V&A Museum of Childhood, London

https://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/

Situated in Bethnal Green, this fascinating museum is a delight for both children and adults; it's transportive qualities connect visitors with memories of childhood and play. The richness and variety of the displays held my attention and my research lead me straight to Rachel Whiteread's installation "Place (Village)" (2006-2008). This community of vintage doll houses was collected by the artist over a period of twenty years and assembled in a stepped configuration to resemble a hilltop village. Each house is internally lit, and their emptiness evokes a haunted, mysterious and melancholic quality reminiscent in the artist's large sculptural works. They are a trace memory of a physical materiality diminished by time. Absence hangs heavily.

Place (Village), 2006-2008
Rachel Whiteread
V&A Museum of Childhood

My attention was also drawn to the strange dolls and puppets held in the collection. The top right image is a 1946 glove puppet modelled on a burglar and was used in a comedy sketch performed by award winning puppeteer Mary Bligh-Bond. The puppet is constructed from plaster and textiles and his characterful features carefully detail expression and stance. These are elements I am concerned with to create and animate my puppets. 

In Kenneth Gross' (2011) essay on uncanny life, he states:

"The puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. Puppets can be creepy things, secretive, inanimate while also full of spirit, alive with gesture and voice." (2011:01)

Mammets (Family), 2018, Sara Jayne Harris

Mammets (George, Gilbert), 2018
Sara Jayne Harris

Javanese rod puppet, C19th

There has been some debate as to whether my figures should be called puppets. Most of these creations do not have moveable parts as puppets do, however these figures are housed on sticks to be held and interacted with a little like early rod puppets. The puppets have accompanied me on journeys to discover my ancestral lands and they have acted as mediums for me to access hidden memories; to supplement an absence. Gross (2011:04) identifies "the homemade dolls found in the possession of accused witches[...]were also called puppets." The online thesaurus defines the term puppet as a noun: person or toy manipulated by another. As I can remove my figures from their cloche containers and steel stands I am free to interact and manipulate them I believe they are more puppet than doll. Through my research on puppets I have discovered the noun Mammet, which is an obsolete term from 15th Century English and describes a lifeless figure, an effigy, a scarecrow, a doll or puppet. I like the strangeness of this word and will now resurrected this term and apply it to my sculptural figures. 

 Paul Klee Puppets 

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-puppet-doll-and-toy 
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mammet
Gross, K. (2011) Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life. London: The University of Chicago Press Ltd.