MOVABLE STATIONERY Volume 3 Number 3
April 1995
Current European Pop-up Books
Tony Sarg: Illustrator and Puppeteer
Theo Gielen
Michael Mullen
Though the movable and pop-up book phenomenon from the 1960's on is for the greater part an Anglo Saxon business or maybe it always has been since German publishers such as Ernest Nister and Raphael Tuck moved to England in the last century to be really successful some European publishers do produce nice books of interest to collectors worldwide. -
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Most European publishers buy the rights for their pop-ups from packagers such as Intervisual Books. Sadie Fields Productions, Van der Meer Paper Design, Compass Productions, Oyster Books, White Heat Design, The Templar Company, Bellew Publishing, and others. Books from packagers can be found in up to ten or fifteen different languages, differing only by their cover design which is adapted to local taste. Nevertheless there exist some European packagers producing interesting movables just for their home market. They are identified in this article. In adition, some titles from Canada and Mexico may be unknown to readers of Movable Stationery until now.
We will leave out all titles known to be published in an English version as well as the very simple fanfolded books. Europe knows such books in great numbers too, cheaply produced for a mass market and sold in toyshops, drugstores, and department stores. Hardly ever collectable, although, Kubasta's books were and are produced for this market as well! So, if readers are interested, we could list them in the next issue. -
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Most attractive are reprints of 19th century books published by (one of) the original publishers of Lothar Meggendorfer, J.F. Schreiber from Esslingen, a rural village near Stuttgart in Germany. Apart from titles that were once available in English edition, they offer: Buffalo Bill's wilder westen (Buffalo Bill's wild west). Originally published in 1891, it is constructed like Meggendorfer's International circus with six folddown panoramic scenes resulting in half a circle. De Krippe (the creche), originally published in 1888, has continued on page 3
Let me begin on a personal note. because it may strike a chord with you. I first learned of Tony Sarg through an interest in the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. Sarg produced an illustrated map of the fair. and I assumed he was a popular illustrator of the day. Knowing him as an illustrator. I was not surprised to discover in Movable Stationery that Sarg had created mechanical books. I was surprised. once I started researching Sarg. to discover that his reputation rests on his role in revitalizing the tradition of puppetry in the United States as much as on his work an illustrator. In her book Tony Sarg: Puppeteer in American, 19151942, Tamara Robin Hunt wrote: "Sarg's hobby (marionette plays) turned into a profession and he embarked on a career which gained him a national reputation as a puppeteer. He not only popularized puppetry as an art but greatly influenced the type of puppet performances given in America during the decades that followed his own productive years. It is a generally accepted fact that in Tony Sarg America found the embodiment of a new puppet tradition." As we shall see, it was this widespread popularity as a puppeteer, combined with his skill as an illustrator, that allowed Sarg the opportunity to create books for children, most notably Tony surprise book. Sarg was born in 1880 in Coban, Guatemala. His father was a German consul, and his mother an Englishwoman. Sarg said that the strongest artistic influence on him was his grandmother, who painted. She also collected toys, which were willed to Sarg when she died. When he was seven the family returned to Germany. At fourteen he entered Lichterfelde, a German military academy, and at seventeen was commissioned a lieutenant. For the next few years, Sarg's position was not unlike that of many aspiring artists: he found himself: pulled more and more towards art, and increasingly unwilling to devote himself to a military career. Despite his father's attitude that he should stick with the military career because so much money and time had gone into it, Sarg's desire to be an continued on page 2
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