The Smallfilms Gallery at the Beaney

One of the places I visited last week was the Beaney Museum in Canterbury.

This is not only free to enter, but holds the Smallfilms Gallery, which has a huge range of resources connected to the work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, who had decades of huge creativity where they created the TV series and huge amounts of related books, merchandise and other activity based around a number of 'worlds' they created. In early 1999, Bagpuss topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's television programme.

They include some of the most well loved of all TV characters, and their animation was wonderful. For people my age, we grew up with the Clangers, Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, Pogles Wood, Pingwings (I was too young for those) and - my personal favourite - Noggin the Nog.

Outside of that they were also involved in material for Basil Brush and a range of other animations and series, including design work.

The interest in Smallfilms work continues to the present day. A recently discovered archive of Peter Firmin's artwork recently went up for auction.

It's wonderful to browse through this catalogue of artwork.

Here's a wonderful map of a village in an Ivor the Engine book as part of one lot, which sold for ten times its estimate - many other auction lots did the same.

Image: Peter Firmin (1979)

To finish, here's 'Noggin and the Ice Dragon' - a classic... forget your minions and computer generated flatness... this is pure craft and hand made...