2014-09-12
Baybars rattle
Kristin Baybar's ‘Little Place in Gospel Oak’
This rattle was designed by Kristin Baybars (1933), an excentric toy store owner from North London. Baybars began in the sixties with the design of toys and opened her own "shop of wonders" in the seventies. The window display has hardly changed since then. Change is terribly overrated, she says.
Baybars makes and sells mainly handmade toys. Not all of her toys are selling as well. Some things are over 35 years on the shelf, but that adds -as many believe- only to the magic of the dusty shop on Mansfield Road.
Baybars has become a London legend. In 2014 her shop figured even in a short documentary that was shown at the London Independent Film Festival. A city fairy tale about a homage to the child's imagination, says the filmmaker.
Who thinks that Baybars was impressed by all the attention, is wrong. In her store everything remains just as it was.
Watch the documentary
This rattle was designed by Kristin Baybars (1933), an excentric toy store owner from North London. Baybars began in the sixties with the design of toys and opened her own "shop of wonders" in the seventies. The window display has hardly changed since then. Change is terribly overrated, she says.
Baybars makes and sells mainly handmade toys. Not all of her toys are selling as well. Some things are over 35 years on the shelf, but that adds -as many believe- only to the magic of the dusty shop on Mansfield Road.
Baybars has become a London legend. In 2014 her shop figured even in a short documentary that was shown at the London Independent Film Festival. A city fairy tale about a homage to the child's imagination, says the filmmaker.
Who thinks that Baybars was impressed by all the attention, is wrong. In her store everything remains just as it was.
Watch the documentary
