jigging puppet
Also known as: marionette à la planchette
Quick Summary
Marionnettes à la planchette
Marionnettes à la planchette, or jigging puppets, being operated by a young puppeteer who provides his own accompaniment on his drum and whistle in the engraving Les Petites Marionnettes, an illustration from Le Bon Genre (1820), a work on the entertainments of early 19th-century Paris.
A jigging puppet, also known as a marionette à la planchette, is a type of puppet that was popular in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. These small figures were made to dance by manipulating a thread that passed through their chests, with slight variations in tension causing them to move. Similar puppets were controlled by rods attached to their backs and made to dance by bouncing them on a springy board. The spontaneous vitality of these loosely jointed figures was a notable characteristic.1
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