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Have you ever looked beyond the cute little tea sets of childhood toyboxes to consider what they represent?  

The toys of the past can be considered part of the material culture of childhood, and can tell us about ideas of class, culture and especially gender at a particular time. Today children have access to a wide array of toys, considered appropriate for learning principles and age-suitability, with technology also influencing play in our children’s lives.  

In the 19^th and early to mid-20^th century, toys were perhaps simpler and made of more long-lasting materials. There was certainly a smaller range of toys available, and gender stereotypes abounded in their distribution. In advertisements from that time, we see play tea sets and dolls are so often the toys earmarked for girls, while boys were offered trains, toy soldiers, and sporting equipment. 

Toys can tell us a lot about the people who lived in the past. Archaeologically, we can learn about the presence of children – for example finding marbles, toy tea sets and parts of dolls in archaeological contexts, such as these found at Victoria Park.  

And we can learn more about a family’s life by the quality and source of those toys. Artefacts give indications of standard or quality of manufacture and the place where things were produced, that may link to status and class of those who owned or used them. They can also give clues about the availability, supply and global networks for manufactured items, and even indicate whether things may have been handcrafted at home.  

These toys found at Victoria Park can tell us a something about relative economic situation of their owners. The minimal decoration, thickened walls and coarse clays, and non-refined features and shaping suggest they were of generally poor quality, and most likely produced for those with less money to spend on toys. Toys of this standard are often found in places like sawmill settlements, and mining towns, where residents were often working class, had lesser access to a broad supply market and were typically a more transient population.    

While we cannot say for sure whether girls or boys played with particular toys found archaeologically, the advertising of that time clearly promoted gendered ideals and suggest the typical users of them.  

In contrast, the beautiful miniature tea set produced by Royal Worcester (below) is hand painted by several ceramic artists. It is produced by a renowned manufacturer, made of porcelain, and richly decorated. This tea set was part of a collection, rather than found archaeologically. It does however show the other end of the spectrum as to what toys were available at the end of the 19^th century, to those that could afford good quality.  It is on the one hand a symbol of status, where the owners demonstrate their affluence with high quality, hand-decorated porcelain used for play. And, on the other hand, provides another example of the preferencing of domestic toys that reinforce the social practices of the time, including what was seen as appropriate play for girls.

Discover miniature tea sets in Fragile and Forever: Ceramics from the Queensland Museum Collection, a free exhibition now on at Queensland Museum: museum.qld.gov.au/kurilpa/whats-on/fragile-and-forever