CIRCUS TIME: An Answer (Sort Of) For Hugh Walter Regarding Circus Tents

Hugh has been a reader of the blog for many a moon and posted this comment on one of the photos of the Carson and Barnes Circus, Nellis AFB set-up:

"Seeing the tentage come out of a not-small lorry inn a huge roll, makes you wonder where and how they make the tentage, somewhere there must be a vast covered-warehouse with a work-table the size of a football pitch (either rules), with people all over it on their knees, working massive sail-cloth needles while button-thread rolls feed down from the ceiling . . . or that how I picture it now!"

Now that there is an interesting question. We get so wrapped up in circus wagons, clowns, parades, menageries, rides, and main performances, that we forget what it takes to actually make a circus! I belong to several facebook circus-related groups and have had the opportunity to see what it takes to restore wagons so that kind of gives me a glimpse into what the old carriage makers went through when building them from scratch, but what about the tents?

I posted Hugh's question to the Circus Historical Society" facebook page and got several insights. Modern tents are vinyl - not canvas - and this was apparently made by Scola Taloni of Italy, and a quick search of the Internet shows that the name may be a place rather than a company name.

As you can see in the photo of the truck above, there are two spools. Each spool of tentage is rolled out, one beside the other, "stitched" together while on the ground, then raised. As it is vinyl, any rips/tears/holes are mended using heat. Being a heavy material would of course require industrial sized sewing machines. My guess is that there are feeder spools of the material which feed out the vinyl, then it gets all sewed up, then immediately fed onto take-up spools, thereby not requiring a huge warehouse sized facility. THAT'S JUST A GUESS, but having worked in factories and steels mills prior to joining the military it's what I can imagine would happen.

One very interesting insight regarding old school tent making came from Pj Holmes, one of the group experts:

"Ed Bettina Berg in the days before vinyl tents, they were made of canvas and the ropes were sewn to the canvas. Here is a photo of the Ringling sail loft in Sarasota in 1942. This photo was taken by Joseph Steinmetz and belongs to the state of Florida. This building was the former grandstand that was turned into the menagerie building on the 1st floor and the canvas loft on the 2nd and 3rd floors. When they moved winter quarters to Venice, the roof trusses from this building were used in the new Venice arena that has been recently torn down..."

(Photo property of the State of Florida library system)

 

CIRCUS TIME: A Bit More On Toy Circus Tents

I was really hoping that this thread would be further along by now but a big snag has hit: I don't have room! There's several toy tents waiting in the wings to be assembled but now I need something to at least put them on for photography purpose. One of them will need approximately 24" x 36" to set up but there's no room for that out in The Cave at the moment. So here's what I thought we could do - look at what I do have and then figure out something else to post. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Marx Super Circus Tent and Banner Line

Marx did an excellent job of encapsulating the essence of the Big Top in it's wonderful playset from the early 1950's. In real life those two sets of banners you see flanking the Big Top would actually be placed in front of a separate tent. Together they would form the 'banner line' and would act as a preview of  the human oddities (aka 'Freak Show') that could be seen in there.

Marx's Big Top measures 25" (63.5cm) L x 10" (25.4cm) W x 9" (22.86cm) H

My photos of the Super Circus set appeared in Playset Magazine Issue No. 64

Coca-Cola Circus Cutout Reproduction (1997)

The original was first made in 1932 is much smaller than the repo. I love the repos for its larger size and its ability to be shoe-horned into even the smallest of spaces

Here we see an original placed on top of the repo for size comparison

This tent measures 14" (35.56cm) W x 2 7/8" (7.30cm) D overall

Hand-made Tents

These of course are too small to stage a Big Top performance in but they make excellent ancillary tents

Mattel Circus Playset

This is a work in progress. I broke this out not too long ago so that I could photograph the tent and all eleven circus acts that were a part of the overall offering (I'll explain that when the time comes). However, this was yet another snag I hit. You see, the separate circus acts require assembly and quite frankly, they're not going together as easily as I'd hoped with a bit of ill-fitting parts to contend with. Stay tuned for more progress.

Preiser No. 30645 HO Scale Krone Circus Tent

While I have been concentrating on tents compatible with Lionel or K-Line 3-rail O-gauge electric trains (1/43 - 1/50 scale or so),HO scale has a huge presence in the miniature circus world as well

(photos culled from eBay)

 (480X160mm)

CIRCUS TIME: Carson and Barnes Circus at Nellis AFB 30 May 1992 - Pt 1

 I've been making a feeble attempt at covering circus tents the past couple of weeks, but it's probably best to show an actual one as it's being erected. Here's an installment that would have fit well in my 'Ed's Travelogue' series but what-the-heck, let's do it now. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

In 1992, while stationed here at Nellis AFB,  I had seen flyer's go up about the Carson and Barnes Circus s coming to the air base. Circus? 

This is the front page to the flyer. I'll feature the entire flyer in another post

On an air base? What? The set-up was on 29 May - a Friday - with performances only on Saturday30 May. So on Friday I was able to get enough time off to snap photos of the set-up (the tie-in to my series on tents) and the next day took the family to see the circus. You'll notice the flyer mentioning that this is 'THE BIGGEST BIG TOP ON EARTH"

This was an awesome experience, watching elephants ort of roam around the field and seeing the circus hands use the big beasts to help erect the Big Top - it was thrilling! This is a good example of a truck circus. No fancy wagons here folks - everything the circus personnel needed was trucked in. Well, let's get this started!

The photos are presented here in the order in which they were taken

Voilà, the finished Big Top  - what a thing of beauty!