My partner Steve has been in correspondence with a ventriloquist in Romania who’s name is Crina Zvoboda. Since according to Crina, ventriloquists are very rare in Romania, Steve asked Crina to send us her story with along with some photos, so here it is:
Here’s a video showing a J.C. Turner ventriloquist Figure that could also be classified as folk art. This is perhaps one of the rarest forms of the J.C. Turner figure.
This wonderful clown is in all original condition with his clown paint fully intact. He is 40″ tall and has his original wooden body wooden hands and the original muslin covering on the body as well as muslin arms and legs.
Provenance is the complete lineage of an item or “the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. Who first purchased it and the hands that it has gone through to the present.
Most people out there have no clue what provenance is nor do they care. This is another fundamental piece of a true collector and it especially applies to ventriloquist figures.
As a collector of vent figures I want to know who has owned the figure so that I can give the information to anyone that may ask. I always list as much information as possible about a figure when I list it in the Ventriloquist Central Collection page. To me it is one of the most important things other than originality of the figure.
I was talking with my partner, Steve the other night when he mentioned it was that time of year in Oklahoma where the humidity was getting bad. Of course here in Boston and other parts of the country, the humidity levels are getting quite high.
It also got us talking about how ventriloquist figures fair in this type of environment. If you keep ventriloquist figures on display I have wondered about humidity levels and where they should be kept. I think about this because for the most part the figures in the Ventriloquist Central Collection are wood and with the changes in the seasons there is movement of wood. Movement being expansion and contraction of the wood.
