The Collectors
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Friday 2 November 2007
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Annie Forbes and Tim Denton have been puppeteers for over 25 years and during this time have collected a wide range of string, glove, rod and shadow puppets from all over the world.
Spanning different eras and countries, their wonderful collection includes hand-crafted marionettes from Burma, Taiwanese opera puppets and Chinese hand puppets to name just a few.
From an early age puppets have been very special to Annie. When she was younger both her uncle and grandfather carved hand and finger puppets for her out of old furniture legs and she still has these today. After graduating from art school, Annie’s mother studied puppetry in Czechoslovakia. Then, after migrating from Britain, her mother and father put on Punch and Judy shows.
Annie likens the puppet-making process to giving birth. “You have the idea, then you get all the materials” she says, “then the materials will do something different from what you imagined”. The next stage sees the puppeteer breathe life into the puppet maker’s creation.
Annie believes most people’s fascination with puppets comes from our earliest instincts of wanting to bring something to life, and also in some cultures puppets are a manifestation of gods or ancestors. So they can be very powerful objects she says.
While Annie finds that some people aren’t fans of puppets because of their lifelike characteristics, she says, for her, imagining life without her puppets is a bit like asking her to live without water.
