Artist and puppet maker known for the Clangers and Bagpuss

Born: December 11, 1928;

Died: July 1, 2018

PETER Firmin, who has died aged 89, was an artist, model marker and printmaker who helped create some of the best loved British children’s television characters of the last 60 years.

In collaboration with the late Oliver Postgate, who wrote the stories, he created the Clangers, Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog, characters that dominated British children’s programming in the 1960s and 70s. Firmin was also closely involved with the revival of the Clangers, narrated by Michael Palin, which began in 2015 and faithfully reproduces the gentle cosmic world that first captivated children in 1969.

Firmin, born in Harwich, Essex, studied at Colchester School of Art and then London’s Central School of Art and Design (with a stint in the Navy doing national service in between). After leaving the Central School in 1952, he worked in a stained glass studio and in advertising design before becoming a lecturer at his old college.

In 1957, he was living modestly with his wife Joan when Oliver Postgate knocked on the door of their bomb-damaged Battersea flat. Postgate was a stage manager for ITV and was looking for someone to help with the designs for a children’s programme he was developing. Firmin didn’t even have a TV set and didn’t much rate the new medium, but Postgate was offering to double his weekly wages, so he accepted.

That programme – Alexander, King of the Mice – was a hit when it aired, live, in 1959 and cemented what would become a lifelong partnership between Postgate and Firmin.

Setting up their own company, Smallfilms, they went on to produce their most famous work in a barn in Blean, Kent, on Firmin’s land, after he and Joan moved there in 1959 to raise their family.

Their first commission was for Ivor the Engine, the endearing tale of a Welsh steam train who wanted to sing in the choir. The series featured quirky characters, inventive stories and warm humour, as well as capturing a gentle way of life that was about to disappear forever. In typical Smallfilms style, Postgate was the creator and writer, and Firmin provided the all-important artwork. It was made in their trademark stop motion style, in which the subject changed position incrementally in each drawing so that when the frames were run together, they gave the impression of movement. As well as voicing Ivor’s driver Jones the Steam, Postgate provided Ivor’s famous engine noises – psssht’koff, psssht’koff – bringing Firmin’s enchantingly drawn world to life. Ivor the Engine was to prove a huge inspiration to the young Nick Park of Aardman Animations.

The 1960s also saw the creation of Noggin the Nog (1959-65; 1979) about the adventures of a kindly Viking-style leader called Noggin. This was Firmin’s own original concept. The Essexman had long been fascinated by the Vikings and their raids on the east coast, but this was to be a very British Viking, with good manners. Firmin modelled the Nogs on the Lewis Chessmen, then on show in the British Museum. He hit upon the name when playing around with the word Neasden while on the Tube heading through north London one day. A total of 27 episodes were made and it led to books and even a commemorative stamp in 1994, designed again by Firmin.

The Clangers came about in 1969, on the eve of the moon landing, after the BBC asked for a children’s programme about space. Joan knitted the Clangers’ exteriors and clothes to her husband’s designs, which were stretched over small mouse-like structures made of Meccano and wire. Firmin was part of the team that created the Clangers’ revival, along with Postgate’s son Daniel, which won a Bafta for best pre-school animation.

And then in 1974 came Bagpuss which, like that other 1970s classic Fawlty Towers, has exalted status in British cultural history in spite of running to around only a dozen episodes (13, to be precise). Long before Pixar’s Toy Story, it told the tale of lost toys, ornaments and other objects that came to life. They were collected by a little Edwardian girl called Emily, who loved her “saggy cloth cat”. Emily was Firmin’s own eight-year-old daughter of the same name. The ragdoll Madeleine was one that Joan had at home for the girls.

Firmin’s puppets had a homely charm due to their hand-stitched, glued-together construction. He always felt that their simplicity and accessibility – being able to see how everything worked – helped explain why they were so enduringly popular. They stimulated children’s imagination in a direct way, perhaps making them see their own toys in a different way.

Firmin and Postgate got on well throughout their decades of collaboration, working in adjoining studios and living a few miles apart. The good-natured artist never seemed to mind being seen as second fiddle to the writer, observing in 2016: “The writer gets the main plaudits. But we always made it clear that it was a combined effort."

Firmin also made puppets for other programmes and was co-creator of Basil Brush, making the first puppet with a real fox’s tail. Other characters he created included Olly Beak the owl and Fred Barker the shaggy dog for the ITV programme Smalltime in the early 1960s.

Firmin had a long marriage to Joan, whom he had met at art school where she was studying bookbinding. They had six daughters together (five of whom also went to art school) and later added 11 grandchildren as well as great grandchildren.

He carried on producing artwork in his famous barn after retiring from television work, focusing on printmaking and linocuts, which he sold via his website. His creations have continued to inspire new work by others, with a theatre company staging its own version of The Saga of Noggin the Nog at the Edinburgh Festival as recently as 2014.

Peter Firmin is survived by Joan and their six daughters.

REBECCA MCQUILLAN