Carved wooden marionette from the Tiller troupe. Stock character representing a young heroine character wearing a white chinz dress sprigged with pink flowers and a pink scarf tucked into a purple ribbon waistband. Made by the Tiller family circa 1870 to 1890.

Carved wooden marionette; a young woman with a pink painted face, red mouth, painted eyelashes and eyes with white flecks, as if she is looking upwards. Her wig is attached over carved hair, painted black, and the top of her head shows evidence of several wigs having been tacked on. Her right hand is closed as if to hold props, with the index and first finger pointing, and the left thumb is also closed to the index finger, to hold props. She wears a full-sleeved cream chinz dress (possibly original) decorated with a small red floral pattern, with a frill around the hem, under which she wears a heavy cream stretch satin underskirt (probably later), and blue stockings stitched over older white cotton stockings. She has a pink cotton scarf around her shoulders, the end of which are tucked into a purple ribbon waist belt decorated with a piece of jewellery with two shells attached. She has a pink ribbon at her neck.

The legs are jointed at the ankles, with a staple, and have wooden joints at the knees. The knee is carved as part of the lower leg, and the hips are attached with a leather loop to the carved pelvis section. The arms are constructed of tubes of ?cotton ticking? with some stuffing above the transverse seam which act as elbow joints.

Unstrung and without control bars. There is an eyelet between the shoulders for a string and staples to the wrists for strings.

This marionette along with the rest of the troupe and three of their original backcloths had been stored in a blacksmith's shop in Lincolnshire for over thirty years, but after cleaning and re-stringing, most of the marionettes were restored by Gerald Morice and George Speaight who purchased them in 1945. They began working on recreating some of the puppets' original repertoire. Since the original cloths were too fragile for performance, new backdrops were painted, and in August 1951 as part of The Festival of Britain celebrations, the marionettes took to the stage again as The Old Time Marionettes, at the Riverside Theatre, Festival Gardens, Battersea Park. In the 1980s George Speaight lent the troupe to puppeteers in Germany but in the late 1990s he sold them to John Phillips, an expert puppet carver, manipulator and puppet historian, whose widow sold them to the Museum after his death in 1998.

This marionette was used as Mariette in the production of The Floating Beacon which took place at the Theatre Museum in April 2004.

It is impossible to identify the precise maker of this marionette since the company made, altered and used figures throughout its career. It is possible, however, to distinguish distinct types, and therefore groups, made by different makers, due to the type of carving. The carver of this object has not however been distinguished.

This is one of 35 marionettes from the Tiller-Clowes troupe, one of the last Victorian marionette troupes in England. Marionette shows were a popular form of entertainment for adults in the 19th century, many of them family concerns which travelled around the country long before the advent of film and television, presenting shortened versions of London's latest popular entertainment from melodramas and pantomimes to minstrel shows and music hall. In the 18th and early 19th centuries their theatres were relatively makeshift, but after about 1860 many became quite elaborate, with walls constructed from wooden shutters, seating made from tiered planks of wood, and canvas roofs.

The figures were carved, painted, dressed and performed by members of the company. This is a young woman who would have been a stock character, used in any play requiring a heroine. Both her hands have been carved in closed positions, so she could have held props, and some of her clothes were probably made from old clothes belonging to the troupe, such as her cream chintz dress and her stockings.

S.308-1999