Puppets on Stage

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.

Two traditional hand puppets are the quarreling duo of Punch and Judy, rooted in the knockabout traditions of the 17th-century Italian commedia dell’arte and the 18th-century British theater. Intended largely for adult audiences, their shows were criticized for comic violence. This puppet set was crafted by the Reverend W. E. Hitchcock of Massachusetts, an itinerant minister/showman. He inverted the bawdy stories and used the figures to present plays preaching proper moral behavior. 

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.

Gift of Hazelle and J. Woodson Rollins

Slugger Ryan, a honky-tonk musician, was inspired by pop music and jazz composer Hoagy Carmichael and created by Bil Baird. Slugger Ryan first appeared in the late 1930s in the stage shows at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Master puppeteer Baird sculpted hundreds of puppets for live theater, film, and television during his long career. He is perhaps best known for creating the marionettes for “The Lonely Goatherd” sequence in the 1965 film The Sound of Music.

Gift of Bil Baird

The finger puppets Pinokio and Pinokiann are constructed of wood and fabric to resemble a boy and girl in traditional Dutch costume. Puppeteer and entrepreneur Hazelle Hedges Rollins made them. She created the only puppet factory in the United States and one of the largest in the world.

Gift of Hazelle and J. Woodson Rollins

These paper puppets of fairy tale characters Red Riding Hood and the Wolf are cutout color prints mounted on cardboard. They are manipulated by a cardboard stick extending through a slot at the bottom of the puppet. 

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. 

Philadelphia artists Frank and Elizabeth Haines took up puppetry in the early 1930s and created hundreds of marionettes. One play they developed was inspired by a Puerto Rican folktale about the romance of a mouse and a cockroach. The Haines also devised a supporting cast that includes the grim-faced Señora Duenna Beetle—Martina’s maidservant-guardian—and the elegantly attired M’sieu Frog. 

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.

Gift of Hazelle and J. Woodson Rollins