The Puppet Challenge Part 12: Peter, Ben, Lucy and Lynne

Peter Slight, Ben Javens and Lucy Kempton, with a guest-appearance by Lynne Lamb

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Peter Slight initiated the idea of a Puppet Challenge at the Artlog, and thereafter researched and approached many of the artists and makers who would go on to produce puppets for it. Last year his jaunty artwork (see above) announced the Challenge, and thereafter he compiled a number of the ‘puppet posts’ that we jointly provided to encourage the contributors. I am much obliged to him for all his hard work.

Peter Slight: return to the horned man

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Peter Slight set his heart on making a ‘horned Man’ puppet from the outset of the Challenge. I’m touched that he chose a folkloric character close to my own heart. It’s no secret here at the Artlog that last year Peter tracked me down and identified me as the anonymous designer of a theme-park attraction that long pre-dated my career as a painter, in which a horned man made an appearance. Peter says that seeing my work on that project when he was at an impressionable age, definitely tipped him into the love of British folklore that informed his choice of career as an artist.

Peter writes:

“If all the artists who you have inspired dedicted just one piece of work to you, it would amount to a LOT of work! I myself was inspired by your work over 20 years before I even found out who you were! (And I’m still being inspired by you.)”

“Thanks again, I can honestly say this is one of the best things I’ve ever been involved with, it’s been a real pleasure and privilege doing my little bit.”

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Above: the puppet as originally conceived by Peter

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Below: his Horned Man as realised.

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Ben Javens: Jack-the-Green

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Like Peter Slight, Ben Javens is an illustrator, and it’s interesting how both have brought the style of their more usual work to their puppets. Anyone knowing Ben’s graphic output would immediately recognise this Jack-the-Green puppet as being his.

Ben Javens illustration: All Around my Hat

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Interesting too, that neither Ben’s Jack-the-Green or Peter’s Horned Man have arms, which lends them a particularly naive charm. I think they hail from the same universe.

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Lucy Kempton: Fairy Melusine

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I was delighted when I heard that Lucy Kempton was making a version of the French sorceress, Melusine, because it was a tale that I had discovered when studying the ravishing miniatures of the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, in which in flying serpent form, she makes an appearance. That’s her above the red-roofed tower to the right.

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Lucy writes beautifully of the story, and so I shall leave her to tell it in her own words, as well as with a lovely quote from Jean d’Arras.

“I chose the mythical figure of Melusine, who is something of a favourite of mine. I was determined to make her from old felted jumpers, old t-shirts, scraps of wool and other textile and knitting-related materials which were waste or which I had already, and knowing I would leave the making of her quite late and be short of time, and that sewing to any kind of perfectionist standard often discourages and deters me from finishing things, I would deliberately make her in a rough and improvisational manner. In fact on researching the story, I learned that one of the best known versions of it from the Middle Ages was that of Jean d’Arras, and was part of a cycle of stories designed to be told by ladies at their spinning and needlework, which seemed appropriate.”

“The tale goes that Raymond of Poitou, founder of the House of Lusignan, came across a beautiful woman, Melusine, in the forest one day. Instantly smitten, he proposed marriage, and she was happy to consent, only exacting the condition that he should never seek to find her on a Saturday. She bore him many fine children and brought him much wealth. Of course in myth, as in life, if you make someone promise things like that, the one thing they want to do is break the taboo and find out. Raymond had to go looking, and found Melusine at her Saturday ablutions. (In some versions simply in the bath at home, and in others in a forest pool or spring, the kind of place associated with her.)”

“Oh dear, she was all serpentine from the waist down, and, many of the tales say, with a double tail!”

 

“Raymond was shocked, as was Melusine.”

“Then she was furious.”

 

“But also deeply saddened. Jean d’Arras has her say these words:”

 

Ah! Raymond, the day when I first saw you was for me a day of sadness! Alas! for my bane I saw your grace, your charm, your beautiful face. For my sadness I desired your beauty, for you have so ignobly betrayed me. Though you have failed in your promise, I had pardoned you from the bottom of my heart for having tried to see me, not even speaking of it to you, for you revealed it to no one. And God would have pardoned it you, for you would have done penance for it in this world. Alas! my beloved now our love is changed to hate, our tenderness to cruelty, our pleasures and joys to tears and weeping, our happiness to great misfortune and hard calamity. Alas, my beloved, had you not betrayed me I were saved from my pains and my torments, I would have lived life’s natural course as a normal woman, I would have died in the normal way, with all the sacraments of the Church, I would have been buried in the church of Notre-Dame de Lusignan and commemorative masses would have been observed for me, as they should. But now you have plunged me back into the dark penitence I have known so long, for my fault. And this penitence, I must bear it until Judgement Day, for you have betrayed me. I pray God to pardon you.

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“Though some say she forgave him his curiosity and for seeing her, but couldn’t do so when later in a public row he called her a serpent. She resumed her serpent form and disappeared back into the forest, never to be seen again.  But she’d got to found the royal house of Luxembourg first.”

 

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Lucy was not the only contributor to turn to Melusine as as source of inspiration. Lynne Lamb too made a puppet of the siren/sorceress. Lynne has already featured in the Puppet Challenge with her fantastic wolf puppets, but as she also made a marionette of Melusine, I’m adding it here, to keep Lucy’s version company.

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Below: Lynne’s Melusine being made.

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