'Art of Toys'

For Hazel Booher, 88, of Greensburg, her antique doll collection brings back fond recollections of her mother and the last doll she gave her, a Patsy doll by Effanbee that she received as a teen.

"When a little girl was 12 years old, she would get her last doll," Booher says. "In 1930, when I was 12, it was deep in the Depression and I didn't get my doll. I didn't get it the next year either. When I turned 14, I said to Mother, 'You know, I never got my last doll.' She gave it to me when I was a freshman in high school."

The special doll is a part of Booher's collection that she has shared with Westmoreland Museum of American Art over the years for its annual toy exhibition. She says the museum staff especially fancied her Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.

"They asked me to borrow them so often that I finally said, 'Why don't you keep them?'" she says.

The museum adds a new twist this year to its 31st holiday display of toys from its permanent collection along with donated and borrowed playthings from area collectors.

Museum curator Barbara L. Jones says the holiday toy and train exhibition, "The Art of Toys," will feature groupings of antique and modern toys with paintings, sculpture and folk art arranged together in vignettes reflecting different themes. The idea of the display is to make a connection between the toys and fine art that reinforce the museum's dedication to American art in various forms, she says.

"They do make a nice relationship with the paintings," Jones says of the toys. "It's a nice way to bring the two collections together."

The vignettes include a painting, print or poster hung on the wall, surrounded by dolls and other toys that relate to the artwork. Themes include the circus, children at play, merry-go-rounds and more. Jones says the exhibition will feature some paintings that haven't been shown to the public for a number of years.

Among the recent gifts to the museum that will be a part of the show is a china-head doll from the 1860s that Jones says she believes is based on a popular "Mary Todd Lincoln in Mourning" doll. There's also a rocking horse with an authentic horsehair mane.

Gary Luther, of Greensburg, regularly lends the museum pieces from his extensive collection of self-propelled pedal cars. He owns more than 100 tricycles, in addition to scooters, wagons, sleds and other ride-ons, most from the 1930s. Although the majority of his collection is made from metal, he also has some popular plastic pedal cars from the 1960s, including a Star Wars ride-on he says he purchased "because of its place in history."

The older metal toy vehicles he owns are more substantial in terms of their construction, he says, but "most of my '30s toys wouldn't have passed safety tests today. They were well engineered in a crude sort of way, but safety was not an issue back then."

He says he still has a "wish list" of toys he would like to obtain for his collection, including a Zephyr cruiser he has seen in photos but has not been able to locate.

"The Art of Toys," sponsored by Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield and supported in part by a grant from the Westmoreland Women's Committee, also will feature the museum's popular LGB train layout that measures 28 feet in diameter and depicts a landscape setting of Western Pennsylvania.

Jones says she hopes the exhibition will generate discussion from visitors who recognize playthings from their pasts.

"It's the connection people make to these toys that they played with or wanted as children," she says. "It's nostalgia, a trip down memory lane."

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