Last week I went to the Museum of Childhood with Melanie and Becca. I’ve been to the place so many times (it’s one of my favourite places in London), and I have a lot of photos on this blog of the various different exhibits (look at the Museum tag), so here’s a few things I noticed for the first time. First up this amazing ride-on ladybird toy.
They also had this, one of Lotte Reiniger‘s scenes from Cinderella. I was surprised at how home-made the actual piece is- you can see pencil marks on the black card still and the edges are roughly taped (it’s about 75cm across). I always wondered how she got some of the transparent layers- turns out it’s layers of tracing paper and semi-translucent card sandwiched in between the main layers of tracing paper. Of couse when the whole thing is backlit with coloured lights it looks immaculate. Here’s the film . .
They also have an excellent collection of magic lantern slides, one of my all-time favourite things. These two have levers at the side, which make the sea and kaleidoscope move respectively. I wish that magic lantern shows were still a common entertainment.
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