Pollock’s Toy Theater

A paper (toy) theater called “Pollock’s toy theater”. Entirely cut-out of thick cardboard paper. Bought at the Pollock shop in London in 1965. Previous RC Collection. Museum Kolong Tangga has several paper-theaters in the collection. Paper or table-top theaters were almost a must in every child-loving family. Sometimes called “Toy Theater”. They were a byproduct of the early 19th century taste for caricatures and fashion-prints. The single-sheet prints started as souvenirs of famous theater-plays and portraits of the actors who had performed in these plays. The years 1812-1813, saw the publication of complete sheets. The theater-front, the scenery, the actors in the different attitudes of the role they had played on stage, it was all printed on the sheets and ready to be sold at the paper toy shop in Scala street in London (still open at the same address in London in 2015). Soon the sheets were bought, were it the scissors, the glue and the fingers of the young toy theater fan, which transformed the flat sheets in a three-dimensional theater. Some cardboard was needed, to fortify the cut-out figures and scenery (by sticking some cardboard strips at the paper-actors back). This Pollock’s toy theater was well-known in Europe but it had nevertheless a strong competition to endure from the German and French manufacturer of paper toy-theaters. The Pollock theaters however remained favorites, as their figures had bright colors (hand painted). The French prints were less bright, although they had a more creative design and a greater variety of plays. The German paper-toy theaters, probably influenced by the Brothers Grimm newly published fairytale-books, had a large repertoire of (for the paper theater adapted) fairytale scenarios. From 19th century diaries and letters, do we know that many grown-ups enjoyed the paper-theater as much as the children’s audience did.