Toymaker’s creations recall bygone era of craftsmanship

Published 4:57 pm Thursday, June 4, 2009

Thank goodness for Don Surface.

Kids today fill their rooms with high-tech toys that devour batteries, Wii games that necessitate a TV and even clothes that light up, flash and blink.

But Surface kicks it totally old school.

He makes toys by hand. Really, by hand.

“The toys have to look like they were made by boys out of their dad’s scrap iron piles from the 1920s to the 1950s,” Surface said. “I do not weld. I do not braze because us boys didn’t have welders or brazers in the 1950s, so I use nuts and bolts.”

Surface is one of the many artists at this year’s Arts Council of Snohomish County’s 15th annual Artists’ Garage Sale at Rosehill Community Center in Mukilteo.

The popular event draws patrons looking for deals on original art and artists in need of supplies. More than 80 participants offer watercolors, oils, pastels, acrylics, glass, found objects, cards, sculpture, ceramics, photography and garden art along with seconds, old stock and new stock.

Over the years, Surface, 60, has collected more than a ton of parts — truckloads, he said — and other items by trolling scrap metal yards and swap meets. At the garage sale, he’ll sell his precious treasures to artists who specialize in recycled or mixed-media art.

Surface will bring a handful of his toys. The toys range in size from the largest at 3 feet long to smaller shelf-size or garden art pieces. But they are not inexpensive, starting at $300 a toy. Then again, each toy is uniquely made without a pattern.

There are no Home Depot parts on these toys, either. Surface won’t use anything that looks like a reproduction. All the pieces are parts from the bygone days.

Surface likes the nice hues of all the old tobacco tins so there are lots of those. Tractors might have old fence insulators or be operated by a male figurine taken off a bowling trophy.

The Sanka Coffee Truck carries a load of 150 pennies from 1919. The body of a steam shovel comes from a Log Cabin syrup tin. Two lawn sprinklers and a fishing lure form a biplane. A 40 mm shell casing became a gravity fed fuel pump.

When they are finished, the toy tractors, rail cars, steam shovels and the like are not only museum pieces of recycled gems, but celebrations of the skills boys used to have and poignant reminders of how far we’ve come.

Each toy comes with a postcard picture of the toy and a poem that Surface has written about the toy. The postcards bear the name, Por Boy Toys, and include Surface’s first-grade picture from 1954.

“When I make these and sell these to people, I give them a certificate of title,” Surface said.

Surface was one of 12 children growing up on Whidbey Island. The brood didn’t get store-bought toys. Surface began building toys in the early 1980s when his son got a store-bought toy for Christmas that immediately broke.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is crazy. I will go and make something that won’t break,’ ” Surface said.

Since then, the semi-retired operating engineer who lives in Mukilteo spends his spare time collecting parts, making toys and occasionally showing them off in public.

His toys have been on view in the Arts Council of Snohomish County gallery, the Best of the Northwest show and during Christmas in Seattle.

His favorite toy is the tractor he named after his stepgranddad, the “Dave Gibson.” He gave it to his daughter for her 30th birthday and it’s destined to belong to his 3-year-old grandson.

“One day he will have that toy his grandpa made in memory of his stepgrandpa,” Surface said. “It’s a nice legacy.”

Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424, goffredo@heraldnet.com.