Flechtarbeiten - Entrelacs - Twisted Works

[Germany], 1855. Some conservation to box lid.. A 10.50" by 8.25" card box with applied litho with albumin wash label depicting a mother and children creating braided yarn and braided paper. Applied gold bead scrap border decoration. Within is a form and supplies for creating braided or woven paper. Also paper weaving supplies. Also includes a knotted braiding. Also includes eight (8) sheets with numerous designs for both woven paper and fabric.

The toy was designed to encourage both manual dexterity and pattern design. Presumably influenced by Friedrich Froebel's education materials for young children. The ‘Froebel gifts’, or ‘Froebelgaben’, originally formed a series of six gifts, but these were extended to ten sets of gifts, with dexterity in weaving forming the seventh. The first six gifts illustrated solids, while the seventh, which moved from the concrete towards the abstract, made the transition to the surface. Froebel died in 1852, but not before the Prussian government banned kindergartens the previous year.