Figure 1.--This German boy is seen with a picture book. He looks to about 5-6 years old and is just leaning to read. The portrait looks to have been taken about 1920. Note the large blocks in the background. This looks to be a studio portrait. He probably did not have these large blocks at home. Image courtesy of Album1900.

Large Blocks

We have noted some images of children in the late 19th and early 20th century playing with very large-sized blocks. Most of the images are drawings. Thus we do not know if such large blocks really existed or if they were simly pictured for artistic purposes. Most photographic images, more reliable than drawings, show children with small blocks. We do have some photographs of the larger blocks, but these seem to be portraits from photographic studios rather than home scenes. Several readers agreed with HBC that this portrait was aken in a photographic studio. Thus we are not sure how common these large blocks were. Note that they are not alphabet blocks, but rather picture blocks with animals and other characters on them.

Clothes

The boy wears a fairly standard sailor suit. Notice the stripped dickey. I'm guessing it was actully a kind of early "T"-shirt. American boys tended to wear duckies with embriodered emblems. We have nited these stripped dickeies in continental countries, especially Russia and France. We see them less frequently in Germany. I was at first confused about the hosiery. I thought at first that he was wearing ankle sicks, but he must be wearing long stockings that are a light tan color and so well fitting that they could almost be mistaken for bare legs. We notice these tan stockings becoming popular in the 1920s after World War I. Also notice the modern-looking low cut oxford shoes.

Created: 6:10 PM 10/21/2004
Last updated: 8:16 PM 10/22/2004