The decisions we’re not aware of are often the most interesting!

John, I completely agree. It’s so easy to make these reductive associations, and one also has to check one’s desire to to make every object some sort of complicated cultural text to be read. You run the risk of being plain wrong at best and inflammatory or ridiculous at worst. But I do think that objects do contain a whole raft of cultural baggage, even when they seem random. It must be impossible to make an object that’s purely “meaningless” or that is completely free of intention or associations, whether conscious or unconscious, or that is purely random. So many hundreds of decisions are made in the making of something, and most of these are culturally conditioned in some way or other that we’re not even aware of. However, I agree that with some objects, what seems to be a cultural meaning often turns out to have more to do with choices that had more to do with function, materials, structure, cost, availability etc. so that reading into it becomes a bit ridiculous. And no culture is so homogenous that every artisan will represent the biases (and, say, bigotry) of the majority. Many objects and their makers ran against the cultural grain or had an entirely different and more complicated intellectual and cultural provenance than we might assume. Anyway, like the best art pieces, objects that contain a lot of internal ambiguities really lend themselves to rampant speculation. Maybe that’s why we don’t chuck them out. I had this in my living room for many years and I don’t think I ever had a guest who didn’t comment on it or ask questions, so it earned its keep as a conversation piece.I am hoping someone will find this photo online and actually know when and where it came from, so that all my childhood questions can be put to rest, but I’m sure that’s overoptimistic. Thanks everybody for these very interesting thoughts.

If this toy had been produced in pre WWII Britain then we might be making suggestions about the British colonial attitude to their Empire, the same with France. If it was American, then there would be other issues, what does the black baby really mean? etc.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that we can sometimes read more into a ‘made in…’ label because we have preconceived ideas and attitudes towards the history or culture of that country, despite trying our best not to, and of course sometimes a wooden toy is just a wooden toy.

I’m sure it is an innocent enough educational toy, though because it is German and pre WWII/Nazi, it does make it unsettling, but perhaps we are adding 2+2 and getting 5!