 | |
  Location within London | |
| Established | 1959 |
|---|---|
| Location | Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, England |
| Coordinates | 51°32′39.6″N 0°4′23.3″W / 51.544333°N 0.073139°W |
| Type | Clowning museum |
| Director | Mattie Faint (Mattie the Clown) |
| Website | clownsgallery |
The Clowns Gallery-Museum is a museum of clowning. Established in 1959, the collection contains costumes and props from famous clowns, as well as a reference library,[1] and is home to the Clown Egg Register.
The collection is split between the museum's two sites, the Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, and Wookey Hole, Somerset, England.[2] The museum was established in 1959 in Dalston and the collection was split into a venue in Wookey Hole in 2007. The Dalston museum is situated in what was the vestry of the Holy Trinity Church.[3] It was threatened with closure in 2014 but remained in place.[4] The Wookey Hole museum is run by Gerry Cottle, vice president of Clowns International.[1]
The Clown Egg Register is an archive of painted ceramic and hen's eggs that serve as a record of individual clowns' personal make-up designs.[5] The clown egg tradition began in 1946, when Stan Bult, a chemist, and founder of Clowns International, took to drawing the faces of club members and famous clowns onto chicken eggs.[6] The egg gallery was created to forestall the possibility of accidental or intentional plagiarism: an unofficial rule prohibits any two clowns from sharing a single face paint design, with eggs providing a suitably head-shaped mannequin. Real eggs were originally used but were later replaced with ceramic eggs. The gallery is open on the first Friday of each month.[5]
- The museum is mentioned by Spencer Reid in season 13 episode 17 of the American crime drama Criminal Minds.
- The museum is additionally mentioned in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series book "Men at Arms"