Box Set of Anchor Stone Blocks

In The New Yorker‘s book review last week, Alexandra Lange discussed Amy F. Ogata’s new book “Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America,” focusing on the diverse materials and malleability of toy design over the past several decades.

With increasingly commercialized handmade, all-natural toys on the market, Lange asks, “Do toys need to be as artisanal as our food?”

Nearly two years ago now, Meg wrote about Tegu, wooden magnetic building blocks that support conservation and Hondurans in poverty. Tegu blocks seem to be a perfect blend of the artisanal qualities that wood bring to a toy, while the magnets inside add the opportunity for creativity that simple wooden rectangles and squares might not (unless they have the Lego-like studs that Mokulock does).

What about stone toys?

You don’t hear much about those, it seems to me. Heavy to carry around, more dangerous as projectiles, and requiring more machinery to produce, playthings built from stone might seem even more cumbersome and antiquated than wooden toys to a child brought up on shiny plastics and polymers. But the stone Anker/Anchor blocks (a box cover of which is pictured at the top of this post, and one of my own creations from these blocks is here to the right) made from quartz sand, chalk, linseed oil, and color pigment, are still able to merit $200+ asking prices on eBay, although part of their appeal comes from their relative–or perceived–antiqueness. Continue reading →