History – Children's Design International Collection, registered charity, Canada BN 770946317 RR0001

World Children’s Day 2025

November 20^th is World Children’s Day. In other words, the World Children’s Rights Day, because annually it marks the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

We join everyone who helps “amplify children’s voices” as UNICEF puts it.

On the UNICEF’s web site and social media, you will see a huge amount of photographs of children, usually with a mention of their first name and country. Looking at these portraits, you may wonder what these children would actually say about their living conditions. Little is revealed about the context of the photographs, and usually nothing about the photographers. What we are implicitly asked to do is to see how the images fit into the narratives of the articles and media posts.

We invite you to join us in celebrating those who document, record, preserve, and share children’s experiences and stories, as children tell them. They are the people who amplify children’s voices, and make room for them in society.

In this spirit, we share below a photograph, by an anonymous photographer, of a photographer famous for photographing anonymous children: Lewis Hines.

We also like to celebrate with you the people behind the Lewis Hines Project at the Lawrence History Center, in Massachusetts, who unearthed the stories of the real life children captured by Hines’ lenses. This is dedication to giving children their voices back at its best.

The issues the convention on children’s rights raises are many, and each as pressing as the others. Among them, we invite you to learn more about the continued devastating impact of child labour. In a report released earlier this year, Child Labour: Global estimates 2024, trends and the road forward, UNICEF and the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate that nearly 138 million children are working, often in dangerous conditions. That is a lot of people denied their childhood, or education opportunities. While UNICEF reports a significant decrease in child labour over the past twenty five years, it nonetheless admits to a global failure to eliminate it altogether.

The ILO has long been an advocate in the fight against child labour. Interestingly, though, young adults suffer scandalously high unemployment rates across the globe. This has been the case for decades. It is one thing to fight child labour, but what about helping young adult enter the job market? Labour organizations seem clueless on how to curb systemic barriers that prevent new generations of workers at entry level. See some recent World Bank alarming statistics. But that is another story.

**Lewis Hines photographing children**, c1910. Source: Eastman Museum, NY, 2025.

The pencil lead that never was

Once upon a long time ago, a mistake went on for centuries, even though almost everyone knew it was a mistake. Pencil lead is still a commonly used expression, while it is widely known to be a misnomer.

The truth is, the familiar small wooden writing tools have at their core a blend of graphite and clay.

Graphite is the first victim of this unfortunate mistake. Its resemblance to lead is to be blamed. When discovered in England in 1560, it was named “plumbago”. The term is still in use in industry and refers to pure graphite. The color is really the only trait that graphite shares with the toxic heavy metal. In 1779, a Swedish chemist ultimately let the world know that graphite was made of carbon, not a metal. Almost twenty years later, French chemist Nicholas Jacques Conté patented the process used to make the pencils we know to this day.

We must acknowledge that the error in naming graphite was made in good faith. The fact that writing tools made of lead had been in use from Antiquity through the Middle Ages likely contributed to the mistake.

While it can be justified and forgiven, setting things right is no less the thing to do. So, let’s stop using an expression which we know to be misleading. My pencil is not toxic. What about yours? Find more about pencils by visiting the California Cedar Products website. For an in-depth, illustrated book about writing tools in Antiquity, see Anna Willi’s book, Manual of Roman everyday writing tools, Vol. 2, accessible Research Gate.

***A pencil tip***. Source: Wikipedia, 20 September, 2025.

SHCY conference 2023

Well over 150 childhood and youth historians took part in person or virtually, in the Society for the History of Children and Youth’s conference this past few days, at the University of Guelph, Canada. All about childhood then and now, and what to make of it, the organizers granted us the opportunity to set up an information table, so that we could introduce our mission and collection to attendees.

The atmosphere was friendly and the hybrid sessions, and panel discussions aplenty, over two and a half days. This was a great opportunity to see historians in action in their “cultural habitat.” We were thrilled to contribute an image from the collection for the conference poster and program.

SHCY 2023 conference poster and program cover. Volunteer introduce CDIC to attendee. Source: CDIC-CIDE.

When kids fought inflation – Canada, 1947

A war, mass migration, rampant inflation, street protests, and democracy versus communism. This combo is too familiar almost everywhere on the planet these days. Sadly, it is not the first time in history, which some say repeats itself.

But wait, add kids and chocolate bars to the mix, and you get a unique moment in Canadian history.

From a 2022 article by Taylor C. Noakes, in the Canadian Encyclopedia, we learn that in 1947, hundreds of kids took angrily to the streets in several cities in the country. Their cause? They were protesting against the drastic price hike of chocolate bars, from five to eight cents.

What began as a seemingly benign and somewhat amusing burst of discontent, eventually turned out to be taken seriously, to the point that the local police intervened in some cases. Within just a few weeks, with popular support, children made candy bar sales drop by no less than eighty percent.

Only after the Toronto press reported on a presumably communist infiltration among the youth, did the public opinion turned against protestors, and their recriminations silenced.

Filmmaker Phillip Daniels made a fantastic documentary about it, back in 2003: The five cent war. The film gives a voice to some of the protestors, half a century after the fact. Two children’s books about the event are also on the market. Maggie and the chocolate war (2007) by , Michelle Mulder, and Candy bar war (2121) by Lindsay Ford.

Spoiler: In real life, the price of the chocolate bars never came down again. In the end only grown-ups told that story. We looked for them, but unfortunately we did not find any children’s drawings coming out of this moment in Canadian history. Sad.

***Sad***. By Yvon, c1965. Source: CDIC-CIDE.

Message from a bottle

After last week’s blurb about quills, it is hard to resist sharing a few words about vintage ink bottles. Small bottles of ink have been on the market for over two hundred years, and were for the most part made from blown or molded glass, sometimes from metal, or a combination of both. People and museums collect the early ones, and they are fairly easy to find on reselling platforms.

Jane Eastman of Winchester, England is a self-made connoisseur, and demonstrates great appreciation for them. She recklessly seeks and pulls them out of riverbeds, among other treasures. See several beautiful photographs of them, with extra historical background, in her Beach Combing magazine article “My indelible love for ink bottles.” The magazine’s channel has a video of her in action and it is quite an excursion.

As far as museums go, the Charles Dickens Museum has a bottle used by the famous author. Another bottle with a clever design is among the many others at the Corning Museum of Glass, in New York State.

*Ink bottle*, 1825-1875, AN 2013.4.3. Source: Corning Museum of Glass, 27 August 2022.

If it be your quill

A craft activity is a great way to convey a history lesson. A history lesson should be an opportunity to contemplate what has been long gone, as well as parts of the past that still persists in our time.

If you ever consider making a quill with your child, we suggest that you begin with the word processor in your computer. Have a close look at the many fonts available, and see if you and your child can differentiate the old looking ones from the newer ones. You will be quick to find Old English, Palatino, New Roman, Garamond, and the likes. They are the ones with stylish serifs.

Then, ask the child to gather as many different handwriting devices as possible at home. You might have ballpoint pens, felt pens, pencils, crayons, chalks. You might even have a metal quill. Ask the child to write the alphabet with each and compare the results. If you have one, use a magnifier to have a closer look. Make sure to observe the variations in the thickness of lines, as well as the presence or absence of serifs.

At this point, proceed with your quill making, to find out whether a quill will make writing in old style fonts easier. A good guide to use is one posted by the Rhode Island School of Design, aka RISD Museum on Instructible. You might also like the very detailed one by Liralen Li on this old Flick page, or one of the many videos online.

Whichever way you go about it, there are a few important things to keep in mind. First, hygiene. If you take feathers directly from a farm, make sure to clean, sanitize and dry it thoroughly before you handle them with bare hands or before cutting carefully. Second, safety. For best results, the carving requires a short, sharp blade that gives maximum control. Use more than one feather, because your first attempt might fail, or you might want to try different carvings. Once your quill is ready, get some ink and write for fun, your own secret recipe for a magic potion. Try different kinds of paper, and hang on to the one that best suits your quill.

In the end, take the time with your child to browse books or the web, and see if you can find old style fonts. One fantastic recent book about fonts is The Eternal Letter (MIT Press, 2015) edited by Paul Shaw.

*Trimmed and sharpened quill*. Photo: RISD Museum. Source: Instructables.com, 19 August 2022.

Go, medievalists!

A couple of years ago in this blog, we introduced Onfim. This thirteenth century child whose drawing on a piece of bark had been discovered by chance, among other archeological findings. Thanks to a growing number of medievalists researchers over the past few years, the images left by medieval children are no longer left to chance.

The advances in child psychology have long helped parents and educators. They now benefit medievalists, and it is great news for children’s drawing conservation. Deborah Ellen Thorpe holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of York (GB). In 2016, her article Young hands, old books: Drawings by children in a fourteen century manuscript, LJS, MS. 361, was published in Cogent Arts and Humanities (Taylor & Francis). In it, she meticulously and convincingly argues that the hands that drew three drawings in the margins of a centuries-old manuscript were those of children. Her observations are strongly supported by the works of several researchers in child psychology and arts education.

Other reputed medievalists, such as Seth Lere (Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children’s Marginalia, University of California Press), and Nicholas Orme (Medieval children, Yale University Press) have been instrumental in nurturing a growing interest in what medieval children have left us.

**Drawing by a child in the margin of a 14th Century manuscript**. *LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 26r*. Source: National Library of Medecine, 9 August 2022.

Fired up

This blog entry steps away from pens, pencils, chalks or paint brushes and sheds light on a different way of creating images, just as ancient. It is not crocheting or weaving, not bas-relief carving either. Let’s talk about pyrography, the art of drawing with heat or fire on wood, leather, metal of even glass. The most commonly used method however is on wood.

Our collection holds no sample whatsoever of such pyrographic works made by children. For sure there are some out there, because the pyrography tools are still selling aplenty. They were all the rage back in the 1950s and 1960s, when a wave of new consumer products became sought after items for crafty families.

To get a sense of the ancient origin of pyrography, see the short article by Working the Flame, a collective endeavour of aficionados: A brief history of pyrography and wood burning art.

Few artists excel in pyrography. One who masters the traditional figurative imagery is Julie Bender. Her small scale works, the beautiful fine art coasters, are as impressive as her large scale sport, pet, farm or wildlife works.

The one contemporary artist who took pyrography to another level is Cai Guo Quiang with his artworks made with gun powder and fireworks. His recent Exploding the self project is enough to convince anyone of his daredevil way.

Now why not turn up the heat and give it a try. Next is a video by Mercedes Grundy for CBC Art. In it, artist Aicha Lasfar makes a full demonstration in less than 3 minutes.

In memory of Françoise Roy

We are saddened by the passing of Françoise Roy (1924-2021), in La Pocatière, Québec. She embraced life and will be missed by all who knew her. Françoise had a long successful teaching and family counseling career. She was a pioneer in applying the Goodenough (draw-a-person) test, when helping children and their families. Françoise had been an early inspiration in creating our Collection. Her insights will continue to inspires us always. As a modest tribute to her, below is a drawing, published for the first time, by a child she had assisted. We can see her own handwriting notes, taken just after conversing with the child.

My **family**, c1982. Source: CDIC-CIDE, fonds Françoise Roy.

Let’s make History

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, if we keep repeating the same mistake, but expect different results, we are insane. Up until recently, too little was done to preserve the expression of children. The result is that the contribution by children to the societal narrative has been erased and historians do not have access to enough if it to draw significant interpretations from it. This situation is particularly unfortunate for the past 150 years, since the emergence of public elementary education in western cultures.

Fortunately, change seems underway in the 21st century and a few historians demonstrate a growing interest in what kids have to say or show. It is about time because whatever was left on paper by children during the second half of the last century is about to vanish. We created our Collection largely to remedy the situation and to leave mistakes of the past behind, when it comes to preserving children’s drawings.

A superb article by Professor Karen Sánchez-Eppler (Amherst College), published by The Conversation, is an encouraging sign that children’s drawings may find their rightful place in history and help history reveal itself to future generations: How studying the old drawings and writings of kids can change our view of history.

We also take notice of the recent mostly European initiative by the International Research and Archives Network (IRAND) and their Historical Children’s Drawings display. This initiative is a contribution to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme. Read the beautifully illustrated article by Dr Jutta Ströter-Bender, co-founder of IRAND, published on Research Outreach.