Thousands of archaeological finds have been made on the territory of the Tula Kremlin. All of them are helpful in studying the historical, cultural, craft and spiritual periods of people’s lives. A separate series of items illustrates the sphere of raising children in medieval Tula families.
The most significant group, up to 95% of all finds, consists of clay toys. All of them, except for single specimens, are made of white earthenware. In their raw form, these clays have a grayish-blue or almost black color. Their deposits are found in many places in the Tula region.
This type of clay is exceptionally malleable, so it is possible to pull out the most complex shapes from one piece. After firing, products made from this clay acquire a soft light color — from pure white to a pinkish tint. There is a sharp contrast between such white items and the reddish-brown fragments of toys that were made of ferruginous clays and acquired color after the firing.
Two types of baby rattles were the most popular. One of them included disc-shaped rattles in the form of rounded boxes with a diameter of five to eight centimeters and a height of two to four centimeters. They were made of two symmetrical halves — a lid and a side. Both parts were sculpted by hand or by using a mold.
The sides were overlapped with one or two holes left. These holes were used to press the sides from the inside with a finger to fix them together. On some fragments, the craftsman’s fingerprints are clearly visible on the inside. At the same stage, a clay ball with a diameter of one or two centimeters was placed inside the rattle to create a rattling effect.
After this, the hole was sealed, but the rattle was not. In the center of flat or slightly convex lids, and sometimes on the side walls of box-shaped rattles, a small through hole was made in the wet clay. It had two functions: it was used to remove gases that appeared inside the product during firing and to create sound resonance. The rattles were decorated with red, orange, or brown mineral dyes.
