The Hayes Valley puppeteer, and his dragon treehouse
It’s not every day that one sees a dragon rising out of San Francisco’s fog. So when I saw a life-sized dragon puppet suspended from a treehouse in Hayes Valley, I knew I had to meet its maker. I slipped a note through the gate of the nearby Victorian and hoped the rain wouldn’t smudge my handwriting. Edward Winslow, a dad, dancer, and internationally-touring puppeteer of 20 years, responded. Winslow, now 64, had the Bay Area version of a storybook childhood: His mom, Marilyn, owned a toy store in Los Altos called Mud Pie and the Jester’s Eye, where she sold handmade Renaissance Faire toys.Winslow, at 11, would play with their stock of finger puppets, but it wasn’t until he moved to New York in the late 1980s that he picked up his first life-sized puppet. The rain did not deter Edward Winslow […]
