William Simmonds operating his marionettes.
…
So many of you having evidently enjoyed the post I made about Walter Wilkinson last week, I offer one today about William Simmonds, another artisan puppeteer who worked tirelessly to revive the traditions of British puppet theatre with his meticulously crafted marionettes. The Gloucester Museum hold a magnificent collection of Simmonds puppets, though my attempt to get copyright permission to show some of them here has met with no response, and dire as the warnings on the site are regarding infringement, I needs must heed them. Luckily I’ve found other sources of photographs, but you can see the wonderful collection held by the museum at this LINK. (Click on the individual entries to bring up images.)
…
Young Faun
…
It was to the museum that some years ago I was spirited away by Peter for a surprise (it was my birthday) private viewing of the Simmonds marionettes. To my delight I was able to untangle the strings of some of them and demonstrate to the curator how the little figures would once have been operated. One in particular was transformed from a limp and dishevelled heap into a lithe and spirited performer. A tiny faun, shown above in a photograph taken in the 1930s, is so ingeniously constructed, that as I ordered his strings, lifted him to his feet and took mastery of the control, his goat’s hindquarters clicked into action in a springy gait that was both characterful and entirely plausible in terms of animal anatomy and locomotion. Wonderful to operate.
…
Adult Faun
…
William Simmonds was born in 1876 in Istambul, where his father was working as an architect. Having spent some time helping at his father’s practice, he later attended Windsor School of Art, moving on from there to study painting under Walter Crane at the Royal College of Art. Scenery painting was among the skills he studied and acquired at the Royal College. On graduating he worked as an assistant to the American painter Edwin Austen Abbey. In 1912 he married an embroiderer, Eve Pearl, and in 1914 they moved from Wiltshire to London. Throughout the war William worked as a draughtsman, particularly in the field of tank design. In 1919 the Simmonds moved to the Cotswolds. It was there that William’s lifelong interest in theatricals surfaced when he made his first puppet show for a children’s party, collaborating with Eve who made the costumes and provided the musical accompaniment to the performance.
…
Marionette of ’a Greek’ designed for a projected… though to my knowledge uncompleted… John Drinkwater puppet play.
…
William and Eve continued creating puppets and puppet-shows throughout the 1920′s and 30′s, and the quality of their artistry was much admired. Together the couple became fully integrated into the cultural life of the Cotswolds. Mostly, William wrote the plays, but occasionally other playwrights like their friend John Drinkwater provided scripts. During the 1920s and 1930s they held professional puppet shows, including a regular slot at the Grafton Theatre in London. When arthritis forced William to give up wood-carving, he began pottery classes at Stroud School of Art. Creativity flowed from his fingertips, and he was not be be daunted by the limitations that came with age and infirmity. He died in 1968, working right up until the end.
…
Snowball and Estrella from ‘Circus’
…
…
Most of the images for this post have come from the wonderful Puppets and the Puppet Stage by Cyril W. Beaumont. Published in 1938 it’s a treasury of images drawn from productions across the world. A must for all puppet enthusiasts.
…
…
…
I am so happy to have found this site. William Simmonds was my grandmother’s
brother and I have a couple of carvings he made for me when I was a child. Also
have some paintings (my mother died two and a half years ago).
Lois, what a lovely surprise to read of your connection to William Simmonds. I so admire the work he did in the field of puppet theatricals, and having seen and handled some of his marionettes, I know what a master-craftsman he was. I would be greatly interested in writing more about him here at the Artlog if you felt able to share with me any family recollections, and it would be wonderful too to show some images of the carvings he made for you when you were a child. He really was the most fantastic wood-carver.
If you are interested in contacting me privately, please click HERE and send an e-mail so that I can get back to you. I’m so pleased you left a message today, and I do hope to hear back from you again before too long.
Very best
Clive Hicks-Jenkins
I really enjoyed your piece on the Simmonds puppets, which I have loved for years, since seeing them in the case they inhabited in the City Museum in the ’80s. Simmonds sculptures and carvings are generally full of inherent muscle and potential movement – have you come across the animal carvings (some in the Cheltenham museum), or is your interest more exclusively in marionettes? There was, apparently, a pantomime horse that used to come in half…It’s a shame you don’t have photos of your meeting with the puppets – if you disentangled strings I’m sure you should have been due a photo op. I have been shocked by how little the puppets are displayed now they are in the hands of the Folk Museum – they were always visible in the City Museum.
Hello Camilla. I’m so pleased you enjoyed this post. Thank you for dropping by and leaving a message.
I do know the Simmonds animal carvings and greatly admire them, but thought that I might one day make a separate post on the subject. The online photographs of those too are covered by dire warnings not to use them without copyright permission, and having tried to get it for the puppet photographs and failed to elicit any response, I can’t quite face the frustration of wasting more time on a wild-goose chase over the images of the animal carvings. I recall seeing some of the carvings in a museum in Cheltenham, and they were lovely things.
As a blogger I firmly believe that online photographs of objects from museum collections should be free to those who want to use them when sharing information for the simple pleasure of it. In fact it’s quite rare these days to see warnings as fierce as those that protect the Simmonds puppets. I think such copyright warnings show a want of understanding that publicly-funded museum bodies should be doing everything to promote their collections in the blogger world. I can see that using the images for gain should be discouraged, but a blog is altogether another matter.
As a painter I find images of my work on countless blogs that never asked my permission to show them, and I wouldn’t dream of complaining because I see such ‘borrowing’ as free publicity.
I couldn’t agree more! After all this time has passed since Simmonds died, you wonder who stands to gain. I found the pantomime horse, by the way. it’s with a whole lot of his other marionettes in the craft centre in Farnham. Click HERE to see.
Camilla, thank you so much for forwarding the Farnham link. There are some wonderful puppets to be seen there, as well as some of W.S.’s beautiful animal carvings. I’m very much obliged to you. That pantomime-horse is a wonder!
these are wonderful!! puppetry is such a fascinating realm…ever since i started with your maquettes, i’ve been itching to try more 3d versions
Fascinating post on your knowledge and experience of the history of puppetry. I have been absorbed reading about this and previous puppet posts in the Artlog since yesterday. Thank you Clive.
Did you find THIS one, Janet? It’s crammed with all sorts of marvellous links, a real ‘primer’ of puppet techniques.
The Project x puppet primer was just amazing!
Wow, more treasures!
These puppets are exquisite – delicate and beautiful figures. I love the little faun-hooves.
Thank you Clive!
Yes, those little faun-hooves are indeed wonderful. He was a fantastic wood-carver, his marionettes brimming over with character and life.
I think that William and Walter are both men ‘of their time’ Clive, or am I just being fanciful ? There’s William performing all togged up in a shirt and tie and looking more like your favourite uncle than a master puppeteer but your words confirm his skills. Thanks for bringing these two gentleman players to our notice again and shame on Gloucester Museum for not following their remit, replying to you and supporting the promotion of William Simmonds to a wider audience via their photographs.
I think that the online archive could be made a lot more user-friendly in copyright matters, and certainly it would be good if there were a better response system. (For instance an automated e-mail back explaining that your message has been received and will be dealt with within a given time.) But instead there’s a black hole that swallows enquiries, and that’s not helpful for those genuinely interested and seeking permission.
I think collections really do need to get with the programme and understand that the world of online-sharing has changed significantly. It’s not as though bloggers are selling images or making money from their endeavours. The Gloucester Museum just isn’t getting it right in terms of promoting its holdings, because those images should be the first things that appear when anyone types ‘William Simmonds, puppet-maker’ into a search-engine, and they’re not. No point in having a wonderful resource but then not ensuring that it’s out there and being seen.
Yes, they were both definitely ‘gentleman players’, and both were skilled artist/makers. It’s significant that they recognised and appreciated the traditions of the old peep-shows, and sought in their different ways to carry them forward to new audiences. But the age of mass entertainment in the form of TV was on the way, and the days of the travelling showman were over. Wilkinson and Simmonds were a part of the last flowering, and one can only admire their insight and passionate commitment to the art.
Those are delightful–really surprising and lovely. I like this sort of post and hope you do more… Since you are the De-tangler, I would think they would let you have a few photographs!
There’s been no reply to my enquiry, and I’m short of time to chase the matter up. (Back in November Peter made an enquiry to a major Welsh institution about copyright of an image he needed for a publication, and he hasn’t heard back yet. The wheels of some institutions can occasionally grind exceeding slow.) I would hope the Gloucester Museum would oblige me re their Simmonds holdings, but the post has been done now without recourse to their images, and so I should probably just forget about the matter. There is a link in the post for anyone wanting to view the many photographs at the museum’s website.
The trouble is, none of the Gloucester Museum images come up when you google Simmonds. In fact, very little comes up. That’s the shame of it really. The Simmonds images… and there are many of them… are buried on the museum’s website where Google isn’t taking people. If those images were freely available for enthusiasts to blog about, his online presence would grow and I’m sure his work would be admired by many people all over the world. Even for anyone who does eventually track down Simmonds to the museum website, the copyright infringement warnings are so grim and the means by which permission might be sought so unhelpful… another example of bad website design and wording… that most are just going to wander off empty-handed. I did persist and send a permission-to-use application, but there has been no response. A shame.
Oh, heavens, they are gorgeous! The faun is just exquisite. I’ve loved puppets since I was very tiny…my Pelham Pinocchio watches me every day in the studio…smiling even when I am producing rubbish! The maquettes you use, Clive, are really 2D puppets, don’t you think?
Yes Shellie, the maquettes are puppets. Sort of like shadow puppets, but painted. And I certainly use them in a puppet-like way, exploring expressions of meaning through shape.
I too started off as a child with Pelham marionettes, receiving the first for my seventh birthday. It was the Prince, complete with an eighteenth-century pale blue watered-silk frock coat and a powdered and beribboned wig. Happy memories. Like you I owned a Pinocchio, though never the Jiminy Cricket I so coveted! They made a Gepetto and a cat who looked like Felix, but the Pinocchio range never went further. No Lampwick, no Honest John or Stromboli or Cleo the goldfish or Blue Fairy. No Monstro the Whale! That was the trouble with the Pelham Puppets drawn from film, TV and even literary sources. You could never aspire to a full set! (There was a fairly good ‘Alice’ set, with a splendid White Rabbit, Duchess and Fish Footman, but I never knew anyone who had it, as the puppets were early Pelham and I think that not very many were made.) I got the most value performance-wise from the Nations of the World puppets, with their generic round heads and button-noses. I used to redress and repaint them to make new puppet casts for the plays I wrote. But there never seemed to be roles for the Disney or Hanna-Barbera characters, who I delighted in owning, though those puppets ended up being more admired than used.
PS. I simply don’t believe that you produce anything even close to rubbish, not even on a bad day!
These are magnificent puppets .They are so full of character even in the stills! The horse is a true work of art. What a brilliant birthday present, clever old Peter. Did I send you the pics I took in the puppet museum in Prague? I must look them out for you.
William Simmonds was a magnificent carver and creator of marionettes. Liz, having held held some of his puppets in my hands and operated them, I can say that the constructions are so beautifully articulated and balanced that there is a natural elegance and dynamic to the movement they produce. The little faun’s legs felt almost as they were powered by muscle, so perfectly did they respond to the control. That’s a rare thing in a puppet. When a figure is poorly conceived and executed, the puppeteer can feel as though it’s a battle to elicit a performance. But the Simmonds marionettes collaborate with the operator, and it’s as though the energy flows both ways through the strings.
Those fauns are masterful. I once tried to make a marionette. By far the most difficult thing I have ever attempted to do. I long to complete a well balanced one and have several books that demonstrate how to create the joints. I love that you have that affinity with these magical creations.
It’s a complex craft, marionette-building. Weight is crucial. Too light and the puppet will float about, too heavy and it’ll be uncomfortable to hold up for long. Jointing is an elaborate process, as is stringing, and costuming must be carefully judged so as not to compromise movement. It’s a minefield.
It certainly is. I find making simple rod puppets simpler. My main reason for learning was to be able to teach my year 6 (11 yr old) class design and technology in a way that would inspire and interest them. They have just completed their first automata (using cam and push rod). However I am not sure we are quite up to the more complex aspects of puppetry yet. I like to keep the expectations high.