The New Mexican - 12.22.98

Wooden Treasures

Timber Toy Furniture Company creates heirloom-quality wooden rocking horses

Many of us remember sturdy wooden pull toys or faded red steel fire trucks pulled out of a grandparent's attic to play with when we visited. These were toys our parents played with when they were kids.

A generation from now, what will parents be able to pull out from their early years? Broken pink plastic Barbie RVs? Or long-dead and obsolete Nintendo games?

Timothy Willms established the Timber Toy Furniture Company in 1995 to create wooden toys that hark back even further that the toys of our early memories. Based on late-19th and early-20th century European and American toy rocking and gliding horses, the toys he has designed are a line of artisan-made, equine playthings of heirloom quality.

These toys are not for every child. Featured this season in the upscale F.A.O. Schwartz catalog - in the past they were in Neiman Marcus' holiday catalog - the "Lasso" Frontier Pony Rocker sells for $1,200.

All Timber Toy items are made in limited editions and are finished to order. Willms designs and markets the toys, which include about eight versions of the rocking pony, a toddler's rocking sled, toy chest and gliding horse. He contracts with local woodworkers to build the items of ponderosa pine, and with Santa Fe artist Laura Dean to paint and finish them.

Some of the toys are purchased by adult folk art collectors, but most are bought and used as children's playthings, he said. Willms, whose training is in fine art and art appraisal, also continues his original profession as an independent art consultant and appraiser.

After working as an intern at Sotheby's in New York and London in the early 1980s, he earned a bachelor's in fine art from Syracuse University and a master's in fine art from New York University. He served as gallery director for the Landfall Press in Chicago until 1991.

Now dividing his time between Chicago and Santa Fe, Willms started Timber Toy Furniture to bring together several of his longtime interests: Fine art, folk lore, the spirit of the Southwest and horses. After researching European and American antique moving toy horses, he realized there was an unfilled niche for this type of toy.

"There's not really another American company making heirloom quality toys like this. Not toys that really evoke a sense of whimsy and artistic interpretation for children," he said, sitting in his appointment-only showroom on San Francisco Street.

"You can see the artist's mark-making on the toy - it's not just cranked out. If someone sees this as a child, when they become older they learn to appreciate folk art. It's easier for them to become drawn to art and art making. It's more accessible, because they're playing with it."

Willms grew up with horses, both rocking and real. He learned to ride when he was 6, and took part in hunter-jumper competitions throughout childhood. As he sees it, the rocking or gliding horse has qualities that are beneficial to children beyond simple entertainment.

With no preprogrammmed script, children are much more in control of their own fantasies with this kind of toy, he said. In addition, the physical aspect of balance on a rocking horse is important for young, developing bodies.

"There is something incredibly lulling to a child as they rock," he said.

And in a world of disposable toys, children can learn to cherish and appreciate a toy that will be around even when they're grown. The nonprofit consumer guide, Parents' Choice, agreed, giving Timber Toy Furniture its honors award in 1996 and 1998 for "toys that help children grow mentally, physically, emotionally, socially and ethically."

With such a high quality toy, Willms is not entirely comfortable with the fact that its price makes it inaccessible to many children. He plans to design and create a couple of types of wooden toys for younger children in a lower, more mass-market price range.

He also hopes to expand the use of his toys as philanthropic and charitable vehicles, having them donated and auctioned off for fund raising endeavors. And he would like to set up an apprenticeship program where local, artistically gifted high school students could work alongside craftspeople building the toys, and then use that experience to help gain entrance to art school.

To expand his business in order to realize these goals, Willms said he is open to entering into a co-marketing venture with another company selling equally high-quality children's products. Such an arrangement also would free his time for concentrating on the creative, design aspect of the business.

Within the next year, he said, he hopes to begin developing a line of equine fantasy wooden children's furniture, to add to the toy line.

Willms also has another project in the works, which would offer the horse character, if not the actual toy, to a broader range of children. He is negotiating with studio executives on the creation of a live-action animated television feature film starring a magical pony. Designed to be aired during the winter holiday season, the film would be a heartwarming fantasy teaching children to accept and value differences between people, and to value the act of giving, he said.

Willms wrote the screenplay for the film, which he said could be aired in two or three years once it is accepted.

Gussie Fauntleroy