Most of the projects I do for and with Harry take minutes or hours; we are notoriously distractible and not genetically completer-finishers. Not at all. This one however was a monster; it began when Harry was just a few days old, and was finished a year later – at last, Harry’s Ark (with apologies to Noah) is ready for the rains to come!
In the early, fuzzy days of new motherhood I decided I wanted to make Harry a toy that he could play with over a number of years, that would look good even when it was retired to the playroom shelf, and maybe, just maybe, might become a family heirloom and entertain others in the future. I must have been mad; let’s blame the raging hormones and sleeplessness.
I settled on the idea of a Noah’s Ark, as a sort of boy’s equivalent to a Dolls House. My creativity may be strong but my woodworking skills are not, so I searched Ebay for old model boats or half-built and abandoned projects that I could makeover. I found the base for Harry’s Ark this way; a beautifully shaped, nearly complete hull of a boat that was discovered in someone’s late grandfather’s workshop. This gave an added poignancy to the project and I like to think he’d have been pleased to see it finished and put to use. I built the body of the ark using random doll house components bought online (pillars, doors and windows) and balsa wood for the walls and pitched roof. Miniature cedar shingles glued to the balsa create a folk-art style roof, and I used malleable stained glass leading for the roof top and edges.
I added eye-hooks along the hull and threaded a waxed washing line and curtain rings to give the impression of buoyancy aids (amazing what you can repurpose!). A cheap ladder from the pet store intended for budgerigar cages provided the perfect ramp for animals to board the ark. Stitched scraps of hessian filled with rice make good food bags / sandbags, and join straw bales and barrels to make a collection of props for Harry to use when playing. Harry helped me to gather tiny twigs through the winter, which I chopped and glued to fill the roof cavity and add a decorative top to the ark walls. I nailed a tiny model dovecote to the roof and added miniature birds and a weathervane (the forecast of course is always rain but you never know…).
I was determined that this should be a properly usable toy and not an ornament, so designed it to come apart into several pieces (above). When Harry was tiny he played with the base alone, then I mounted it onto castors and added a rope so he could pull it around. Now that he is 2 and more dextrous, he marches the animals in and out of the ark and positions them along the roof, slams the doors and zooms them up and down the ladder laden with buckets and miniature carrots and grain sacks. Being a boy, many animals regularly plunge to their doom in the sea, and the emergency services are frequently required to rescue lost dogs and sheep. Not very biblical perhaps, but great fun nonetheless.
We bought a few pairs of Schleich animals to start him off, which cost a couple of pounds each; I thought that in time this would be a good pocket-money investment, with Harry able to add new animals one (or maybe two) at a time, and find the odd one in his Christmas stocking. With that in mind, I customised an Ikea box using transfer paper, so we can document and then store each new arrival….
The ark is still a work in progress, and I suspect always will be; bits occasionally drop off after vigorous play, but more often additions are requested and made; our next project is a feeding trough and some nets to trawl the ocean; I’m thinking fishnet stockings might be the obvious candidate for recycling here but am pretty sure I don’t have any lying around (not these days, at least…)
What was your best-loved toy as a child, and has it survived? I give our ark a 50:50 chance of longterm survival, but actually it doesn’t really matter – sometimes the very best toys get loved to death and destruction, and that surely should be seen as a sign of their success..
