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)

 

Möller-Nielsen had an interest in using his creativity for children, even doing successful work as the illustrator for children’s books. Möller-Nielsen’s philosophy of play sculpture was “based on a child’s desire to hide, slide and climb up high to feel that sense of danger.” His play sculpture Tufsen is the forerunner of modern play sculptures; abstract, curved, full of hollows, it was a striking creation for 1949. In 1950 Möller-Nielsen also created the seven Domarring sculptures which were minimalistic, whimsical granite animal shapes for children to play on and around, including a cute turtle. Möller-Nielsen’s play sculptures started appearing all over Stockholm with the support and direction of the chief park designer Holger Bloom. Nichols returned to the U.S. inspired to carry the Möller-Nielsen flag into the New World.

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)

 

The Saddle Slide was created in 1954 by Nichols along with sculptors Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe and James Jones, architects Shephard Schrieber and Edward Barnes, and landscape architect Hideo Sasaki. A folded arched form full of holes made of cast stone of granite and marble chips, the Saddle Slide looked like nothing previously seen in American playgrounds. With a plan to cast the sculptures on-site through shipped molds, Nichols’s business began with the first saddle slides appearing in New York and California. Nichols realized that he would have to offer some concrete creatures to complement what larger playground equipment companies were offering.

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)

 

The Turtle was the 1953 creation of New York sculptor Milton Hebald (1917-2015). Called the “Turtle Tent” because it could be crawled under as well as over, Hebald’s turtle was a cute creature with a funny snub-nosed appearance and dimples on his shell to aid in climbing. Around the same time another concrete turtle and wide-tailed fish were being sold by the Londino Stone Company, also based in New York. Londino sold concrete, cast-stone, and concrete park and playground equipment.

 

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

 

Back in Ann Arbor, MI, working as a design instructor at the U of M, Jim Miller had been sketching abstract castle and climbing wall play sculptures, wondering if he could make such forms commercially successful. One day Miller was contacted by Nichols who told him about his business and his challenges. He was having problems with his molds. His Saddle Slide was difficult to manufacture on-site and needed to be re-envisioned and re-engineered. He also wanted to add some aesthetically designed animal pieces, specifically a turtle and porpoise. Miller agreed to the work, though it is not known what exact projects that Miller did for Nichols. We do know that the saddle slide was completely redesigned, and that Miller designed his playful turtle around 1959. It was a descendent of Hebald’s archetype, but certainly his own turtle. Miller also created a smooth, invitingly arching porpoise. 

Prototype of Miller Melberg's Porpoise at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, MI  (Photo: E. Lorey)

 

While Miller plunged into his work for Playground Associates, Nichols was already moving onto other projects, and his company was not making money. A man who loved plans and who always had a new idea on the horizon, Nichols would (among many other things during his life) become a successful poet, playwright, and novelist. He would eventually oversee the 1969 redesign of New York’s Washington Square Park. His playground sculpture business plans retreated, and he fell behind in his payments to Miller. When Miller asked to be paid for his work, Nichols gave him a different offer. Would Miller accept as payment all rights to his design work, as well as the Saddle Slide; essentially the product line and what was left of the whole play-sculpture business? Such an offer was entirely in character for Nichols. He hadn’t patented the Saddle Slide and had a reputation for openness and generosity.

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.

 

[Sources: Miller-Melberg, Bogart, Cartiere, Davies, Druker, Hennebury, Hocking, Jurrjens, Lederman, Levine, Millman, Minton, Duncan Nichols, Robert Nichols, Robb, Progressive Architecture, Solomon. Details in Sources Page]