Category Archives: Acquisitions

Making More of the Skelt and Webb Collection of Toy Theater Theater

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As a collector, Mr. Cotsen was nothing if not adventurous.  One of his most ambitious purchases was the archive of the publishers of juvenile theater, Skelt and Webb, at auction in the early 1990s.  At well over 300 linear feet, Cotsen’s toy theater collection dwarfs every other notable American institutional collection, such as the Arthur Weyhe Collection in the Billy Rose Theater Division in the Performing Arts Division of the New York Public Library or Ohio State University Lawrence & Lee Theatre Research Institute.

Perhaps the curators of those collections have been releasing explosive sighs of relief for years because they dodged the interesting challenge of figuring out what to do.  The Skelt & Webb collection contains much of the contents the shop owned first by the Skelts and then their successors the Webbs when it finally closed in the early twentieth century (it is said that the member of the Webb family who had been its keeper stowed things under the floor boards, up the chimney, and beneath the beds because the house was so small). The play scripts and prints were the devils we knew being on paper. It was the bundles of heavy metal stamps for the foil used to decorating the cut-out characters, copper plates used to print full-length portraits, sheets of grouped characters, scene drops, almost two hundred lithographic stones for reproducing prosceniums and sets, and tools.  Here’s a detail from a copperplate of a backdrop for Shakespeare’s Othello and a machine whose purpose is still to be determined…The first stage of processing the Skelt and Webb archive was the monumental task of sorting the materials, housing, and photographing as many of the objects as possible before sending them to Princeton’s remote storage.  Cotsen’s redoubtable curatorial assistant Aaron Pickett set the course of steering between mounting a full-fledged digitization project and compiling a conventional finding aid..

Without Aaron’s can-do attitude and a flock of student assistants, the collection would be virtually inaccessible.  This month two of England’s leading experts on the toy theater, Alan Powers and David Powell, are able to take a second deeper dive into Skelt and Webb during their tenure this month as Friends of the Princeton University Library’s Research Grant winners.  Their goal to is rethink the history of the English toy theater using the resources of the Skelt & Webb Collection…

Because they will be going through as much as possible while they are in Princeton, I’ve had a chance to do some exploring in corners I didn’t get see years ago, such as the boxes containing drawings.  There are literally hundreds of them…  Here’s a pencil sketch of  great actor Edmund Kean as Shakespeare’s Richard III and a more finished one of a fight shipboard between an English tar and a dastardly pirate wearing a skirt with a ring of skulls and crossbones around the hem.There are marvelous full-length portraits of characters which I’m longing to identify, like this Roman soldier, the deadly damsel with a tambourine and a dagger, and a sprite in fancy fishy-scale tights.  This summer a cadre of us will be working hard to improve the bare bones record for the collection by adding measurements, names of authors, works, and performers, as well as all the foundational information in the Excel spreadsheets Aaron’s team made which at the time couldn’t be inserted. Already I’ve matched up one drawing with its lithographic print captioned “Bob Cousens Pantaloon!”We’re excited at the prospect of making more marvelous material available for  performers, historians of the genre and of illegitimate theater in general, plus collectors and any other enthusiasts on Cotsen’s digital library module.

Play the Board Game: A Race Game through a Magical Hand-drawn Shared World

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Two weeks ago the Princeton Board Games Club visited Special Collections to look at a selection of Cotsen’s board games.  Here they are battling it out over Election: The Game of the Day, a 1950s board game very loosely based on Monopoly where players try to win seats in the House of Commons.  The battle for voters in Coventry and Bedford was spirited.

But when they walked into the large classroom, they made a beeline to the game shown in the foreground of the photograph and asked what it was?  The playing surface appears to be a drawing covering four sheets of paper which have been mounted on board, varnished, and hinged with fabric. The only evidence for the materials that were used if the label shown to the left pasted on the back. The creator didn’t sign the front anywhere obvious, although it’s possible a name could be concealed somewhere among all the figures.  Sometimes the rules for published board games are printed down the vertical sides, but this feature was not copied.  Perhaps they were written out and made into a little booklet. The tokens and dice probably went missing decades ago.

Was this pastime based on Snakes and Ladders or is it a variation of the Game of the Goose, the most popular race game of all?  There’s no way to know unless players line up at the castle in the upper left hand corner and advance down the track.

[Antique Manuscript Board Game]. [London?, 1920s?]. (Cotsen)

Like any version of the Game of the Goose, players lucky enough to land on certain squares  get a leg up on their competitors.  The Bull of Norway from the fairy tale waits at number 88 to carry the player to number 111.Among the obstacles to advancement is a fiery salamander, who will detain a play until a six is thrown. There two dragons to avoid…  Land on number 25 (notice that there’s one in bold in a circle and another above) and the knight kills the lion waiting to maul travellers and the the player can jump over the scaly brute to number 35. The second dragon can be slain if Excalibur is pulled from the stone at number 93.  Otherwise it will eat the unfortunate player who lands on number 94, eliminating him or her from play.  The satyr facing it is perhaps piping a tune to improve its digestion.  The elves to the right look disinclined to intervene. 
Tramp through the Forest of Sherwood and meet  Dick Turpin, the highwayman, who will relieve the player of unnecessary baggage.  Avoid  him and there’s a chance of nabbing the Seven League Boots that will skip ahead to number 73.
Hurry down to the sea and sail a tall ship around Neptune and bypass Long John Silver on Treasure Island.Turn north to head for home, a stately country home.  Perhaps it is a picture of a real place, the actual site where this quirky shared world cum board game  was made.  So far there aren’t enough clues to figure out who drew the game board, although it seems a good guess that the person lived in England before the first World War and was very familiar with the classics of Victorian literature.    When it’s digitized and up in the Cotsen module of DPUL, the board game club can figure out how it’s played!