Anyone for Skittles?

Some years ago Irwin and I visited with Kendra Daniels, a collector and dealer in children's illustration art, at her home. We viewed the amazing collections she and her husband Allan had assembled; and among the collections, I saw my first figurative skittle set. 

Skittles is a form of ninepin bowling, for table top or floor. The sets Kendra collected were made in Europe in the 19th century, and consisted of whimsical collections of paper mache figures in wheeled wagons that relate to the characters. An antique example is shown on the right - in this case, a dog with puppies - from the LiveAuctioneers website.

As the summer drew to a close, I began to look about for a new Oz project and decided to give skittles a try. Most of my projects develop from ideas I've had for a very long time!

I decided that Quox, the dragon from Tik-Tok of Oz, would be a natural as a wagon, since he had seating for passengers attached to his back. For the skittles, I chose the Nome King together with an additional troupe of Nomes. The set needed a kingpin, and Ruggedo seemed like a natural choice! 

Quox wears his pearl necklace and gold locket and, as in the book, there are eggs inside the locket to be used for knocking down the Nomes. Wheels are concealed under the dragon's legs, for rolling across the table or floor, and with the use of mini LEDs his tail lights up and his eyes flash.

On the left, Quox can be seen at the start of his paint job. The Nomes are lined up and finished. All the pieces are molded from paper mache like the antique versions. Below, a video shows the set in action!

Figures from Oz

Back in October of 2020, I showed the start of a new project; toy figures of characters from the 1903 Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz. Over the past year and a half, I’ve continued to work with this idea, and now have 14 examples - 11 main characters and 3 chorus girl Poppies. It’s been a fun and entertaining way to pass the time during a pandemic!

 

The figures are built from paper mache, dowels, and various scraps of wood and heavy cardboard. They're based on photos and costume designs from the show, although they aren't really portraits of the performers. The actors were lavishly dressed, and creating miniature versions has been challenging; some are more successful than others, but it's been quite a learning experience!

I started with the familiar characters of Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion and Dorothy - then adding her cow Imogene, and the Poppies. After that I decided to continue on with the less familiar characters: Locasta (the good witch of the north), the Wizard, Cynthia Cynch (the lady lunatic), Sir Dashemoff Daily ( the poet laureate), Tryxie Tryfle (engaged to Pastoria), and Pastoria (the true ruler of Oz).

The characters are in stationary poses, but they do move. Each one has a mechanism built in to help them wobble, sway or nod, adding some motion to the mix!

Edit: After posting this, I finished one more character - the Snow Queen, summoned by Locasta to save Dorothy from the Poppies -

Ozma Comes Home

Here’s the story of a window that was 30 years in the making!

Every year, Irwin & I close our studio between Christmas and New Year’s Day. This past holiday, with its lack of entertaining and socializing, seemed the perfect opportunity to finish a long lingering project. This began 30 years ago, when we created a stained glass window based on the endpaper drawing of Ozma in The Emerald City of Oz. This window was eventually sold through Books of Wonder.

Our studio was new at the time, and this was one of our first windows that required a painted face. As I was a little uncertain how things would go, I painted and fired two faces - one to be a spare in case of any accidents or problems in constructing the window. As it happened, the spare face was not needed and it was set aside. 

Miraculously, it survived years of being tossed about, filed, neglected, and left on a shelf. Then, 5 years ago, I decided it was time to use it. I drew up a new pattern, but a large window requires both time and considerable space for construction, and we didn’t have either - in fact, for the past several years we haven't taken window commissions, as we are booked up with lamp work.

So, this particular Christmas break seemed like an ideal opportunity to attempt the window. The timing worked out perfectly, with both of us cracking away, and there is now a new friend to keep us company in our window seat!

Babes in Toyland

 Babes in Toyland is not an Oz book, but there is a very strong connection between this book and The Wizard of Oz - both stories were successful Broadway musicals in 1903.

After the stage adaptation of The Wizard proved to be a hit, the producers came up with a successor to follow the wildly popular show. Using a production team that included many of the same designers and writers who worked on Oz, as well as some of the same actors, Babes in Toyland was the result. The musical is in three acts, like Wizard. The first act is based on a traditional pantomime, The Babes in the Wood, peopled with traditional nursery rhyme characters. Part of the second act is loosely adapted from The Wondersmith, a rather gothic tale by Fitz-James O'Brian, and the third act bears a strong resemblance to the previous hit, The Wizard of Oz!

The stage show was a success, and included a lovely score by Victor Herbert, with several songs that are still popular today. There have been film and television adaptations based on the show, and heavily rewritten versions are frequently produced around Christmas time. But nothing has been as lavish as the original production! 

It's interesting to note that the show does feel like a definite attempt to outdo the Wizard - instead of a spectacular cyclone, Babes has a raging storm at sea AND an erupting volcano. Instead of the transformation of a field of chorus girl poppies into a snowstorm, there is the transformation of the Spider's Forest into the Floral Court of the Moth Queen, with a troop of chorus girl butterflies. Both shows include a threatened execution in the third act. Babes is more bloodthirsty than Wizard, with several deaths. In spite of these attempts, I think The Wizard of Oz feels far more original in its story and characters.  A poster for the show can be seen above, sold several years ago at auction. 

The book was published in 1904, a year after the successful extravaganza opened on Broadway. Glen MacDonough and Anna Alice Chapin are listed as the authors; Macdonough wrote the stage show, and I’m guessing the book was actually written by Chapin, using MacDonough's concepts and even some of the stage dialogue. It follows much of the first two acts of the show, with some changes - all love interests are cut, and the Toymaker, who is not an evil character in this book, doesn't die. At the same time, Alan and Jane's journey to Toyland is fleshed out with additional incidents.

Descriptions of various locations in the story are clearly based on the set designs of the show, but the illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts are not based on the stage presentation. The exception is her painting of Alan as a toy soldier, and the cover design of Alan and Jane as toys. These are directly based on the costume designs of the show, as seen in the photo on the right, from the NYPL digital collections. 

Earlier this year, I finished off a toy theater version of the show. Like my earlier toy theater version of The Wizard, it's based on the various scripts and photos I've been able to track down and reference. As with Wizard, it's not terribly accurate but an attempt to capture some of the visual aspects of the show. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find visual references for several of the scenes and characters, so I simply filled in as necessary!

1903 Babes in Toyland 

A Golden Road

The original edition of The Road to Oz is one of the handful of Oz books featuring a jacket with a different design than the cover of the book. On the 1909 Reilly & Britton first edition, the book itself has a stamped cover and the jacket is a lovely watercolor of Dorothy and friends, with a metallic gold background. The metallic ink was only used on the earliest copies, and the jacket soon changed to a yellow or blue background, finally settling on yellow after 1920. When Reilly & Britton became Reilly & Lee and dropped the stamped cover, the jacket design was put to use as a paper label. Metallic jackets are few and far between - I don’t own one, the photo shown below on the right is a later version of the jacket with a blue background.

A little while back, I was involved in some discussions concerning the Road to Oz dust jacket, spurred by a fragment of a metallic gold Road jacket. On closer examination, questions arose as to the authenticity of the piece; in the end, it appeared to be a much later jacket that had been altered with gold paint. I thought it would be interesting to see how difficult it might be to do this, and decided to create a copy of the book with a metallic label. I chose to do this to a book rather than a jacket, as it would be a sturdier base to work on, and jackets - even on later printings - are still uncommon enough that I didn’t want to destroy one! The original book was never published this way.

Different shades of yellow were used on the later printings of Road, varying from pale (which is rather attractive) to quite bright. I happened to have a late 1940’s/early 1950’s copy with the bright yellow background that I dislike. I masked the cover using frisket (an adhesive film), and cut out the background areas. With a couple passes of gold spray paint, I had created a non-existent variant of the book! The above photo shows the result. The book on the left is another copy of the standard cover, and on the right is my metallic version. It didn't take long, and the result is actually rather attractive!

 

Pandemic Projects

For the last couple weeks, I've been working on a fun project - some figures of the 1903 Oz stage characters. Here's my version of the Tin Man, Lion, and Scarecrow as portrayed by Dave Montgomery, Arthur Hill, and Fred Stone, respectively.

The project actually started several years ago when I molded a couple faces off of an antique doll head. I painted these up to look like Fred and Dave, and then put them aside. I finally found my way back to them, and as I usually do, worked with various scraps found in my basement to finish the figures.

I then decided they needed a Lion, so I built him up as well, using more scraps and Sculptamold. The figures each have some movement built in - the Tin Man sways from side to side, the Lion's head wobbles and the Scarecrow sways forward and back. Who knows - maybe a Dorothy will eventually join them!


Edit 7/27/21 - Dorothy did indeed join the others, a few weeks later. She was just updated with a better wig - here’s a shot of the four together -

Humpty Dumpty

Easter is just around the corner, and while out shopping the other week I ran across some brown paper mache eggs. Inspiration struck and I decided to make a pair of Humpty Dumptys - one as drawn by W. W. Denslow, and one based on John R. Neill's interpretation.

Denslow drew Humpty Dumpty for a newspaper comic page, which was later published as one of his series of picture books, by G. W. Dillingham. Neill also drew the egg for a newspaper page, an adaptation from Through the Looking Glass, which became one of the Children's Stories That Never Grow Old.

Denslow's egg is quite jolly, due no doubt to the fact that he has been hard boiled and no longer needs to fear being broken. On the other hand, Neill's version seems rather glum, perhaps grown tired of sitting on his wall!

Convention 2017

This past weekend I was at the National Convention of the International Wizard of Oz Club. As always, it was an opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones, as well as experience a variety of programming dealing with various aspects of Oz.

This year I did a presentation based on the making of the toy theater I've been working on for the past two years. I spoke about the steps involved in creating the theater and the various scenes of the 1903 Wizard of Oz musical. Below are a few pages of sketches and drawings used to make the different curtains and figures used in the scenes of the show.

I finished with a showing of a simple stop-motion animated version of the show. It's an adaptation based on the script in the Library of Congress, and utilizing bits of music and songs that were in the production - though not necessarily all at the same time! L. Frank Baum makes a cameo appearance at the end of the show. I've never done anything quite like this before, and it was an interesting experience... but I don't think film-making is in my future!

Toy Theater Update

Last November I did a post about the toy theater I was starting to make, showing scenes from the 1903 Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz. I'm still working away at it, and have made progress - although there are still several scenes to go! It's a fun project, requiring some ingenuity and a good deal of patience, while trying to figure out the sets of the show from the handful of surviving black & white production photos.

 In my earlier post I showed the Poppy scene, which was my starting point of the project. This takes place towards the end of Act 1, and is followed by The Poppy Field in Winter. This was a transformation, with the poppy scene transitioning through a snowstorm, finally revealing the flowers vanquished by the Snow Queen, the travelers awakened and the end of the first act.

Act 2 takes place in a courtyard of the Emerald City, a bizarre architectural blend of East and West. This is a shot of the scene in its early stages, as I was starting to figure out the various panels. I roughed out the ideas on paper, before painting and cutting the final drops from canvas. The original sets for this show were extremely elaborate and complex, involving a number of drop curtains as well as flats and set pieces. For my purpose I've had to try and distill this into something a bit simpler and manageable in a small size; the backdrops of the toy theater are about 12" by 20", which limits the amount of detail presented. This scene required some freestanding set pieces, constructed of balsa and paper mache. 

Of course each scene also needs its cast of characters in appropriate costumes - the actors in the various scenes are approximately 4" tall.

Act 3 is set in The Borderland, with a color scheme primarily of lavender and white. The use of color changing LED lights provides the ability to enhance various colors in the different scenes. Once again, some freestanding set pieces were required, included a cage of wisteria vines which is used as a prison during the act - paper mache to the rescue!

The story presented on stage veered drastically from that of the original book, including an execution scene with the threat of death facing Dorothy and her companions. Fortunately a speedy resolution is achieved, and a happy ending!

A Toy Theater

Lately I've been working on an ongoing Oz project. The 1903 Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz has fascinated me for some time, and I decided to make an attempt at recreating settings from the show in a toy theater format. Toy theaters were the play sets of the Victorian age, generally produced cheaply of paper that was cut and assembled to create sets and characters for a stage version of a popular story or fairy tale.

Of course to do this, I first had to come up with a theater. I decided I wanted something more substantial than paper, so after rummaging in the basement I came up with a wooden wine crate that seemed to be an appropriate size. Some more digging around produced some scrap moldings that had been in the house forever, and when combined, along with some balsa wood and paint, I came up with a very sturdy theater. (Clicking on photos will enlarge them for easier viewing.)

Once the structure itself was finished, it was time to work on a set. The original sets primarily consisted of a series of painted drops, which when layered together create the scene. I decided to start with the Poppy Field, which was consistently singled out in reviews as a highlight of the production. There are only a handful of visual references for the show, so I'm afraid my version can't be considered particularly accurate - but, it was an interesting challenge!

Of course, the stage wouldn't be complete without actors, so a number of figures were required. The poppies were originally an integral part of the set, played by chorus girls in large hats- I decided to make them double sided, one side flowers and the other side chorus girls showing a bit of leg - as chorus girls do.

When all the elements are put together, you get an approximation of the scene. Thanks to the availability of flexible mini LED lights, I was able to add the ability of lighting the stage - and in a variety of colors, which create different atmospheres. Sadly, it doesn't photograph terribly well - but then, theater is always better live, isn't it?

So, with a few more figures added we have the tableau of Dorothy falling asleep among the poppies. As this is the Broadway version, we also have Pastoria, Tryxie Tryfle and Imogene the cow. And Locasta, the Witch of the North, has arrived to save the day by calling forth a deadly frost....but that's the next scene.