BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Puppetry in America (phase 2 of 2)

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Puppetry in America (phase 2 of 2):

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: Puppetry in America
December 13, 2013 – April 13, 2014
Howdy Doody and Kermit are only two of the beloved and familiar puppets in the museum's collection. Learn about the history and variety of puppets from marionettes and hand puppets to shadow puppets and ventriloquist figures, and learn about the role of significant puppets in American culture. Other highlights include Oscar the Grouch,Cookie Monster, Swedish Chef, and a selection of puppets from The Corpse Bride.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show? [Slideshow]

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] SIAHPU_140325_005.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] SIAHPU_140325_012.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] SIAHPU_140325_023.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[4] SIAHPU_140325_028.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[5] SIAHPU_140325_031.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[6] SIAHPU_140325_037.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[7] SIAHPU_140325_040.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[8] SIAHPU_140325_042.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[9] SIAHPU_140325_047.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[10] SIAHPU_140325_051.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] SIAHPU_140325_053.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] SIAHPU_140325_059.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[13] SIAHPU_140325_064.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[14] SIAHPU_140325_067.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[15] SIAHPU_140325_074.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[16] SIAHPU_140325_081.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[17] SIAHPU_140325_084.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[18] SIAHPU_140325_090.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[19] SIAHPU_140325_100.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[20] SIAHPU_140325_104.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[21] SIAHPU_140325_105.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[22] SIAHPU_140325_107.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[23] SIAHPU_140325_109.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[24] SIAHPU_140325_115.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[25] SIAHPU_140325_120.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[26] SIAHPU_140325_128.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[27] SIAHPU_140325_130.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[28] SIAHPU_140325_132.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[29] SIAHPU_140325_139.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[30] SIAHPU_140325_141.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[31] SIAHPU_140325_144.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[32] SIAHPU_140325_146.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[33] SIAHPU_140325_149.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[34] SIAHPU_140325_152.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[35] SIAHPU_140325_155.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[36] SIAHPU_140325_158.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[37] SIAHPU_140325_161.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[38] SIAHPU_140325_164.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[39] SIAHPU_140325_166.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[40] SIAHPU_140325_168.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[41] SIAHPU_140325_169.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[42] SIAHPU_140325_171.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[43] SIAHPU_140325_175.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[44] SIAHPU_140325_177.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[45] SIAHPU_140325_180.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[46] SIAHPU_140325_187.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[47] SIAHPU_140325_190.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[48] SIAHPU_140325_197.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[49] SIAHPU_140325_200.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[50] SIAHPU_140325_203.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[51] SIAHPU_140325_206.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[52] SIAHPU_140325_210.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[53] SIAHPU_140325_216.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[54] SIAHPU_140325_224.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[55] SIAHPU_140325_228.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[56] SIAHPU_140325_234.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[57] SIAHPU_140325_241.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[58] SIAHPU_140325_244.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[59] SIAHPU_140325_250.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[60] SIAHPU_140325_254.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[61] SIAHPU_140325_261.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[62] SIAHPU_140325_264.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[63] SIAHPU_140325_267.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIAHPU_140325_005.JPG: Lion shadow puppet, about 1850 Early Chinese shadow puppets were made of paper. Later, animal hide was used, for increased durability and detail. The puppet master created the design by piercing the leather. This mid-19th-century figure appears to be a hybrid of a lion and a qiln (a mythical unicorn beast). Shadow puppetry continues today throughout the world, particularly in shows such as the 1997 smash Broadway hit The Lion King.
2. SIAHPU_140325_023.JPG: Hand Puppets: Usually made of cloth, a hand puppet is a flexible, glove-like structure. The puppeteer inserts a hand and manipulates the figure by moving fingers and wrist. This method can be traced to prehistoric times, when storytellers used their hands to make shadows to illustrate their tales. It evolved evolved into the use of highly sophisticated objects of wood, plastic, paint, and fabric. Woman and man, about 1863 Little is known of these puppets' origins except that they were created and used during the Civil War era. They are from an extensive collection of nearly one hundred puppets amassed by Hazelle Hedges Rollins during her fifty-year career as a puppet maker, manufacturer, and historian.
3. SIAHPU_140325_028.JPG: Patagonian pigs & Mr. Ringmaster, 1948 Philadelphia artists Frank and Elizabeth Haines took up puppetry during the early 1930s and crafted hundreds of marionettes. Their play The Circus featured a number of marionettes designed as performing animals, including a pair of exotically attired Patagonian pig musicians named Pinkie and Patti. They hold mallets to play a prop marimba. The imposing Mr. Ringmaster presides masterfully over them.
4. SIAHPU_140325_042.JPG: MARIONETTES Marionettes are manipulated from above the stage using wires or strings usually attached to a horizontal control bar, often called an airplane control because of its shape. A usually unseen puppeteer operates the bar. The French term dates from around 1600 and translates as "little Mary," in recognition of the Virgin Mary, one of the first figures used as a stringed puppet in church morality plays.
5. SIAHPU_140325_047.JPG: Teto the Clown, about 1950 Teto the Clown is among the most popular of the children's toy puppets created by Hazelle Hedges Rollins for her Kansas City, Missouri, company. It features Rollins's patented airplane control, which allows for easier operation of the puppet and keeps the strings from tangling.
6. SIAHPU_140325_067.JPG: PAPER PUPPETS Intended as inexpensive children's toys, paper puppets are either cutout figures mounted on sticks or decorated paper bags. Cinderella and the Prince, about 1935 These paper puppets of fairy-tale characters Cinderella and the Prince are cutout color prints mounted on cardboard. They are manipulated by a cardboard stick extending through a slot at the bottom of the puppet.
7. SIAHPU_140325_081.JPG: VENTRILOQUIST PUPPETS Ventriloquist puppets can take a number of forms, such as a hand puppet or a stuffed creature; the type we know best is a large doll. All have a "conversation" with the puppeteer, achieved by the latter's ability to alter his speech, making it appear to come from the mouth of the puppet. This is the art of "throwing one's voice." Bob Campbell, about 1977 Bob Campbell was created by puppeteer-actor Jay Johnson for the TV comedy series Soap, a lampoon of soap opera narratives. The puppet acted as the half-brother of cast members Johnson and Billy Crystal, and was used often as Johnson's uninhibited alter ego, spouting outrageous observations about various situations and characters. Highly controversial for its time, Soap dealt openly with topics such as race, religion, sexuality, and organized crime.
8. SIAHPU_140325_090.JPG: MARIONETTES Marionettes are manipulated from above the stage using wires or strings usually attached to a horizontal control bar, often called an airplane control because of its shape. A usually unseen puppeteer operates the bar. The French term dates from around 1600 and translates as "little Mary," in recognition of the Virgin Mary, one of the first figures used as a stringed puppet in church morality plays. Art Carney, 1959 Bil Baird created this marionette for the television special "Art Carney Meets the Sorcerer's Apprentice," about an illusionist whose magic always backfires. The puppet is in the image of actor Art Carney, who rose to fame as an original cast member of the television situation comedy The Honeymooners. Baird is famous for devising the puppets featured in "The Lonely Goatherd" sequence in the 1965 film The Sound of Music.
9. SIAHPU_140325_107.JPG: HAND PUPPETS Usually made of cloth, a hand puppet is a flexible, glove-like structure. The puppeteer inserts a hand and manipulates the figure by moving fingers and wrist. This method can be traced to prehistoric times, when storytellers used their hands to make shadows to illustrate their tales. It evolved evolved into the use of highly sophisticated objects of wood, plastic, paint, and fabric.
10. SIAHPU_140325_109.JPG: Snap, Crackle, Pop, about 1954 These elves, official mascots created for a Kellogg's Rice Krispies advertising campaign, are based on drawings by illustrator Vernon Grant and cartoonist Don Margolis. The characters are named for the percussive sounds made when the puffed-rice cereal is splashed by milk. Originally the puppets were offered to consumers as premiums for collected cereal box tops mailed in to the manufacturer.
11. SIAHPU_140325_128.JPG: MUPPETS The Muppet characters grew from the creativity and imagination of Jim Henson, who was involved in puppetry since his high school years. Introduced in the 1950s on various television programs, the Muppets are known for their zany, absurdist humor and outlandish, distinctive looks. Henson coined the term "muppet" simply because he liked the sound of the word.
12. SIAHPU_140325_130.JPG: Bert and Ernie; Oscar the Grouch; Cookie Monster, 1969 For the public television children's series Sesame Street, Jim Henson created a virtual neighborhood made up of his zany Muppets. Most were hand-rod puppets used to provide life lessons: for example, the inseparable duo Bert and Ernie show the values of friendship, and Oscar the Grouch's irascible behavior and love for trash demonstrate the effects of antisocial behavior.
13. SIAHPU_140325_161.JPG: Swedish Chef; Scooter, 1975-76 The Muppet Show, a vaudeville-style Jim Henson television series, featured a cast of wacky Muppets and human guest stars. The Swedish Chef, a parody of TV cooking show hosts, speaks in a comically incomprehensible dialect. The bespectacled Scooter is a stagehand at the Muppet Theater and nephew of the theater's owner.
14. SIAHPU_140325_164.JPG: Red Fraggle; Boober Fraggle, 1983 The children's TV series Fraggle Rock featured a group of Muppet characters known as Fraggles. Although comically high-spirited, the series was an allegory of the human world, exploring such complex issues as social conflict, personal identity, and environment. Red Fraggle's optimism, athleticism, and boundless energy annoy the dour Boober Fraggle, who dislikes frivolity.
15. SIAHPU_140325_171.JPG: Bert and Ernie; Oscar the Grouch; Cookie Monster, 1969 For the public television children's series Sesame Street, Jim Henson created a virtual neighborhood made up of his zany Muppets. Most were hand-rod puppets used to provide life lessons: for example, the inseparable duo Bert and Ernie show the values of friendship, and Oscar the Grouch's irascible behavior and love for trash demonstrate the effects of antisocial behavior.
16. SIAHPU_140325_175.JPG: Corpse Bride, 2005 The use of stop-motion puppets in films is given a glorious turn in producer-director Tim Burton's 2005 Corpse Bride, a gently macabre Victorian fairy tale. Graham G. Maiden and the British firm Mackinnon and Saunders transformed Burton's vision into intricate puppets made of metal, silicone, and fabric. The supporting characters shown here are a male and female zombie, Widow Munch, and Green Grocer.
17. SIAHPU_140325_177.JPG: STOP-MOTION PUPPETS Stop-motion puppets are three-dimensional figures made of either carved wood and plastic or a clay substance molded on a wire shape. The puppeteer poses and re-poses the puppets in progressive phases of movement and documents each movement on a single frame of film. The film is then projected at the correct speed, creating the illusion of animation.
18. SIAHPU_140325_187.JPG: California Raisins, 1986 The California Raisins are sculpted clay figures used as advertising and merchandising characters by the California Raisin Advisory Board. Developed by Will Vinton Productions and based on caricatures of African American rhythm-and-blues groups, they are often accompanied by a soundtrack of "I Heard It through the Grapevine," originally popularized by soul and rhythm-and-blues singer Marvin Gaye.
19. SIAHPU_140325_197.JPG: FINGER PUPPETS Animated simply by wiggling, a finger puppet is a sheath of cloth, paper, or rubber that fits over a single finger. It normally has no moving parts such as arms or legs. This form is generally used for toys.
20. SIAHPU_140325_200.JPG: Howdy Doody, about 1950 These finger puppet toys for children depict three cast members of the wildly popular children's television series The Howdy Doody Show. Two are based on marionette figures seen on the show: cowboy Howdy Doody and Phineas T. Bluster, the cantankerous mayor of Doodyville. They are joined by a miniature version of the human character Clarabell the Clown. They illustrate one of the many ways the show was aggressively marketed to youngsters.
21. SIAHPU_140325_203.JPG: Puppets on Radio, Film, and Television Beginning in the 1930s, new media provided wider audiences for America's most well-known puppeteers and puppets. New techniques were developed to match the immediacy afforded by the microphone and camera. Edgar Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy entered American homes via radio broadcasts. George Pal pioneered a groundbreaking system of stopmotion puppetry on film. Jim Henson's techniques grew out of his fascination with the technology of television; he achieved intimacy by freeing his characters from the confines of the traditional puppet stage and animating them through his experiments with the focus of the TV camera and TV monitor.
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: ) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2023_DC_SIAH_Mirror: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Mirror, Mirror for Us All: Disney Parks and the American Narrative / Experience (146 photos from 2023)
- 2023_09_19A5_SIAH_More_Perfect: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time (134 photos from 09/19/2023)
- 2023_09_17D2_SIAH_Holzer: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Jenny Holzer, THE PEOPLE (22 photos from 09/17/2023)
- 2023_07_13B1_SIAH_Weatherbreak: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Reconstructing ‘Weatherbreak’ in an Age of Extreme Weather (17 photos from 07/13/2023)
- 2023_06_30D1_SIAH_Trouble: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive (42 photos from 06/30/2023)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Sense: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things (87 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Remembrance: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: War and Remembrance (8 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Rallying: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Rallying Against Racism (8 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Music_HerStory: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Music HerStory: Women and Music of Social Change (106 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Musical: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Musical Instruments (3 photos from 2022)
- ...More (List all 130 pages)...
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (11 photos from 2022)
- 2021_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (27 photos from 2021)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2014 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Winchester, VA, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA), Michigan to visit mom in the hospice before she died and then a return trip after she died, and my 9th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles). Ego strokes: Paul Dickson used one of my photos as the author photo in his book "Aphorisms: Words Wrought by Writers". Number of photos taken this year: just over 470,000.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link: [Thumbnails Only]
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].