PREHISTORY OF MILLER-MELBERG'S PLAY SCULPTURES
Jim Miller-Melberg’s playground sculptures were the most career-defining works of his life. His business Form, Inc. propelled his prolific output, gave him financial success, and handed him immortality as the “guy who made the turtle” that so many fondly and wistfully remember from their childhoods. For more than twenty years, Miller poured everything he had into the creation and distribution of castles, imaginative animal forms, climbing walls, and more. They sold by the thousands in the 1960s and 70s to populate the rapidly expanding playgrounds of schools, parks, and apartment complexes. But the idea of a playground sculpture business was never part of Miller’s master plan. Like so many serendipitous turning points in his life, this destiny dropped into his lap. Miller owed much of it to an eccentric Jack-of-all-trades character from New York named Robert Nichols.
A colorful and talented creator, Robert B. Nichols (1919-2010) studied design at Harvard under Walter Gropius and served as a Navy officer during World War II assembling landing aircraft. Working as a city planner in Sweden after the war, Nichols became interested in the inventive playground designs and play sculpture that were being developed there. Nichols’s eye was caught especially by the playground sculptures of Danish-Swedish architect and sculptor Egon Möller-Nielsen (1915-1959).

Möller-Nielsen’s Tufsen, designed 1949 (Public Domain Photo)
Settling in New York, Nichols began plans for his own modern playground and play sculpture company. Inspired by Möller-Nielsen, Nichols developed a theory of playgrounds that would transcend the old “outdoor gym” model of swings and monkey bars. Nichols wanted to create playgrounds based on variety, color, and the opportunity for imaginative and dramatic play, keeping in mind the movement of children. Nichols wrote articles such as “New Trends in Playground Design and Equipment” and “New Concepts Behind Designs for Modern Playgrounds” for design publications. He called his company Playground Associates, Inc. Nichols’s playground innovations included curved concrete and fiberglass structures and a rhinoceros made of canvas. Everything was driven by harnessing expressions of form and play. One of his central projects was the creation of his own abstract play sculpture he called the Saddle Slide.

Robert Nichols Saddle Slide (Valley News, West Lebanon, NH, 2/2/1955)
Interestingly, Nichols was now competing with Möller-Nielsen, who had started working with the playground equipment company Creative Playthings along with fellow abstract playground sculptor Robert Winston. The New York based Creative Playthings had been formed in 1945 by Frank and Theresa Caplan. Dedicated to toys and playground equipment that would fire the imaginations of children, Creative Playthings became very successful in pioneering progressive children’s play. In 1953, along with the Museum of Modern Art and Parents’ Magazine, Creative Playthings sponsored a playground sculpture contest that helped propel the modern playground. First prize of the competition went to Virginia Dortch Dorazio’s “Fantastic Village,” a tour de force assembly of abstract climbing walls full of sections, holes, and secret areas. Significantly, Creative Playthings offered Möller-Nielsen’s Tufsen in their catalogues. Along with these surreal shapes, Creative Playthings had been putting out curious concrete turtles for children to climb and play on.

Milton Hebald Turtle Tent 1953 (Photo: Tom Mardis)

1950s Turtle by the Londino Stone Company (Photo: Scott Hocking)

Prototype of Miller Melberg's Porpoise at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, MI (Photo: E. Lorey)
Miller was tiring of his teaching job at the University of Michigan where he felt suffocated by bureaucracy and lack of imagination. He resented that one of his colleagues who could not paint was teaching painting. Miller, the non-conformer, had lost patience with the place. But here was a chance for something new. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Whether Miller wanted it or not, he now had a new company, career, and future.