Tui's Frisbee

Object Description

Vinyl pet toy in the shape of a Frisbie pie tin.

Dog Toy in the Shape of a Frisbie, “Vinyl Bone” (lettering on vertex), orange colored, injection molded, polymer disk with bone shape. Used by “Tui”, domestic sheepdog still in residence at “Silver Screen Printers,” Tip-Top Building, White River Jct. 22 cm dim (irregular).

"Used" is perhaps too inconclusive a word to describe the brutalization this toy has been subjected to. A dog runs along a dirty hallway into the semidarkness. When she catches her toy she becomes simultaneously desperately social, unbearably proud of her catching and prancing abilities, and fiercely possessive. In the darkness of the hallway, her eyes have a burning lightness to them. The Smith (or Tip-Top) building in which she plays is a former bread bakery. In the 1980s it began to be utilized by artists who needed large spaces at a reasonable rate of rent.

Frisbee Pie Tins

The original frisbies were pie tins manufactured by the Bridgeport, Connecticut Frisbie Pie Company (80,000 pies per day by 1956 when this business closed.) The Smith family manufactured 6,500 crackers per day in downtown White River Junction, Vermont. The cracker business ceased, and it and the bakery was sold out of the family, ca. 1934.

—Gift of Tui (through B. Arnold)

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