In the last two posts we looked at ballet costumes, but where can you find a library that may offer great chances to study this subject and read at the same time about other topics linked to the performing arts such as set design?
One of such places still exists in Glasgow and it's the Museum/Research Centre The World Through Wooden Eyes (admission free).
Though located in one large room on the ground floor of the Mitchell Library, the largest in town, this peculiar place is actually not part of it.
The Research Centre gathers in one space the collection of books, puppets and masks that belonged to the late puppet master John M Blundall.
As Irenebrination readers may remember from previous posts, Blundall was an icon himself as he created the Thunderbirds’ Parker, Kyrano and Grandma.
Years ago, I spent an afternoon chatting with Blundall and admiring the details on his puppets’ costumes. I remember being transfixed by the Burmese puppets wearing finely embroidered and bejewelled costumes.
In that long chat I had with Blundall he recounted me his passion as a kid for variety theatres and how it developed when he saw performances by Russian puppet master Sergey Vladimirovich Obraztsova.
Stephen Foster, who designs and creates puppets and masks and runs the research centre (open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1.00 to 5.30pm) reminded me that there was another huge Russian influence on Blundall's – Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Apart from including prints,and engravings related to the puppet theatre, a vast range of Punch and Judy artefacts, postcards, ephemera, original puppets, masks, designs and scale models for the puppet theatre productions of John. M. Blundall, the collections has a lot of books about costume and set design for ballet throughout the centuries.
Some of the ballet programmes are even signed by the dancers, but you will have to find these gems by yourself as nothing in this archive is catalogued. Though the collection is stored within the Mitchell, the books are not part of the library, so they do not have any catalogue number and you won't be able to find them in the electronic resources.
This relaxed environment (with absolutely no intimidating librarian staring at you...) and the fact that you can search as much as you like, take as many books as you want out of the shelves, leaf through them and read them for as long as you want, is an absolute pleasure.
What's so unique about the books stored here is that, collectively, they show a path, representing Blundall's multicultural interests in the theatre and his multiple passions that ranged from puppetry to ballet.
After you have completed your research on costume on the books, you can admire the costumes on the puppets on display, or maybe enroll in one of Stephen Foster's workshops on relief figures, 3D portraits, paper masks, pop-ups and Japanese dolls (check them out on the Facebook page of the collection).
Hopefully, the collection will be kept together as it is (or in an even bigger space inside the Mitchell), it would be a criminal act to see it dismembered or dispersed since it contains documents and artefacts of inestimable cultural value.
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