Finding Inspiration in the World of Vintage Paper Crafts
Vintage Paper Dolls...Not the Creepy Ones!
Greetings! This week I’m kicking off a new packaging design project for a client who has great taste and wants the box to be reusable for kids, with back cutouts that turn it into something like a lemonade stand or a cafe. This, of course, immediately made my brain go into its Rolodex of memories and playing with paper dolls as a child that were either Amish (born in Illinois!) or pioneer-themed. Speaking of pioneers, I’ve heard that there’s a new Little House on the Prairie. We 70s/80s/early 90s babies will be the judge of whether the new Nellie character can live up to the most bonkers scene on television after Laura’s had enough of her bullying and she pushes Nellie down a hill in a wheelchair! Ok, back to design.
If I haven’t lost you with talking about scenes from a 1970s show about American pioneers, now let me tell you about the rabbit hole I’ve been down this week that might also make you question why you’re here! Have you seen vintage paper dolls? Or, if we want to get away from calling them “dolls”, let’s go with paper crafts, pin paper toys, or moving paper toys. That elevates it a bit. I landed upon a Flickr account of 4000+ paper crafts, and I looked at…all of them. And I’m here to convince you that these works of art can inspire our design work!
A Brief History of Paper Crafts
The history of paper crafts goes deep, all the way back to the Egyptians on the Nile River and ancient China, but for the designs I’m going to show you today, let’s chat briefly about paper toys starting in the 1800s.
Long before the 1980s pioneer paper dolls, the French ruled the world of beautifully painted paper crafts with pantins, stiff paper puppets with joints that could dance and move, pieced together with brads or eyelets.
As printing technology advanced, newspapers across the globe caught wind that perhaps offering a weekly paper toy craft could increase engagement. French journals like Le Petit Parisien and Le Petit Journal offered weekly paper-toy crafts, and later, during wartime and the US’s Great Depression, printed paper-toy cutouts were a way to bring affordable toys and joy to children.
Let’s Dive Into These Beauties…
