I can see your
lips moving
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
In the 1980s I
collected old ventriloquist dummies. I had
acquired 13 of them and had them sitting all
around my living room at Alexandra Mansions,
North West London. Several took up a whole chair
and looked almost human.
One early morning the gas man came to read the
meter and almost had a heart attack when he saw
all the silent ‘bodies’ just sitting in
the living room creating an eerie atmosphere. He
exited very quickly!
My husband Martin Breese, a magician and magic
publisher, didn’t want to be the 14th dummy
and persuaded me to sell them.
Not an easy task. It was very challenging but I
by chance had recently met the Swiss
ventriloquist Retonio Breitenmoser at the
Portobello market. At the same time Valentine Vox
the well known British ventriloquist had
published his book ‘I can see your lips
moving’ and was also a collector of dummies.
Martin proposed that my small collection be
amalgamated with Valentine’s large
ventriloquism collection and sold to Retonio for
his museum in Las Vegas with Valentine being the
curator as part of the deal. And it came to pass.
However by 2020 the museum folded and Retonio
shipped all its contents back to Appenzell, his
home in Switzerland, where he had bought a
disused furniture factory in the 80s. He called
his haven the Dreamfactory.
25/1/25
written in Nightingale.
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