Clowns Gallery-Museum
Clowns Gallery-Museum is located in Greater London
Clowns Gallery-Museum
Location within London
Established1959 (1959)
LocationHoly Trinity Church, Dalston, England
Coordinates51°32′39.6″N 0°4′23.3″W / 51.544333°N 0.073139°W / 51.544333; -0.073139
TypeClowning museum
DirectorMattie Faint (Mattie the Clown)
Websiteclownsgallery.co.uk

The Clowns Gallery-Museum is a museum of clowning. Established in 1959, the collection contains costumes and props from famous clowns, as well as a reference library,[1] and is home to the Clown Egg Register.

History

The collection is split between the museum's two sites, the Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, and Wookey Hole, Somerset, England.[2] The museum was established in 1959 in Dalston and the collection was split into a venue in Wookey Hole in 2007. The Dalston museum is situated in what was the vestry of the Holy Trinity Church.[3] It was threatened with closure in 2014 but remained in place.[4] The Wookey Hole museum is run by Gerry Cottle, vice president of Clowns International.[1]

Clown Egg Register

The Clown Egg Register is an archive of painted ceramic and hen's eggs that serve as a record of individual clowns' personal make-up designs.[5] The clown egg tradition began in 1946, when Stan Bult, a chemist, and founder of Clowns International, took to drawing the faces of club members and famous clowns onto chicken eggs.[6] The egg gallery was created to forestall the possibility of accidental or intentional plagiarism: an unofficial rule prohibits any two clowns from sharing a single face paint design, with eggs providing a suitably head-shaped mannequin. Real eggs were originally used but were later replaced with ceramic eggs. The gallery is open on the first Friday of each month.[5]

References in Pop Culture

- The museum is mentioned by Spencer Reid in season 13 episode 17 of the American crime drama Criminal Minds.

- The museum is additionally mentioned in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series book "Men at Arms"

References

  1. 1 2 "The Clowns Gallery-Museum's History". Clowns International. Archived from the original on 4 October 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  2. ↑ Taylor, Jeremy (12 July 2013). "First Person: Matthew Faint – 'I run the clown egg register'". Financial Times. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  3. ↑ Adams, Tim (7 June 2015). "Send out the clowns: why are they losing popularity?". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  4. ↑ Polyviou, Natasha (30 January 2015). "A matter of laugh and death: what to expect at the Joseph Grimaldi service". Time Out. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Clowns Gallery-Museum London". Time Out London. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  6. ↑ Fagundes, David; Perzanowski, Aaron (2019). "Clown Eggs". Notre Dame Law Review. 94 (3): 1313–1380.



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