Opera House in a Box – Dolls & Dioramas
Posted onAn exhibition by Viola Ann Seddon With titles by Simon Seddon Copyright Viola Ann Seddon & Simon Seddon Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop Easter 2020
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Viola Ann Seddon – Dancers, Ballerinas & Acrobats
Posted onToy theatre friends The best thing about running in a shop is meeting all your customers. Some who become friends, podcast guests, artistic collaborators. At the end of last year I was trying to source a toy theatre. The ballet in a box ‘Swan Lake’ by Jean Mahoney and Viola Ann Seddon, published by Walker…
‘Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad…’
Posted onHugo Cabret: ‘Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken.’ I’m a technician with a special interest in the very early days of…
A doll goes out into the world….and what if they don’t come back?
Posted onHere is a beguiling story I once read about Franz Kafka who in 1923, a year before his death, was walking through a park in Berlin when he across a small girl in a state of distress. The child was inconsolable as she had lost her favourite doll. Not missing a beat, Kafka immediately informed…
The Art of Doll Photography
Posted on“To me it’s normal now, being out and about taking pictures, it looks really crazy but to me it’s perfectly normal. I guess I do express myself” This is not a quote from luminary female photographer Cindy Sherman with a current retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery on until the 15th September, but the doll…
Transformation through imagination – British folk and their toys
Posted onFOLK TOYS Much has been written about folk art, popular art, naive art …. but where is the history of British folk toys? Whenever we think of folk toys we recognise those from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Japan, Russia and India – books have been published on the folk toys from these countries. The toys are…
Annie Montgomerie at Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop
Posted onAnnie Montgomerie at Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop In Christmas 2018, Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop played host to a fantastical cast of characters created by Annie Montgomerie. Anthropomorphism & Toys Her anthropomorphic storybook beings are part toy, part sculpture and each individual piece is unique, being made from 100% wool felt, up-cycled fabrics and vintage charms and jewellery….
The Val Gardena Dolls and the return trip to London
Posted onIn our podcast ‘From the Forest to the Fantastical’ Simon uses allegories of adventures of Dutch Dolls and folk art toys. Through them, he tells the story of the toy industry and the aesthetic of ‘folk art’ and in Britain the ‘popular art’ of toy theatre, Punch and Judy and fairground art that today filters…
Artists’ Toys and the Toy as Art
Posted onArtists’ Toys and the Toy as Art. The Artists and the need to play Artists often tap into their inner child to make toys. Picasso made a miniature theatre fashioned out of an empty Gauloises cigarette packet for his children Maya and Paulo, with tiny paper cut-out figures of commedia del’arte characters for them to…
Why did we decide to launch the Harlequinade Club and what is it?
Posted onWhy did we decide to launch the Harlequinade Club and what is it? It’s a club for Pollocks aficionados and you will find out about here and on our social media and in our shop but not on a mailing list, it is here when you want to join in. But it doesn’t really exist,…
Denise Hoyle and The Harlequinade Club
Posted onI first met Denise Hoyle in 2003 when I bought some of her decorative tinselled cards. I wanted to sell them in the shop so I sought her out, discovering that she was a near neighbour. She invited me to her house where she showed me an amazing quantity of ceramics and watercolours that she…