‘Better to live a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep’ – Tipu Sultan
As an ex–London–girl I miss skipping across Kensington gardens to Exhibition Road, the home of some of the cities’ most beautiful museums. I have been longing to revisit the V&A museum and scoop up a tiny wonder I wish I hadn’t placed back upon the shelves of the museum shop the last time I visited. The item I so foolishly cast aside was a paper-kit replica of a beautiful, life size automaton known as Tipoo’s Tiger, which can be found in the V&A’s Asia galleries. I am fascinated and delighted by automata of all kinds but Tipoo’s Tiger is really special, do take a look at this video on the history of the tiger if you have a spare 20 minutes, it is fascinating. So, thoughts of the paper-kit from the V&A got me thinking about paper construction and toy-kits in particular.
No sign of Tipoo’s Tiger but the V&A shop does carry this 3D Paper Robot Kit by Japanese designer and paper engineer Keisuke Saka.
Shin Tanaka has the most wonderful paper figures available for free download, for a limited period, from his website. I am in love with the Spiky Babies, we have a whole brood living on a windowsill.
You can even build a special ‘walker’ for your Spiky Baby if you want to!
Keep an eye on Shin Tanaka’s site as he makes new paper toys available in limited editions only, they are free though. Marvelous!
Ishi was lucky enough to receive this brilliant ABC pop-up book by Marion Bataille for Christmas. The book is available from Noun and Amazon of course!
You can see the theme building now can’t you!
I guess you are feeling better judged by the quality of these posts tonight. They are brilliant. Thanks Lisa.