Dear cu­s­to­mers

Mec­cano, Sto­kys, Märk­lin … Do your eyes light up with these names? Then you also built mo­dels as a child? If not — it’s never too late, as Edu­ard Na­dig will prove to you.

Since we were un­fort­u­n­a­tely unable to ce­le­brate our 10th an­ni­ver­sary with you in 2020, we look for­ward to in­vi­ting you to a spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion in Sep­tem­ber af­ter an ex­tra­or­di­nary time.

In 2010 we took over the goldsmith’s ate­lier on Schaff­hauser­platz from Edu­ard Na­dig and con­tin­ued to do so un­til the move in 2017 to the cur­rent lo­ca­tion. This gave Edu­ard Na­dig time to cul­ti­vate his hobby, mo­del ma­king, in­ten­si­vely. We are proud to show you an over­view of his works over the past 10 years.

Vernissage aperitif with Eduard Nadig present:

Friday, September 3rd from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

We ask for your re­gi­stra­tion by email using our cont­act form
and hope for num­e­rous visitors.

Best re­gards

Pa­trick Stal­der and So­nia Mon­taño Stalder

Frank Hornby (1863–1936), in­ven­tor of one of the world’s most fa­mous toys, was born in Li­ver­pool in 1863.

For the amu­se­ment of his sons, Hornby built a toy crane out of per­fo­ra­ted me­tal strips that were held tog­e­ther with nuts and bolts. The crane could be dis­mant­led and the parts used to build dif­fe­rent mo­dels. Hornby saw a fu­ture for this ver­sa­tile toy and set out to mass-pro­duce it.

The toy was pa­ten­ted on Ja­nu­ary 9, 1901 as “Me­cha­nics Made Easy”. In 1907 it be­came known as Mec­cano and took the toy world by storm.

Hornby star­ted ma­king its own parts in a small, one-room fac­tory. In 1914 the fac­tory ope­ned on Binns Road. This re­mained the company’s head­quar­ters for more than 60 ye­ars. In the 1920s and 1930s, Mec­cano Ltd. the lar­gest toy ma­nu­fac­tu­rer in the UK.

Frank Hornby died on Sep­tem­ber 21, 1936. His le­gacy li­ves on to this day. Thou­sands of en­thu­siasts around the world still build Mec­cano mo­dels and ope­rate Hornby rail­road systems.

The foun­ding of the Stock­mann Brot­hers com­pany on the city li­mits of Lu­cerne in 1941 tur­ned out to be a stroke of luck. The Se­cond World War made it ex­tre­mely dif­fi­cult to im­port toys into Switz­er­land and prac­ti­cally came to a standstill. While me­tal cons­truc­tion kits from the world-fa­mous MECCANO and its Ger­man com­pe­ti­tor MAERKLIN do­mi­na­ted the toy mar­ket be­fore the war, both pro­ducts were prac­ti­cally no lon­ger available in Switz­er­land at that time. This de­spite the fact that the me­tal cons­truc­tion kit, as the fo­rerun­ner of all lear­ning and tea­ching games, held an im­portant po­si­tion in the toy mar­ket at that time. In 1941 the Stock­mann brot­hers de­ve­lo­ped the “Ur­sto­kys” with a hole spa­cing of 10 mm. Ho­we­ver, on the ad­vice of a lea­ding toy re­tailer, the well-known cu­s­toms sy­stem from MECCANO and MAERKLIN with a hole spa­cing of ½ inch was adopted.