Review by Camille Alexa: Ahh, Unicorn. Mythical, magical, mysterious. Holding this Folkmanis puppet of you, I can’t help wishing it were more as I picture you. Folkmanis got some things right. They did not, for example, neglect your billygoat’s tuft, that underchin goatee featured — flowing, curling — in medieval prints of you. They chose a rather nice fur for your hide: marshmallow white with a hint of opal sparkle. Your neck in this, your likeness, is depicted as long and elegant (as it should be), your velvet-lined ears prick forward, alert, and your eyes are deeper-set than any mere horse’s eyes, without the gentle passivity of a domesticated animal. No: these eyes are dark, and narrowed, and hinting at the capacity for violence if need be…
So those things they got right. But other things, other elements, are not as I would have them. Not for you, O ethereal creature, whom Leonardo da Vinci described in his fifteenth-century Notebooks as a libidinous beast, which “through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe this puppet is one of those captured-type unicorns, with a silver collar and everything. The horn here isn’t an embarrassment: it stands, proud and spiraled, all to the good. But that mane makes you look like a mop, dear Unicorn! A muppet, a widget, a buffoon! Not at all suited to the gravitas owed your majestic station. And the structure of your face has a somewhat bloated quality, poor thing, as though one late night too many has been passed trawling the streets for fair maidens or seated damsels, long past last call at the pub.
And yet, I’d still rather have a mythical world with you than without you, a catalogue with your likeness rather than without. So kudos, Folkmanis, for attempting to capture this most elusive of creatures in the three Ps: polyester, polyurethane, and PVC.
If only it hadn’t remained quite so elusive.
