Abbatt Toys

Paul and Marjorie Abbatt (nee Norah Marjorie Cobb 1899 -1991) married in December 1930 and spent their honeymoon touring Europe, examining various theories around the study of infant play; they were particularly interested in the ideas of Montessori, Froebel and Susan Isaacs. In September 1932, Paul and Marjorie Abbatt registered ‘Abbatt Toys’ as a business, producing toys that emphasised open-ended play, simplicity of form, the use of natural materials and gender neutrality, launching their toy shop in Wimpole Street designed by the architect Erno Goldfinger a few years later in 1936. It is during this short period, from 1932 up until the outbreak of WW2 (1939) that Abbatt Toys manufactured toys within their own London based factory. The tray puzzles from this era are easily distinguished in the following chapter by the oak frame surrounding each of the puzzles. In the post-war period until the time that Abbatt Toys was sold to ESA in 1973, they manufactured toys in their High Wycombe premises but also latterly relied on other companies such as W.R. Kelly, latterly Willis Toys to manufacture puzzle designs on their behalf.

As a collector of Abbatt Puzzles over a period of almost 2 decades, its worth noting that some of the puzzles themselves are intrinsically hard to find for a variety of reasons; firstly, there is very little information about the output of the Abbatt Toys company and so, even just knowing the extent of the puzzles is hard to ascertain, but perhaps even more crucially, in the early days of trading, the branding of the toys was not given huge significance, and so when looking at the very early oak-framed puzzles, its not instantly always evident that the puzzle was manufactured by Abbatt Toys as on occasion there is no forward facing logo, and whilst some of these puzzles do quite literally have a heat burnished marking of the Abbatt Toys logo (designed by Erno Goldfinger) on the reverse of the puzzle, even this is absent in some of the puzzles, and so, as a collector it requires a deep knowledge of what the puzzles look like to be able to source and identify additions to the collection. Two fabulous examples of this can be seen within the Abbatt Toys Early Tray Jigsaws section – neither the Humpty Dumpty Baby Jigsaw, or the boy on the rocking horse puzzle (stand up baby jigsaw) have any identifying makers logo, and it is purely by chance, luck and a great deal of searching that these puzzles exist within the collection.  No other examples of the 15 missing Baby Jigsaws, as shown in the 1952-1953 Abbatt Toys Catalogue have ever been seen to our knowledge.

Aside from the oak frames denoting pre and post-war manufacturing, and the branding (or absence of) another point of interest is the number of pieces. It can be seen in the original catalogue writing that the Abbatt’s encouraged modification of the puzzles to further challenge children ‘When the jigsaw becomes too easy it can be cut into more pieces’. None of the puzzles within the collection appear to have been modified post-production in a do-it-yourself fashion, but the Elephant puzzle in the Early Tray Jigsaws section, with 62 pieces, was almost certainly cut in the factory to meet the requirements of a specific older child. For this reason, the number of pieces are given when a puzzle is shown a number of times in succession.

In terms of identifying the artists that designed the puzzles, it is fortunate that Paul and Marjorie Abbatt were happy for the artists to sign their work, and as a consequence, many of the early oak framed puzzles in the collection have the name ‘Skinner’ (Freda Skinner) applied, others are signed M.R. (Madeleine Robinson) and Zoo-Zag bears the name of it’s designer James Gardner. In some of the Abbatt catalogues there is a marked effort to acknowledge and attribute the toys to their designers, although sadly this was inconsistent and so where artists are known to have designed a puzzle this information appears alongside the image of the puzzle, and where quotes have been used from the original catalogues, these are shown within quotation marks.