Hello and welcome.

If you had an idea or image of a man who designed and made wooden toys, perhaps Wojtek Bajor would be it : a tall, happy, vibrant, intelligent man with a grey beard, living in an old log cabin on the edge of a forest in Central Europe...

Each day Wojtek makes his way to work along the forest track to his workshop. Deer emerge to graze on the lush grass around the toy factory, squirrels dart from tree-to-tree and woodpeckers yammer-away in the woods.

Blanket the scene with white snow and you have the passing of the seasons.

Time is also marked in the tree growth rings in the wood from which Bajo toys are made.

This is a setting where all wooden toys should be made... far from the industrial lands which characterise most toy production.

The wood from which Bajo toys are made, comes from orchards and hardwood forests in the area. Well-managed for a thousand years, and once the property of Swedish kings, then Polish nobles; these forests and orchards produce the timber from which quality wooden toys are made: Birch, Beech, Sycamore Maple, Oak, Walnut, Cherrywood...

Producing great wooden toys is not as simple as marrying crafted timber with colour paint. It's about the intellectual process which seeks to achieve an educational goal for the child who will play with them. Good design is an integral part of this, and addresses form & function, toy safety, packaging-design and ecology - from the idea origin, to the sketchpad, to the prototype, to the retail store and on to the customer and their gift recipient.

Bajo toys - we have been told - are both a joy to behold, and to hold. There has been a lot of smart work which has gone into each-and-every one of them, in order for them to do their job (for generations).

Well-designed toys assist the child to consider, guage, imagine, coordinate, move, contstruct, anticipate... Simplicity of design, combined with vibrant colour and natural timber have made Bajo wooden toys a very popular brand around the world, and a flagship for 'Made-in-Europe'.

In a time when many factories folded or packed-up and moved to 'You-know-where', Bajo-stuck-it-out in Poland. The world still wanted a Made-in-Europe brand, and was prepared to pay a little bit more for what they wanted. Their realisation that the maxim 'you get what you pay for' very much applied to children's toys.

Wojtek Bajor makes the toys he designs because he loves what he does. He has the artist's inspiration and the mechanic's regimental eye for detail and componentry. With each toy he and his employees produce, he has a personal association with, as one would expect of any artist.

Many consider Bajo wooden toys art-forms. It is perhaps no surprise to learn that Wojtek - the designer and maker of wooden toys (at first for his daughter, then the village, and then the world) is also an academic architect and design lecturer at Krakow University. He literally'walks the talk'.

Wojtek Bajor is the fountainhead of his workshop, and Bajo wooden toys are his offering to the children of the world, who are fortunate enough to have someone special in their lives buy them one (or more!).

Bajo toys have been retailed in Germany since 1987, and in Australia since 2007.

The brand has one of the largest and perhaps the most impressive of stands at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, and also exhibits worldwide.

Seek them out at selected stockists around Australia and New Zealand on www.bajo.com.au.