Seated Man and Woman with Paddle Toy

The Proskauer family, horse farm owners in Kentucky, collected a wide variety of decorative and folk arts. They acquired American Textiles, weather vanes, whirligigs, folk sculpture, table and mantel ornaments, baskets, ceramic wares, and all kinds of antique toys, including delightful penny banks with moving parts designed to make saving money an enjoyable pastime.

With America’s expanding industrialization and urbanization in the last decades of the nineteenth century, commercially made tin and cast iron toys became popular. Mechanical and mobile toys were especially so, reflecting the growing fascination with machinery, speed, and motion.