pucciManuli - A Remarkable Collection

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Maxi Kiermeier has been fascinated by marionettes ever since she can remember.  At only age 16, she began creating her own marionettes and giving them to family members as gifts. At that time, you could not buy the figures shown in marionette theatres, nor were they well suited for the “four walls” of one’s home.  While they were lovely in their movement and perfect for theatre, upon closer inspection, their look was rather crude.  Not long after meeting her husband, Maxi created a one-of-a-kind marionette for his birthday.  It was then, that the idea of making more struck them both. The idea proved so successful, they began selling one-off creations to those that expressed interest.

To build world class marionettes, one needs many artistic talents: creativity to dream up the initial character, modeling for the head and hands, painting for the expressive facial details, fashion design for the wardrobe creation and fitting, and woodworking for the inner workings of the figure.  It wasn’t until after her studies in fashion design at the Munich Master School for Fashion that Maxi realized marionettes were the ideal medium for her skills, the marionette as objet d’art.

Since 1986, Maxi has created her very own remarkable world of marionette characters.  Inspired, in part, by figures from the kingdom of fairytales and fantasy, she dreams up each and every marionette from her vivid imagination. Each marionette is handcrafted with care and attention to the smallest detail. The inside of the figure is constructed based on the traditional pattern of the eye-bolt puppets from the old world puppet theatres, where every joint can be moved.  In addition, each puppet is anatomically correct.  The head and hands are made of a ceramic and the clothes are custom tailored from both antique and new materials alike.  An average of over 30 hours of work go into each figure.  Maxi’s marionettes find loving homes all over the world and are only available in small numbers.