The podcast 'The man with the rattles' about the life and collection of Heinz Keijser, developed by the Jewish Museum and Airborne, was awarded silver on 13 October during the presentation of the Dutch Creativity Awards.
After wonderful reviews in the press and by the public, the podcast was broadcast on Parel Radio and OVT, among others. The results of the Lovie Awards will follow on November 2, for which 'The man with the rattles' is in the top three. The four-part podcast (in Dutch) can be listened to via the link (OVT) above and Spotify.

On view from December 17 2021: The exhibition Rattles! Rattles! Rattles! The curious collection of Heinz Keijser in the Jewish Museum Amsterdam.

A special podcast has been released to accompany the exhibition.

In 'The man with the rattles' podcast maker Lotte van Gaalen goes in search of the story behind this curious collection of almost a thousand rattles. What drove Heinz Keijser to devote nearly forty years of his life to collecting rattles? In search of answers, Keijser's eventful life story unfolds. It starts in Germany in the 1920s and ends in a post-war Netherlands, in a house filled to the ceiling with rattles.

The four-part podcast 'The man with the rattles' was developed by audio agency Airborne. New episodes appear every two weeks on Mondays!
Listen via jck.nl/podcast or via your favorite podcast app (e.g. Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3onjKQx).

The H. Keijser Foundation proudly presents:
Rattles and ringing bells
The collection of Heinz Keijser

In this beautifully designed book, various experts and authors reflect on the life and collection of Heinz Keijser.

It begins with a foreword by Abraham Rosenberg and an introduction by Ileen Montijn, followed by a biographical sketch about the eventful life of Heinz Keijser: Jew, Marxist, refugee, person in hiding, theater man, friend of well-known artists and collector. In ten essays by well-known specialists, the art and cultural-historical developments and the versatile (even magical) aspects of the rattle are discussed. They lead the reader through four thousand years of rattles, child portraits with rattles, and their relationship with pedagogical and social developments.

Edited by Mirjam Knotter and Lies Meiboom, with essays by Rudolf Dekker and Tessel Dekker, Claire van den Donk and Rudi Ekkart, Mirjam Knotter, Ileen Montijn, Sophie Olie, Lucinda Timmermans, Eefje van der Weijden, Wouter Welling and Annemarieke Willemsen
With contributions about sixty masterpieces from the collection by Jan Dirk Biemond, Mirjam Knotter, Stefanie Korrel, Ilja Meijer, George Moorman, Charlotte van Rappard-Boon and Rebecca Roskam.

https://www.walburgpers.nl/nl/book/9789462497214/ratmelaars-en-ringelbollen

During the month of June, an enthusiastic team of professionals and volunteers will be working on an extensive project: the complete repackaging and organization of the Keijser collection. All rattles and other objects from the collection are placed in new, acid-free boxes and packaging. This not only provides for better conservation conditions for the collection, but also for an improvement in the accessibility of the objects for research and loans.

In preparation for a future publication and exhibition about Heinz Keijser and his collection, extensive biographical research has been carried out in recent months. Many discoveries were and contacts were made. A special find is this photo, of the home shop of his parents in Hanover before it was liquidated in 1933 as a result of the boycott against Jewish shop owners and on which his parents fled to the Netherlands. In the doorway is probably his mother Victoria Keijser-Behr. Keijsers parents survived the war at a hiding place in Leersum.

In the meantime, the paintings from the Keijser collection have also been photographed, including an early 17th century children's portrait, painted on a panel. The portrait bears an inscription stating that the child was 16 months old when it was painted in 1628. Unfortunately, it is not known which Dutch master made the work.
Although boys are often portrayed in a dress these days, because of the red necklace around her neck, we know that this portrait shows a little girl.

The Keijser Foundation is very pleased with the recent expansion of the board with new members who, with their years of experience and expertise, make an important contribution to the further realization of the objectives of the foundation.

Board of the Keijser Foundation

Abraham W. Rosenberg, chairman
Charlotte E. van Rappard-Boon, secretary
Ine Everaers, treasurer
Eefje M.C. van der Weijden, board member
Job C. Rosenberg Polak, board member

In the past period, Ilja Meijer has been working on the inventory and organization of the personal archive of H. Keijser.
The extensive archive provides a lot of important biographical information, his survival during the Second World War; information about the development of his collection and his research on the cultural-historical backgrounds of the rattle.

4,000-year-old Children's Rattle Crafted as Bear Cub's Head: And it Still Rattles!

23 OCTOBER, 2016

By Tamara Zubchuk | The Siberian Times

A find-of-the-year by Novosibirsk archeologists is a toy that entertained prehistoric babies. The remarkable discovery of one of the oldest toys in the world came from excavations at a Bronze Age settlement in Siberia.
Inside it - and it remains sealed - are little stones 'that make a jingling sound', said Professor Vyacheslav Molodin, deputy head of Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography.
He told The Siberian Times: 'This is a clay rattle with a visible well-made handle - handy for a child to hold it. It was constructed by clay firing, it is hollow inside. There are little stones inside. We don't know what kind of stones these are, but we will be doing an X-ray to find out. The rattle is still working.'

Click here to read the full article

Since this month the foundation has a new employee. In the coming period, art and design historian Ilja Sarah Meijer will organize H. Keijser's archive.
On her first working day she already made a discovery: a 18-page typed German-language autobiography by Heinz Keijser with a list of the 22 hiding places where he and his partner stayed in the Netherlands during the war years. The list shows that he stayed several times with photographer and resistance fighter Cas Oorthuys in his home on Amstel 3 in Amsterdam and many different hiding places in Groningen and Friesland, often in pastories of the Dutch Reformed Church. His last hiding place was with the graphic artist and resistance fighter Dick Elffers at the OZ Achterburgwal in Amsterdam.

A brief (Dutch) summary of Heinz Keijser's autobiography can be downloaded below.

From 25 June to 19 September 2015, the exhibition 'Babytime' will be on display in the Krimpenerwaard regional museum. The exhibition includes the loan of a selection of rattles from the Keijser collection.

A new part of the collection of mainly 20th century rattles is being photographed. The photos will be shown online in the next few weeks.

Online article by historian Kathryn Kane in the Regency Redingote on the legend and lore of the power of coral… 
To read the article click on this link.

A rare rattle form the Keijser collection, uncommon in type and style, bears an engraved inscription which refers to the birth of John Harford Wilkins on June 26, 1915. Via a genealogical website we have found his son who has been searching for years for more information about his father. And who was most pleased with this find. Moreover, he shared the information with us that his grandfather was a silversmith. Hopefully further research will show whether the rattle was possibly made by the father of John Harford Wilkins at the occasion of the birth of his son.

Archeologists discovererd a baby rattle in 2500 year old graves in the Polish village Łęgowo near Wągrowiec.

Read more about this discovery on: click on this link