Bloghorn is pleased to report that this evening’s talk by Peter Firmin, co-creator of Bagpuss, the Clangers, Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog at the Cartoon Museum is sold out.

This is a closing event for the Toy Tales exhibition which finishes showing to the public at the end of this week.

Bloghorn says go while you still have the chance. To talk to the museum, call 020 7580 8155

Updated: If you are interested in some of Peter’s back catalogue of work you also enjoy some here

Are you sitting comfortably, children? Then you might like to know that the exhibition Toy Tales: Highlights from Classic British Children’s Animation opens tomorrow (July 7) at the Cartoon Museum in London, and runs until September 5.

The show focuses on some of the most popular animated children’s programmes produced in Britain over the past 50 years, and will feature drawn backgrounds, cut-outs, models, sets, posters, and animation cels from Ivor the Engine – above, by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin – Noggin the Nog, The Pogles, The Clangers, Bagpuss, Roobarb, Morph, Danger Mouse, The Snowman, and Famous Fred, below, based on a book by Posy Simmonds (copyright Channel 4).

The exhibition it comes right up to date with Wallace and Gromit, Bob the Builder and Peppa Pig.

These are shows watched by generations, so the exhibition is sure to appeal to children of all ages (that means you too, grown-ups). The exhibition will provide insights into the creative process of animation including scripts, storyboards, preparatory drawings, animators’ notes and “animatics” (rough, early versions) as well as clips from the various programmes. A highlight is sure to be a complete set from Postgate and Firmin’s much-loved The Clangers.

The Cartoon Museum is at 35 Little Russell Street, London, close to the British Museum. It is open Tuesday to Saturday 10.30am-5.30pm and Sunday 12pm-5.30pm (closed Mondays including Bank Holidays).

Visit the Cartoon Museum website

The Cartoon Art Trust, the registered charity [pdf] behind the UK national Cartoon Museum, receives no state or public funding. This means that every year the trustees have to raise £150,000 to run it.

For the first time in several years, the museum have managed to get a funds-runner a place in the London Marathon. Step forward one Marcus Barclay. Bloghorn thinks respect is due to this volunteer.

Marcus and his efforts are one of the museum’s main fundraising events of the year and any donation, however small, is very welcome. Bloghorn understands it is easy to make a donation using the Cartoon Museum’s online sponsorship page – which we have linked to below – and we would like to encourage our readers to do so.

Cartoon Museum London Marathon fundraiser

The Museum is currently showing Ronald Searle – Graphic Master which we have reported on here.

Interviewed by, wait for it, Nick Glass* for Channel 4 News.
Bloghorn says watch for the full explanation.

Cartoonist Steve Bell, who curated the current Ronald Searle show at the Cartoon Museum writes here about the experience. You can read more of Bloghorn’s coverage about the three Searle shows currently on in London here.

In the spirit of our recent coverage of the Ronald Searle exhibitions, we are pleased to publish Martin Rowson’s article from the exhibition catalogue produced by the Cartoon Museum.

In 1999 Ronald Searle was judged, by his fellow cartoonists, to be the greatest cartoonist of the 20th Century. It’s a judgement I thoroughly endorse, though as someone who was brought up on Searle, like most people of my generation born in the late 50s and early 60s, I thought distant worship would be as close as I ever got to him. After all, Searle famously scarpered when I was about one, so I, along with other British cartoonists, could only ever venerate him as the King Across the Water.

Still, when I was approached in 2005 to front a BBC4 documentary about Searle, I jumped at the chance, even though he made clear very early on he wanted nothing whatsoever to do the making of the film or anyone involved with it. That’s his prerogative, and my reverence for him includes a deep respect for his desire for a bit of peace and quiet. Nonetheless, the programme went ahead without him, and I enjoyed it for the most part (although, as I’d decided to speak to camera unscripted, to capture a greater sense of immediacy, there were occasions when the demands of the producer that I repeat a line 20 times meant that by the end I kept forgetting it, as well as forgetting what it could possibly mean.)

Part of the gig – part of the reason they’d got me to do it in the first place – was that, when pressed, I can draw a little bit like the master, and I did several pieces to camera sitting at a drawing board and replicating his style. One riff I went off on was the idea that Searle had invented his version of Hogarth’s famous “Line of Beauty”, which in his case was the “Angle of Beauty”, which I claimed was an acute angle of 37 degrees (I made that bit up, but you get the point) which can be seen repeated again and again in his depiction of feet and noses. I argued further that feet and legs – be they spindly, black-stockinged St Trinian’s legs, or the tree-trunk legs of the Masters at St Custard’s – were, for Searle, the windows to the soul.

All that may or may not be true, but I discovered a deeper truth when I was reproducing the standard Searle script for the “Entr’-Act” cards for the programme. Apart from the fact that each letter tended to twist my nibs into unusability, I soon realised something about that gnarled, nobbly lettering: that without the way Searle drew and wrote, most of the best British post-war cartooning would be unimaginable. Every line of Steadman’s or Scarfe’s had its origins in Searle’s blots. Those blots had shown us all the true path.

Anyway, we finished the film and it was duly broadcast – though in post-production I felt they added too many interviews about his life, and didn’t concentrate enough on his drawing, but what do I know? The production company sent him the film, and were greeted with silence. But unreciprocity from your gods is what you should expect, so I didn’t mind that much.

But then, a few weeks after the programme’s first transmission, I got a letter, sent to my home, addressed in a strangely familiar handwriting. It was a personal letter from Searle, thanking me for placing the garlands on his brow and apologising for the fact that he’s be dead by the time it was my turn. The letter is now framed and hangs in its place of honour next to the only Searle original my wife could afford to buy me. Better yet, in the few interviews he’s given since, he’s been kind and generous enough to say he likes my work. So happy 90th birthday, Mr Searle, from a very humble and grateful admirer…

Bloghorn thanks The Cartoon Museum and Martin for permission to publish here in advance of tonight’s opening.

Bloghorn is sad to hear Lionel Lambourne has died. Lionel, by day, Keeper of Paintings at the Victoria & Albert Museum was one of the founder members of the Cartoon Arts Trust and is consequently responsible for the setting up of the UK’s first National Cartoon Museum. Cartoonist Chris Burke adds that Lionel had an encyclopedic knowledge and love of cartoons and cartoonists. He will be sadly missed.

An exhibition entitled Only Joking! is at the Cartoon Museum, London, from January 27 until March 1. The show is billed as a collection of joke cartoons old and new designed to raise spirits in the deep winter. Meanwhile, you have until January 24 to catch 30 Years of Viz at the museum. For more, visit the website.

From 30 Years of Viz, currently at the Cartoon Museum

“Pictorial satire is so ingrained in our culture that people often don’t realise what a huge part of their lives it is. Not just in comics and newspapers, but also animations, games, advertising, greetings cards”
– Anita O’Brien, Curator, Cartoon Museum

Taken from an article in the Daily Telegraph on 21 years of the Cartoon Art Trust, the charity behind the Cartoon Museum

LINK: Funny how cartoons still have bite

Voting has now taken place for the 2009 UK Young Cartoonist of the Year awards. The awards will be presented at the annual Cartoon Art Trust event in central London this evening. The awards are made in two categories, for artists under 18 and 30s years old, and were chosen from more than 200 submissions. The judges panel was headed by Guardian cartoonist and PCO member Martin Rowson. Fellow judge Christian Adams of The Daily Telegraph has written about the process here. Bloghorn will have full coverage tomorrow.