Tipoo’s Tiger-Paper Construction

‘Better to live a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep’ – Tipu Sultan

Tipoo's Tiger

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.

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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.

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You can even build a special ‘walker’ for your Spiky Baby if you want to!

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Keep an eye on Shin Tanaka’s site as he makes new paper toys available in limited editions only, they are free though. Marvelous!

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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!

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One Response to Tipoo’s Tiger-Paper Construction

  1. margaret oomen says:

    I guess you are feeling better judged by the quality of these posts tonight. They are brilliant. Thanks Lisa.

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