Guard - antique marionette

Antique marionette of a soldier in armor

In addition to a metal vest with an ornament, this soldier also has a shirt made of beautiful fabric, a wooden helmet and a halberd made of wood. Also worth mentioning are the red pants and wooden shoes, which evoke the illusion of real shoes. However, his biggest advantage must be his original, even caricature expression and bulbous nose. This marionette will simply never bore you.

It can be concluded that this marionette was a comic character appearing in farces. The farce was at one time the most widespread department of puppet theater. It is a short, two to three act comedy. It was often really exaggerated and parodied current socio-political events. This form of theater has been known since the Middle Ages and not only in marionettes, remember the world-famous Molière!

Jan Benda

Jan Benda (1897-1967) was a Czech graphic artist, draftsman and later a puppeteer. After being wounded on the Italian front, he was employed at the Archaeological Institute in Prague. He then began working with various Czech puppeteers to design and process marionettes, which he also modeled. Some of his marionette designs were processed by the company of the Czech carver Josef Kalous.