The story of Wojtek Bajor's search for a good wooden toy was supposed to end with him carving a toy in his garden shed in Poland.
Instead it began there.
Wojtek, a sculptor and architect from the village of Kamionna, near Cracow in the foothills of the great Carpathian Mountains, made his first wooden toy in 1993 after a long search to find a good toy for his baby girl.
That fruitless hunt had turned up only the plastic mass-produced and sometimes dangerous ‘toys' that fill store shelves across the globe. Having the skills, and living in a village surrounded by old orchards where good timber could be easily found without harming a single natural forest, he decided to do it himself.
That was supposed to be the end of it; but word of the young Ms Bajor's new toy quickly spread through the small village and before long Wojtek had a list of customers all wanting one of his amazing toys.
The awards started rolling in the following year, with a gold medal at a toy fair in the Polish province of Posen. In 2000 Bajo won gold again, this time at the London Toy Fair; and it was lauded in 2002 and 2003 at an international toy fair in Nuremberg.
The same idea of quality that drove Wojtek to build a toy for his daughter still defines the company, although today it operates from a factory near the village instead of from the garden shed. The 14 timbers used in Bajo toys are all sustainable, with most still coming from the old orchards. Those timbers include mainly walnut, cherry, plum, pear, and apple.
All paints and varnishes used on the toys are safe for little hands and mouths. And the toys created from those trees are made to fire the imaginations of the children who use them.
Wojtek sums it up nicely in this statement:
|
"We strongly believe that nowadays, in the era of computer games and the Internet a wooden toy that doesn't speak, doesn't shine and lacks a remote control, plays a new, fundamental role. Playing with good wooden toys enables the real world to sink into children's consciousness. It may become the means to preserve the children's desire to explore the unknown in adult life. As far as we are concerned, playing with our toys is a game, in a sense, that every artistic activity is a game." |
