The Brightest of Entertainers

Jig dolls are fascinating and elusive; they are percussion instruments, dolls, puppets, toys, wooden artefacts and elements of social history. They feature in traditional music, folk art and local history. This eagerly awaited book is a revised and signifcantly expanded edition of the seminal work on jig dolls by Rennie and Pat Pickles (1988). A huge amount of new content and a bibliography and index have been added. It now has 104 pages and 106 illustrations, the majority in full colour. This edition pieces together a history from descriptions, printed references and museum examples and goes on to present three case studies (Yorkshire, East Anglia, and the Seth Davy legend). Reaching beyond the British scene, it explores evidence of dancing dolls in Europe, the United States and Canada, Australia and Africa, and surveys commercially produced jig dolls and mechanical dancers before concluding with a round-up of recent developments and innovations.