marionettes

Little Golden Books: Tibor Gergely

The following illustration is by Tibor Gergely from the Little Golden Book ‘Houses’ by Elsa Jane Werner. I’m posting it as a comparison to the one by Richard Scarry in another Little Golden Book, ‘Cars and Trucks’, over at Wee Wonderfuls. There is an interesting discussion there about how in updates of the book that particular illustration has been changed to accommodate a more feminist attitude to gender roles. This one obviously belongs firmly in the earlier era, and I wonder if it was changed in a similar way later on?

I don’t have an exact date for this book – its one of a set of four books that together make up a ‘Little Golden Book Library’ that I bought in about 1983, and the dates given collectively are 1948 through 1969.

I was interested to see in an online bio of Tibor Gergely that as a young man he worked for two years in a Vienna marionette theatre as a puppet designer and stage decorator :-).

Puppet carving workshop


Antonin Muller and Michela Bartonova from Prague’s renowned Tineola Theatre are making their first Australian visit this year, and they’ll be holding an exclusive puppet carving workshop in March. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone interested in woodcarving or puppetry to learn from these acclaimed creative artists. The six-day workshop will be held near Bowral in the Southern Highlands of NSW, and numbers are strictly limited. You’ll need a basic set of woodcarving chisels, but experience is not necessary.

Dates: Saturday March 6 – Thursday March 11.
Cost: $630 plus cost of wood (tba)

For more information, or to make a booking, please call Lucy Turner on (02) 4871 2822.