Anything wooden in your child's toy box? If not, Rania Khallaf has much to say Against all the odds of the toy market, five years ago designer Elhamy Naguib and architect Magdy Yaqoub launched their unique line of wooden trinkets. Their differing visions notwithstanding, they have the same goal: to provide the local market with homegrown, educational toys as opposed to "the cheap imports of impersonal plastic" with which they currently play. Yaqoub puts it this way: "There is evidence that ancient Egyptian children played with wooden toys in a nearly contemporaneous way: dolls for the girls and horses for the boys. There are many examples in the Egyptian Museum, including a wooden mouse on wheels that can be dragged by the child." Nor, as Naguib explains, is this the only attempt at reviving wooden toys; the trend, indeed, has persisted almost continuously since ancient times, with wooden toys in Coptic and Islamic museums as well. "Wooden toys," he says, "should be one of our more important national industries." Besides being safer for children than plastic, more durable and more interesting, Naguib says that producing a new wooden toy fulfils his creative impulse as a designer, far more than would "serving a featureless mass production line". The idea behind an Egyptian wooden toy factory came to Naguib while on a visit to Russia in the late 1970s. "I was so jealous of their brilliant wooden toys," he recalls, "such as this wonderful woodpecker, I instantly had the urge to come back to Egypt and start my own business." He did. His small-scale workshop -- producing no more than 100 pieces per day -- the toys are more and more in demand on the part of Cairo's galleries and bookshops. At Naguib's Maadi gallery, Graffiti, the clown stands side by side with the climbing bear, but no sight is more arresting than the life-size peacock, his masterpiece, which shakes its tail and flaps its wing. Drawing on folk art, the piece combines depth with simplicity, evidencing excellent craftsmanship. "Looked at from an educational perspective, the vast majority of modern toys are passive agents," Naguib comments. "This is why I am so keen on producing interactive toys, allowing parents to play with their children, allowing the children to invent. Such a toy will create a positive atmosphere in the house, enabling constructive conversation between child and adult." But, he complains, though Egypt boasts some of the world's most gifted carpenters -- the mashrabiyas bear ample evidence of their intricate skill -- very few are willing to work on toys. "When I started the workshop, I realised that Egyptian carpenters cannot read a design; and this was the first challenge I had to face. I had to train carpenters to work in a new way, abiding by formal standards." The products of this particular course are currently on show at Al-Fustat Market. Are the toys intended exclusively for pre-school children, though? "On the contrary," Naguib hastens to add. "Projects include wooden puzzles and even a unique chess set; Yaqoub and I are currently working on these." Ideas even extend to culturally specific heritage, Yaqoub butts in to add: "We've developed puzzles that take the form of Coptic and Islamic architectural pieces, to make them entertaining and educational at one and the same time." One reason why wooden toys are rarely found with Egyptian children is their high price, which Yaqoub explains is a consequence of the lack of quality wood in Egypt; the use of imported wood makes for greater expense. According to Naguib, however, " a wooden toy will endure, passed from one generation to the next, so it is worth what it costs." The designer does not rest content with producing the toys and training carpenters; he also organises workshops for children, in which they invent their own toys and ways to use them. Made up largely of puzzles and building blocks, Yaqoub's own TIRO line has a slightly different concept. His masterpiece is the madina (city), a model that delivers what it promises with a traditional Egyptian skyline, available at Al-Fustat Market. At LE350, it is not cheap, but Yaqoub hopes that kindergartens and schools will invest in the toy, enabling hundreds of children to enjoy it. Another piece is the arch, which "allows children to unlock the secret of the arch while giving them an insight into static forces"; it is also expensive. However, Yaqoub has a parallel line of production delivering affordable toys: "My aim is to develop the child's sense of geometry at the earliest possible age, and I want to do this on as large a scale as I can." For five years now, Yaqoub has cooperated with the Montessori Foundation's Egypt Manager Marguerite Richards to design toys specifically for the Montessori system of education, guided by international standards. He has also contributed to a project sponsored by the activist Laila Eskandar to develop a sense of architecture among children working at construction sites in the industrial area of Tibbeen -- not to mention a brand-new take on one of the oldest Egyptian games, Siga, designed for adults with different levels of difficulty. Yaqoub's dream is to find a powerful foundation to sponsor his projects, enabling him to make his toys affordable to all.
