Remo Bufano's Book of Puppetry by Arthur Richmond | 1959

Remo Bufano's Book of Puppetry by Arthur Richmond, illustrated by Remo Bufano, published by The Macmillan Company, 1959. Fourth Printing. Condition is very good. Please see photos for full details.

Condition notes: the book carries library markings on the cover and inside pages, indicating it was once part of a library collection. The interior illustrations and puppetry teachings are extensive and visually rich throughout, well worth seeing in the photos.

Remo Bufano (1894 to 1948) was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of American puppetry. Born in Italy and raised in New York's Greenwich Village, he became the foremost avant-garde puppeteer of his era, and his collaborators read like a who's who of 20th century artistic giants. He worked with Eugene O'Neill as part of the celebrated Provincetown Players, created puppets for Broadway productions including Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer and Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning The Skin of Our Teeth, and built puppets for Leonard Bernstein's On the Town. His puppets for Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex stood ten feet tall, and for the Rodgers and Hart musical Jumbo he constructed a puppet thirty-five feet in height. He directed the WPA's Federal Theatre Project marionette unit during the 1930s and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929 to write a comprehensive volume on marionettes. His portrait is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution.

The fact that this book reached a fourth printing by 1959, more than a decade after Bufano's death in 1948, speaks to the enduring influence and reputation of his work in the puppetry world. A wonderful and genuinely rare addition for collectors of performing arts history, puppetry and theatre arts, WPA era Americana, or illustrated books on craft and design. Books on puppetry of this caliber and with this level of artistic pedigree are surprisingly hard to come by.