Toy horses have been part of our lives since early times.
Placed on wheels, pulled by string, or transformed into a
stick horse to carry the imagination of the rider, toy horses
have enchanted the young for three thousand years. Not only
children, but adults too, delight in play horses – Socrates
himself galloped about with his children on their hobbyhorse.
Imitation horses have amused, yet also trained and educated,
as in the Middle Ages when budding knights practiced jousting
on wheeled horses and later on carousels.
The rocking horse first appeared in seventeenth-century
Europe. Charles I of England had one as a boy, and his horse
survives to this day. Enormously popular throughout Georgian
and Victorian times in Britain, rocking horses also flourished
in Germany and in America until the midpart of this century,
when production of fine rocking horses almost disappeared.
Yet, a revival in England during the last twenty years has
seen a remarkable resurgence of this historical and dearly-loved
toy.
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