Description

Female marionette with brown curly hair and a painted face. It wears a floral print shawl, lavender dress and white apron. The marionette is made entirely of cloth with a wooden cross bar and black strings.This marionette is part of a collection of over fifty marionettes, all handmade by Helen Rayley Farnum, a Minneapolis-based puppeteer, and her family. Ms. Farnum raised four children in Minneapolis in the 1920s before launching a career as a puppeteer that spanned from the 1930s to the 1950s. Her children's shows, which usually retold familiar fairy tales, were presented at schools, theaters and even, in 1941, at the bedsides of sick children in local hospitals. The puppet shows also appeared for many years on "Little People's Theatre", a show on KSTP-TV, a local Twin Cities channel. Ms. Farnum died in 1982. Her daughter, Julianne Anderson, donated her puppets to HHM in 1995.