Collezione
Maria Signorelli
The
Puppets of Maria Signorelli
The fairy tales, nursery rhymes and films
Shows with classical and modern texts, films
The ballets of Maria Signorelli
19th-20th century Italian rod and glove puppets
19th-20th century Italian marionettes
20th century foreign rod and string puppets
Sicilian, Pugliese and Neapolitan puppets
Toy
rod, glove and string puppets
Paper
and card theatres, sets and characters
Dolls
Scripts
of puppet and marionette plays
Posters
of puppet theatre productions and festivals
Roughly 300 items, dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Varying in size, from a few centimetres to 80cm, and of various materials (cloth, porcelain, wood, papier mâché, among others), from many continents.
Of special note, other than an Italian wooden doll of the eighteenth century and some Italian items in porcelain, two Russian dolls from the beginning of the twentieth century with embroidered costumes, a large Chinese doll from the 1930s, a Spanish doll made of papier mâché of the same period and an American rag doll dating from the 1950s.
The collection also includes a dolls’ house (bedroom with bath and linen chests of iron, various rooms fitted with furniture and ornaments in various materials, plus little dolls) from the 1940s.
The entire collection of dolls was the subject of an exhibition entitled A Dolls’ World, mounted
in the rooms of the Toy Museum of the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Zagarolo in December 2001.
