The Art of Smallfilms: the Work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin

Working from a farmyard in Kent, Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin produced some of the best-loved childrens’ television of the 1960s and 1970s, including Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor The Engine and Noggin The Nog. This book presents the Smallfilms archive — the puppets and cut-outs from these series, along with insights into how they were made. It’s a book full of pipe cleaners, cotton wool, wire and ping-pong balls, and celebrates the imagination and ingenuity of two brilliant artists who shaped the childhoods of a generation.

“Jonny Trunk has taken the astonishingly thorough archive of Smallfilms… and presented it as one would a collection of artefacts in an exhibition detailing some much-admired 20th century art movement, like Fluxus or Dada. The Smallfilms sacred relics repay his trust in them, and our repeated viewings.”

Stewart Lee, from his introduction

• Hardback
• 304 pages
• 26 × 28 cm