History

Horses have been associated with human endeavour for thousands of years. Civilisations were built and defended using horses. As long as there has been a relationship between humans and horses there have been toy horses.

The toy horse reached its pinnacle with the development of the rocking horses of Georgian and Victorian England. Small rocking and hobby horses began to appear in homes in the middle of the eighteenth century. With the increase in affluence of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, due to the industrial revolution, indulgent parents bought exquisitely carved wooden horses for their children to “learn to ride”.

Originally these horses, with life like heads and carved bodies were fixed to large bow rockers. Although the rockers gave a comparatively real horse action they did tend to walk and were a hazard to furniture, ornaments and lookers on, as they galloped about in complete disregard to the commands of their riders.

In 1880, Phillip Marqua of Cincinnati, USA, patented a “Safety Stand” for rocking horses that eliminated the potentially dangerous rockers. This patent was taken up in Britain, the home of fine rocking horses.

At about that time, the gold rush brought considerable wealth to Australia, and splendid English rocking horses began to appear in nurseries in Australia. Toy makers in Australia began to reproduce the English horses, with advertisements appearing in the catalogues of the larger variety and prestige department stores.

In the mid 20th century, the popularity of traditional rocking horses began to decline. Hand carved horses were expensive and competed with inexpensive mass produced mechanical toys, such as tricycles, bicycles and cars. Some horses were produced by machine replication to reduce costs, others were made of new age materials, plastic, fibreglass and pressed metal. These generally lacked the individual appeal of hand crafted rocking horses. Few, if any makers of the classic horse survived beyond the 1970’s.

At present, along with all things crafted by hand with pride, skill and passion, there has been a renewed interest in rocking horses. These toys require no batteries or motors, they are not computer dependant. They just require imagination, and may come to be treated with life possessing affection.