gilbert, created toys related to […]

Continue Reading about Activity Sets: Playing with Glass, Foil, Plastic, and Goop Published on:
March 27, 2020

Museums, schools, gyms, and malls are closed. Basketball games, poetry readings, dance recitals, and playdates are canceled. As a global pandemic casts a shadow over our daily lives, so many of the places that we see as playgrounds—including The Strong itself—are temporarily closed. But, as I was reminded this past week, play persists. A box of sidewalk chalk showed me firsthand the important role of play, and the ways in which it connects us with each other, during […]

Continue Reading about Playing with Sidewalk Chalk Brings Us Together While We’re Apart Published on:
March 24, 2020

However much you care for them, there’s no denying that families can be aggravating. That said, in my experience growing up, aggravation wasn’t an emotional response to stresses in our household—it meant Aggravation, my family’s favorite board game.
But before Aggravation—both in my family and the world of games—there was Parcheesi or, in its original name, Pachisi. About the time that the global calendar transitioned from B.C. to A.D, Pachisi established itself as a classic board game in India. […]

Continue Reading about Family Aggravation Published on:
March 20, 2020

After many hours, worn-down X-Acto blades, and jars of starch paste, I finally completed my first 3D paper craft model: the “Flying Type” castle from the Studio Ghibli animated film Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). Designed by the Kamiuchu Corporation, the paper craft was originally available on Epson Japan’s website in the mid-2000s as a promotional item for their printers. This was not the only model capturing the imaginative world of director Hayao Miyazaki, as my Google search yielded […]

Continue Reading about Patience, Persistence, and Paper Craft Published on:
March 17, 2020

Working at The Strong museum sometimes involves surprises—of the good kind. That was the case when I received an inquiry about the potential donation of a set of hand-carved Alice in Wonderland figures. “Please tell me more,” I responded. What I discovered proved to be a fascinating story of a creative individual who pursued play in numerous dimensions of his life—something ideal for the collection of the National Museum of Play.
Michael Cubitt (1899–1989) worked as a […]

Continue Reading about Down the Rabbit Hole Published on:
March 13, 2020

Rubber has been used to play ball since the first Mesoamerican ball games of the Olmec people began around 3,000 years ago. The ball courts used for that game can be visited at Tulum, Ek Balam, and Coba in Mexico. The Olmec discovered that latex from a rubber tree could be mixed with juice from a species of morning glory to produce a useable rubber. The rubber was formed into hollow and solid balls for the ancient game, but very […]

Continue Reading about Preserving Rubber Toys Published on:
March 6, 2020

The Strong recently acquired the photographica collection of world-renowned photojournalist Martha Cooper. Kodakgirl, the nickname given to Cooper by New York City B-boys and B-girls, began collecting with a focus on women with cameras and Kodak advertising in the 1970s. Her collection also grew to include photography-related postcards, valentines, snapshots, doll cameras, figures, wind-ups, play cameras, and figurines. To delve into the significance of the collection, it’s helpful to become familiar with the impact of Cooper’s own work.

Following World War […]

Continue Reading about Collection of Street Photographer Martha Cooper Published on:
February 28, 2020