The revival of the ancient art of puppetry is a hopeful sign in an age when so many of our amusements and activities require nothing but money. For the art is a difficult one, and calls on small groups of people to practise at one time literature, acting, music, sculpture, painting, costuming, lighting, construction, and so on ad infinitum. In spite of this, or perhaps partly because of it, puppets have an irresistable fascination for anyone who once takes them up.

--Charles Foster Ransom in his undergraduate thesis at Tufts University, "The New Puppetry in America", 1931.

Welcome to The Domino Marionettes, a collaborative website designed to chronicle and preserve information and images of the hand-puppets and marionettes crafted by William R. Ransom and Charles F. Ransom, father and son, and partner Ernest Sackett in a time period spanning 1918 until the 1930s.

The Domino Marionettes was the stage name adopted by C.F. Ransom and E. Sackett for their semi-professional endeavors to introduce new works for the marionette stage inspired by classical mythology and folktales. They also performed under the name "Pie Powder Puppets" when using hand-puppets, also known as guignols (from the French name equivalent to the Punch character). This website contains information on, and images of, surviving puppets, as well as biographical information on the puppetteers based on Charles Ransom's personal papers.

Please use the SideBar box to your right to navigate to pages on the various puppets, either marionettes or guignols, the puppetteers, and the plays written by Charles Ransom for performance.

This site also serves as an example of the uses of collaborative, "web 2.0" technology for family or personal archival projects. The project leader is Daniel Ransom, a master's degree candidate in Library and Information Science and Charles Ransom's grandson. Information, images and anecdotes have been contributed by J.S. Ransom, D.O. Ransom, G. Hillman and S. Ransom. Photographs of some of the the puppets can also be viewed on flickr here.

Before we go any further, it would be well to define some terms. A puppet is any sort of acting doll. Puppets like Punch and Judy, consisting of head, hands, and hollow clothes into which the hand of the operator is thrust are called hand-puppets, or "guignols" (after the French equivalent of Mr. Punch), or "burattini" (an Italian word with the singular "burattino"). Marionettes, on the other hand, are articulated puppets worked by rods, wires or strings from above.

--Charles Foster Ransom, "The New Puppetry in America".