Local toymaker Gene West and his wife, Patricia, recently gifted the Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum with dozens of handmade wooden toys, representatives of the local nonprofit museum said in a press release Nov. 13. The various wooden contraptions have an elegant simplicity, but lay docile until interacted with, the typical design for toys made before the Duracell battery.
“People young and old like to play with wooden toys,” West said in the statement. “They’re intrigued by the mechanical mechanisms, but also the artistry in making them. We have a lot of fun watching the people playing with the toys and figuring out how to make them work.”
West is a Navy veteran and retired Aerojet General Corp. engineer who lives in Oxnard, but he graduated from Santa Maria High School in 1948 and Cal Poly SLO soon after. His interest in wooden toys came mostly from a book he discovered at the library, which got him hooked on the craft and variety of wooden toys, from crank-activated merry-go-rounds to string pulley puppets.
The donation came to the Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum after West celebrated his 85th birthday, according to the press release. And the museum couldn’t be more delighted to share the beautiful wooden toys with local children, said Executive Director Chris Slaughter.
“Entire civilizations have been built without circuits and electricity, and yet today’s kids think that they can’t survive without television, computers, and cell phones,” Slaughter said in the press release. “These gifts are more than toys, they are handmade mechanical works of art that inspire kids to discover the basics of engineering with fun, hands-on play.”
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 3, 2015.
