This board horse, displayed at the Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green, is attributed to King Charles 1.

Provenance is rather thin, namely a connection to a country house near to Theobalds Palace, Hertfordshire, where the young prince was brought up. Still this design is typical of the type of horse the young prince may have had, and an old horse indeed.

The period 1880-1914 was one of tremendous innovation in toy design. One of the leading toy makers of the day took out a patent for a rocking horse with a "swivel head". Once thought to be limited to a few sample models, more than enough have come to light to suggest significant production. Inevitably the swivel head came off and was "fixed". Look underneath for signs of a small rectangular cover, this was where the bolt for the swivel action was inserted.

A star attraction at the new Museum of Liverpool Life, about to open on the Liverpool waterfront, is "Blackie". A long time favourite of children who visited him when he was also a star attraction at Liverpool's now defunct Blacklers Department Store. His story is more than intriguing as he is the replacement for an earlier Blackie destroyed when this store was bombed in May 1941. Liverpool had a number of famous rocking horse makers, including the Collinson family and relative Frank Usher, but who made the original Blackie? We may now only know this through the services of a rocking horse "medium".

A title almost certainly won by a Japanese jeweller, Ginza Tanaka, who produced a solid gold rocking horse weighing 80 lbs troy, to celebrate the birth of Prince Hisahito, heir to the Imperial throne. Given the direction bullion prices are heading, a good investment, if a somewhat hard and cold ride, no doubt King Midas would have approved.

Amongst many varieties of mounting designs for rocking horses in the period 1880-1914 was this spring stand on this large Ayres rocking horse. The normal "Marqua" type action was supplemented by being mounted on the leaf springs in the photograph. The result is a double motion, and a little more like the real thing, though not for the faint hearted.