Fascination with miniature and intricate pictures that move is eternal. Acquired by the Library Company of Philadelphia in 2020, the Robert Staples Metamorphic Collection comprises an unprecedented array of over 1,300 metamorphic works that fit in a person’s hand. Designed to be physically manipulated through flaps, pop ups, and the like to change their imagery, shape, and/or message, the pieces encompass various genres and are referred to by a variety of terms. They entail an assortment of different articles that although small in scale, are also profound in their influence as movable and moving (in all senses of the word) art before 1920. These images, like the GIF, meme, and AI depictions on electronic devices, permeated the visual matter that shaped the daily lives of generations of people before the 21st century.
While today social media primarily constitutes society’s hand-held moving imagery, producers of such materials for earlier generations created the works with a deceptively simple goal of enlivening a mundane piece of paper. Small-scale, sequential, and mosaic-like graphics served as mass means for visual messaging and learning, as political and advertising propaganda, and as windows into the everyday worlds and graphic design of their eras. The works in the Staples Collection and others of a comparable size and moving nature engage the hand, eye, and mind while also providing a historical lens on the media that function as communication, cultural, and technological devices for “serious fun.”
Erika Piola, Curator
This video shows the mechanisms in action of over forty of the movables in the gallery exhibition. The individual videos of the movables are accessible throughout the online exhibition.
To learn more about the mechanics of movable works, visit Kinetic Joy: Basic Principles of Paper Engineering.
This advertisement promoted the Brown Shoe Company established in St. Louis in 1878. In 1904, Buster Brown and his dog Tige, characters licensed from cartoonist Richard Fenton Outcault (1863-1928), became the brand mascots for the nationwide firm that specialized in children’s shoes. “I’m Buster Brown, and I live in a shoe. That’s my dog, Tige, and he lives there, too” would become the company’s jingle in the years to come.
The exhibition includes historical materials that are offensive and harmful. Historical graphic materials are evidence of the time in which they were created and can contain text and/or images that are racist, homophobic, sexist, ableist, or otherwise derogatory and insensitive. The Library Company takes responsibility for these materials and their importance for the study of the past seriously. The Library does not endorse the views expressed in these materials.
This online exhibition was created in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Serious Fun: The Robert Staples Metamorphic Collection of Movable and Moving Art before 1920 on view at the Library Company of Philadelphia from November 5, 2026 through June 25, 2027.
Serious Fun is supported by Philippa Campbell, Barbara Fahs Charles, and the Pine Tree Foundation. Operating funding has been provided by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s Cultural and Historical Support Program, a program funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.