Flow Circus Skill Toy Museum: 19th Century Diabolo

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latest featured item from the Flow Circus Skill Toy Museum* is a 19th Century diabolo. Many of you have played with a yo-yo. Now imagine a bigger yo-yo that can actually come off the string. Players move two hand sticks connected by a string in order to get the toy to spin. Once spinning, it can fly off the string, jump over body parts, and do other tricks. Some players even juggle two or three on one string.

This museum item tells the story of cultural exchange and adaptation. To the right is a different version of the toy know as the Chinese yo-yo. We do not know when the Chinese yo-yo was first played or who invented it, but a Chinese poet names Cao Zhi wrote an ode to the toy during the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280 AD). He described the toy, how it played, and the whistling sound it made when spinning. People in China still played with the toy hundreds of years later. The journals of Englishmen like Lord George Earl Macartney and French missionaries that traveled to China from the late 1700s contained drawings and written descriptions of the toy.

The Europeans changed the design of the toy and it became a huge hit in England and France. People in France formed special clubs such as Le Diabolo Club and it became a status symbol for adults to play. Even Napolean and his son were known to get the diabolo spinning. The diabolo from our museum is from this time period. It still maintains the style of play of the Chinese yo-yo and the hole to allow for air flow and the whistling sound. But you can see the adaptations the Europeans made to the design. It only had a brief rise to popularity at this time, but will resurge again in the early 1900s. We have acquired diabolos from that period and we will tell that story at another time.

For now we want to address the question of the name diabolo. As the tag that came with the toy indicates, some people are thought to have called the toy the "devil on two sticks" because of the challenge the toy poses. Others believe the name comes from two Greek words: dia (across) and ballo or bollo (to toss or throw). This seems to make sense since the toy does get "tossed across." Either way, we love that this toy created a common language of play between cultures.

*The museum doesn't physically exist yet, but we have been collecting vintage skill toys over the last few years and wanted to start sharing them on our blog.