Somebody cut his strings
The strings did not perish. They were cut.
A marionette does not come loose all at once. Threads fray, tangle, and go one at a time, usually at the knee, usually in the middle of a show. This one lost all of them together, at the same height, in a single sitting. That takes a pair of scissors and a decision.
Whoever made the decision did not finish the job. He was not burned, he was not thrown out, and the control was not thrown out either. It was put away and it has stayed with him ever since, separated from him by an inch of cut thread and however many years. They took him out of service and then kept both halves of him anyway, which is a stranger thing to do than either destroying him or leaving him alone.
Look at how he was put together and you will find two people in him, and they are not the same person at all.
Somebody made the clown, and they could not do it. The hands are flat slabs with three saw cuts for fingers. The feet are blocks shaped just enough to read as shoes. The head is worked up in gobs of paste, lump on lump, nothing on it quite matching anything else: a yellow lump for a nose, a red ring for a mouth, red daubed high on both cheeks. The eyes are blue lids over black hollows with nothing behind them, and they are not looking at the room. A cheerful face attempted by somebody without the hands for it.
Somebody else made the clothes, and they were very good. Yellow twill, a double ruffled collar, a peplum over the hips, rick-rack braid in red and blue laid along every seam and both cuffs. Hours of it, inch by inch, a beautiful suit of clothes made for that. They were looking at it the whole time they worked, and they dressed him in it anyway.
Every intention in the object is kindly and every result is not.
What you will receive
Joey himself. A hand-made clown marionette, eighteen inches tall, mid twentieth century by the look of the cloth and the braid. Not a factory puppet and not a reproduction made to look old. He carries no maker's mark, no tag and no label. We do not know who made him, where, or when, and we will not invent it.
Body, hands, legs and feet are wood, jointed on screw eyes and cord. The head is not wood. It is modelled in a composite of glue, clay and paste, painted cream, with a yellow nose, a red mouth, red high on both cheeks, and blue lids over black eyes. A low crest of red points runs across the crown.
The costume is a yellow tunic and sleeves with a ruffled collar and peplum, blue trousers gathered at the knee and edged in yellow, and rick-rack braid in red and blue on every seam and both cuffs. Well cut and well finished.
Condition is honest and unrestored. The head is dirty and finely cracked, with the black chipped from one eye. The paint is thin on the hands. The cloth is faded and the cuff threads hang loose. The strings are cut short and left exactly as they were.
The control comes with him. It is not attached and we are not attaching it.
Using him in your show
There is no method here. He is wood, cloth and paste, and he does one thing that no working marionette can do, which is nothing at all. What he has instead is two questions, and both are worth more than any trick you could do with him.
The first is how many people made him. There are two hands in this object and they are nothing like each other. One cut those slabs and pushed that face together out of paste. The other sat down and sewed him a suit of clothes worth wearing. The comfortable answer is that they were two people, a poor maker and a good needlewoman, and that she did her best for what she was given. The other answer is that they were the same person. Somebody who could do beautiful work when they chose to, and who did not choose to when they came to his face. Put both to a sitter and watch which one they would rather be true.
The second is why the strings were cut. All of them, at once, and then he was kept anyway. That is not how a puppet is retired and it is not how one is thrown out. Somebody wanted him not to move, and wanted him where they could see him. Do not answer it and do not hint that you could. Let the sitter arrive at what did he do on their own, because the moment they say it out loud they have decided he was capable of doing something, and you did not put that there. He may well have been. We are not going to tell you he was not.
Whatever he did, somebody made certain he would never do it again, and then kept him where they could see him. He is yours now.
Do not restring him.
