The Children's Kraft Shop
The Children's Kraft Shop* by Adelia Belle Beard is a 1914 instructional craft book designed to teach children practical handicraft skills using inexpensive, readily available household materials such as empty spools, kindling sticks, wooden clothespins, natural twigs, old envelopes, newspapers, bristolboard, and wrapping paper. The book's stated aim, voiced in its foreword, is to foster resourcefulness, originality, and inventiveness in young readers by guiding them through the construction of functional toys from everyday objects. The book's content is organized into distinct project chapters, each narrated through the voices of two child characters, siblings Polly and Donald, who collaborate in their home "Kraft Shop." This narrative device serves a pedagogical function: the dialogue between the children models problem-solving, measurement, planning, and iteration in terms accessible to young readers and their parents. The projects escalate incrementally in mechanical complexity, beginning with simple paper constructions and advancing toward multi-component moving machines. The opening chapter, "Making Wind Toys," introduces pinwheels constructed from graduated squares of writing paper, threaded on a string and held apart by knots so each wheel spins independently in the wind. Polly constructs this string of four pinwheels while Donald builds a paper windmill with a manila-paper tower, a pinwheel for the mill's wheel mounted on a paintbrush-handle rod, and the entire structure tacked to a board with carpet tacks cushioned by cut kid-glove rounds. The same chapter introduces a wind wagon: a letter-paper box fitted with hatpin axles and spool wheels, carrying two paper sails on twig masts, steered by tissue-paper pennants. "Making an Automobile" guides readers through the construction of a bristolboard motor car with a detailed chassis, spool-and-skewer running gear, pill-box show wheels painted to resemble rubber tires, a multi-panel hood with paper lamps fastened by pins and cork bolts, opening doors, a steering wheel on a toothpick column, mud guards, cushioned seats covered in tissue paper, and a number plate hung at the rear by paper straps — all assembled without glue where possible, using catches, slits, and cork-and-pin fastenings throughout. "Making the Bird Airship" describes a paper dirigible balloon constructed in panels with catches and slits rather than glue, fitted with paper wings, a paper tail that functions as a rudder, a pointed passenger car suspended beneath by cotton-twine ropes, and a pinwheel propeller mounted on a hatpin. The finished airship is swung in a circle on a length of black thread attached to a loop at the balloon's top, causing the propeller to spin and the wings to rise and fall in a convincing imitation of flight. "Sand Toys" presents the book's most mechanically ambitious project: a sand-powered machine in which dry sand poured through a paper funnel and cocoa-can reservoir falls onto a bristolboard water wheel with six paper buckets, turning a shaft that drives a belt connected to a spinning merry-go-round decorated with paper boats, while a separate winding spool on the same shaft draws a miniature basket "miner's bucket" up from a sand pit and a second winding spool hauls a matchbox wagon up a wooden incline — all components fastened to a pastry board for stability. "How to Make a Trolley Car" details a bristolboard streetcar with spool wheels, opening doors secured by catches and slots, a layered roof with a separate raised top section, and a paper trolley pole with a ball-and-socket joint that allows it to pivot freely through a hole in the roof. The car is threaded onto a length of linen string stretched between two chairs, with pull-strings at each platform end allowing the car to travel back and forth across the room. "Making Toy Furniture Without Glue" introduces a library set — table, rocking armchair, and bookshelves — assembled entirely from interlocking bristolboard projections, slots, and wedge-shaped pegs or bolts, explicitly requiring no adhesive and designed to be disassembled flat for storage. "Wild Animals for the Menagerie" closes the volume with a series of slotted cardboard animals — giraffe, elephant, kangaroo, camel, rhinoceros, lion, and polar bear — each assembled from body and leg pieces fitted together through corresponding lettered slots. Ears, tusks, horns, and tails are made from writing paper where flexibility is needed. The chapter weaves in natural history facts read aloud by Polly from a reference book, connecting craft activity to zoological education. Throughout, the book emphasizes precision measurement, scored fold lines, the use of cork and pin fastenings as mechanical equivalents of bolts and nuts, and iterative pattern-making in scrap paper before cutting final pieces from better materials.
By Adelia B. Beard · First published 1914 · Genre: Children's Educational, Handicrafts/Crafts, DIY/How-To Guide