Friday, February 15, 2019

Florida Day 4 Part 2 - The World's Biggest Miniature Circus!



Still on the grounds of Ca D'zan. We'd gone straight to the mansion for the basic ground floor walk that was included in the price of admission because the timing worked out really well. After that, my sister and I agreed on a meeting time and place and my next stop was the Howard Brothers Miniature Circus, which my friends who'd taken me paddling the day before had raved about over lunch. Valerie had explained how the way it's set up to walked you through the events of a day when the circus comes to town, from the trains pulling in right up through the crowds cheering the amazing feats of daring and antics of the clowns under the Big Top. I had a hard time picturing how this was going to work in a model - a model is static, how is it going to show events unfolding over the course of a day? - but that's exactly what happened!

There's a walkway that runs around the perimeter of the 3,800 square foot exhibit so you're looking more closely at one section at any time. You start out in the train yard where the cars of the circus trains have pulled up and are being unloaded; a sound track hissing steam, the whinnies and clip-clopping hooves of workhorses, and general clangor of a busy rail yard helps set a scene of focused hustle and bustle for your imagination. As you move on around, you see the cook tent, the dining tent (everyone had their assigned seats, with place settings of china and glass), and various other "backstage" tents - this really was a self-contained mobile town, with everything residents would need for their day to day lives.

The townspeople gather on the midway, where they buy cotton candy and balloons, are tempted by the sideshow touts and games of skill, and awed by the strange creatures of the menagerie. The performers dress for the show in the dressing tent and queue up with the show horses and other performing animals for the Grand Parade, while the work horses that will go back to work hauling everything back to the trains at the end of the day rest and munch their feed in their own special tent.

 Every few minutes the "sun" dims and bright electric lights glow in the dusk, making the scene even more magical. Finally it's time for the big show under the Big Top, and one of the many signs describing the scene has you imagining the advance squad of the circus already on their way to the next town on the tour, where they'll plaster the brilliant posters showing the coming delights on every flat surface they can find.

Howard C. Tibbals started building this in 1956 and as far as I can tell he's still working on it - in fact in my next Florida post I'll show some desks where some of that work is being done.

I found an article where Mr. Tibbals shares some thoughts on life and one statement of his directly addressed one thing that really struck me about this amazing model:

"When I first started working on the model, I learned I couldn’t just build a bunch of objects. I had to tell a story. My goal was to show what it was like when a traveling circus came to town." Click here to read more.

He succeeded in that so well - and it isn't even just the overarching story, every scene you see has little vignettes of its own that reward you for spending a little more time there. What an imagination this guy has to dream up all these stories to tell in 3/4 inch to a foot scale! I would definitely go see this again, I went through in a little bit of a hurry because there was more I wanted to see and even at a quick pace there were so many fun little details -- I expect a slower visit would be so rewarding.

All photos from here, click for a slideshow view. I was really missing my Lumix and zoom lens here, I try not to check bags if I can help it and I did manage that for this trip, even with a pretty wide range in the forecast, but when I came down to the last bit of space in the bag, I ended up facing a choice between adding in a better camera (Optio is tiny so that was already in there)  or a shorty wetsuit for paddling. Went with the wetsuit and I was glad but if we do this again (and it was such a great family trip I think there's a good chance of that) I would definitely try to add the better camera. I'm happy enough with the photos I took with the optio but there were a lot of tiny details a little too far away to get with that. Another time, I hope.
 

For more information about visiting The Ringling, visit Ringling.org

2 comments:

Frankie PERUSSAULT said...

Absolutely amazing!

Alana said...

There were so many things to see when we visited the Ringling Museum in January (and it was free day for the art museum) that we didn't see the miniature circus or Ca' d'Zan. That will be for another trip - I was wondering whether the miniature circus was worth it and - yes, it is!