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For ages,
circuses were the prime—or only—form of entertainment for entire communities,
particularly those in rural areas. In Ancient Rome, chariot races took place in
oval arenas (anything to do with horses takes place in oval or circular
structures, and the word circus stems from the Latin for circle or oval). In
Medieval times, clowns, musicians, trick riders and acrobats began to travel
with the horse acts; also at this time, tents were erected over the ovals.
North
America’s first circus was started by a Philadelphia
man in 1793. Three years later, the first elephant was brought to America and the collection and exhibition of
exotic animals became popular—a practice now considered cruel and déclassé (and
eclipsed by sophisticated acts such as Canada’s Cirque du Soleil).
The Golden
Age of circuses began in the 1870s, by which time they included brass bands,
fancy costumes and eye-catching graphics for advertising purposes. Lavish
parades announced each troupe’s arrival, with the circus rolling into town in
ornately decorated wagons and gilded cages. Circuses were mobile communities,
including performers, trainers, production people, barbers, costumers,
teachers, doctors. They lived and worked in their colourful caravans—often,
entire families stayed with the same circus for generations.
The Golden
Age came to an end in the late 1920s and it was shortly thereafter that circus
historian Gordon Potter hired Michigan miniaturist Bert Backstein to construct
a miniature model of a circus as it really was. Half a century later,
Backstein’s son completed the collection, which is slightly larger than the
standard one-inch-to-one-foot scale and which consists of 250 wagons, a
400-piece menagerie of painted ceramic and wooden animals, and 125 carved and
painted circus performers, band members and workers. Half of the wagons are
miniature replicas of actual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus
wagons from the Golden Age; others are replicas of wagons from the renowned
Hagenbeck Wallace Circus (1907-1938).
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