I have been wanting to draw a Mexican toy for some time now and am glad to have found a lovely one made by one of Mexico’s most beloved artisan toymakers. This marimba-playing skeleton takes the idea of death and makes it funny and light – traditional Mexican depictions of skeletons still feel thrilling and transgressive to me, having been brought up in Europe, where the subject of death is not approached or talked of in this way, especially not among children.

Gumersindo España Olivares (1935-2018), known affectionately as Don Sshinda or Chinda, was born into a family of toymakers and became something of a legend in his own town of Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas, where he had his family workshop, called La puerta vieja. Here he made traditional wooden toys like this Ferris wheel, or this maromero (acrobat), or these crocodiles on wheels.

A book was written about him, which can be accessed here, and you can watch videos of him speaking in his workshop here and here.

He said he didn’t like making toys when he wasn’t in a good mood, as he felt it would affect what he produced, and liked making toys to make children laugh.

This skeleton or calaca, which won a prize in 2011 at the 1st Concurso Nacional del Juguete Popular Mexicano, reminds me a little of the wonderful Funnybones series by Allan and Janet Ahlberg, where the attribute of being a skeleton at times might seem almost incidental, but everything is funny and effective because they are what they are. I like this idea of death, of taking away the heaviness and squeamishness of looking inside our bodies. I also like the idea of not immediately associating death with scares and frights. Skeletons naturally look quite silly, with their grinning mouths and angular poses; they look clumsy and awkward, and, without the graceful movements provided by muscles and tendons, are perfect for slapstick comedy.

Looking at this and thinking about skeletons, I thought back to when I worked on a large medieval cemetery site in London some twenty years ago. It is remarkable to think that all of those people we dug up would have looked completely different from one another – some would have been fat, others scrawny; some would have been women, others men; some would have had small button noses, others big ears. At the time I didn’t give it any thought, and I am not sure any of us did; we concentrated on recording each skeleton, lifting and bagging each bone as quickly and efficiently as we could, and then moving on to the next one – we were on a tight schedule. Skeleton after skeleton, they looked identical, and started to blend into one another. Maybe that is it – yes, death is the great leveller, and never more so than when we are nothing but indistinguishable bundles of bones.

It occurred to me that a lot of us go through life actively trying to avoid thinking about what is inside of us, and what makes our bodies what they are – muscles, skin, veins, organs, bones. It may feel a little unnerving or even impertinent when we see ourselves reduced to our bodily components; when we see our bodies as matter; when the layers and inner mechanics of a finger or a leg or a head are taken apart and revealed, as we might do with a watch. But as a kid I thought frequently about the fragility of life, of how easy it is to bleed or to die, of smooth surfaces rupturing quickly and easily – a bruised apple, a scraped knee, a squashed fly, a deep cut on a finger from a kitchen knife while chopping onions.

I also thought about what we are doing when we purposely avoid the topic of death, especially with children, and try to sweep any mention of it under the carpet, for fear of upsetting. How can anyone try to figure out their relationship with life if they are encouraged not to ‘dwell’ on an essential part of it – death? It is a strange kind of mental gymnastics we expect our children (and ourselves) to perform in this regard.

A few weeks ago, my children and I were reading a book of poems for children before bedtime, taking it in turns to read. My son had just read a silly, upbeat one, which had gone down well. My daughter then randomly chose one on the next page, thinking it would be in a similar vein. Instead, it was Seamus Heaney’s beautiful and devastating Mid-Term Break, about the death of his young brother. By the time I realised what she was reading, she was already half-way through. I caught myself hesitating and even briefly resenting the book for sticking that specific poem next to a light-hearted one. In hindsight, I applaud the publisher for doing so.

Our encounter with the poem led to an interesting, if heavy, exchange about death, the meaning of life and the purpose of poetry, and everything in between. It was all the better for having come about organically, but it made me realise, too, that I would sometimes like to come across death in a context that is not linked to a specific tragic event, or at least more often than I do.

These playthings take the idea of being completely dead, worn down to our bones, and juxtapose it with something as silly and full of life as riding a tricycle, or doing gymnastics, or, in this case, playing the marimba – the effect is delightful and, at least in my case, sparks giggles of something like relief. Our calaca friend here is a celebration of life: we can move, we can be silly, we can play instruments, we can have fun.  

This particular vision of death eschews the hushed darkness, acknowledges its everyday presence, and reminds us that, just as our dead were once full of life, we are also full of life this very instant – whatever that may mean for each of us –, and will also come to die. And on and on, in a connected cycle.

So perhaps what I like about these toys by Don Sshinda is that they are, above all, playthings, whose main purpose is to make children laugh. The little mechanisms devised by the toymaker to make them move are designed to enchant. The toys also happen to incorporate death into life, narratives and play in a natural way, and in doing so they act as little release valves. Humour and lightness take the edge off the gravity and blackness of it all. Some of these calacas also manage to poke fun at our existential dread and make us catch ourselves when we are being too precious, a little like when we have been looking at our reflection in the mirror for too long.

I would hire this musical skeleton to play at my funeral, in a heartbeat.  He’s got steady feet, and though he looks like he might end up playing the same tune over and over and possibly keep dropping one of his mallets, I would still trust him to make it fun.

I wonder if Don Sshinda ever wondered what he would be like if he were one of these toys – he said he felt he was imbuing his toys with some of his spirit simply by giving them movement, and there is something rather lovely about the idea of life cycles in that sentiment – the movement he provided the toys with continues even though he himself is gone.

I see myself as a drum-playing skeleton, or perhaps a dancing skeleton with bony legs sticking out sideways as I moved, one-two one-two. I have the feeling ‘calaca me’ would be a physical comedy genius. I would certainly have a tricycle, and, in the mornings, I would get out of my coffin and do my morning exercises on a tree branch.