For more than 50 years Rodney Peppé, who has died aged 88, conjured up a wonderful world through the children’s books that he wrote and illustrated, together with the toys, models and automata that he made. In that world, daydreaming pigs dance, mice travel in time, and at the turn of a handle characters come to life. Two of these creations became stars for children’s television, Huxley Pig (Central TV, 1989, 1990) and Angelmouse (BBC, 1999).
Inspired by the painted and embellished wood models and sculptures of the British artist Sam Smith, as well as by Victorian toys, Rodney carefully crafted colourful toys and automata that displayed a playful charm and engaging, gentle wit, free from any dark undercurrents. A substantial collection of these, together with his book illustrations and archive, are now housed at Falmouth Art Gallery.
He authored more than 80 children’s books, including The Mice and the Clockwork Bus (1986), which was to become part of the national curriculum for seven-year-olds.
This was the fourth in his Mice books series (1981-93), about a little rodent family that built their own idiosyncratic house prior to embarking on a series of adventures in various quirkily distinctive craft. Unique to his method of working were the complex models that Rodney made to draw from and which helped inform his illustrations. These were fashioned with recycled objects at their centre, such as a desert boot serving as a home, a solar topi as a bus, or a kettle as a ship. With these models he was at his most innovative, pointing the way to the use of found objects and recycled material that would become mainstream a decade or more later.
His Huxley Pig picture books (1989-91) ran alongside the stopmotion animation series narrated by Martin Jarvis, about a plump and charming little porker who embarked on a series of imagined adventures with his friends. Among this group was his side-kick, “that rotten rodent” Horace, an indeterminate creature with prominent front teeth resembling a gopher. Of all the characters that Rodney created, Huxley was closest to his heart and, as both a star of page and screen, one of the most popular.
Born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, Rodney and his twin brother, Mark, were six months old when their parents returned to India. There their father, Lionel, co-managed the estates near Birdpur in the north of the country, which had been in the Peppé family since 1849. With the outbreak of the second world war Lionel joined the Royal Indian Navy and, in 1942, the boys returned to their maternal grandparents’ home in Eastbourne with their mother, Vivienne (nee Parry), to start at St Bede’s school. This was the feeder school for St Edward’s, Oxford, which Rodney attended before studying fine art and wood engraving at Eastbourne School of Art and gaining a national diploma in design. His training was interrupted by a couple of years of national service in Malaya, before he started at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, where, in 1959, he attained their illustration diploma in two years rather than three.
The following year, Rodney was appointed art director for the advertising agency SH Benson, and was singled out to do special illustrations for Guinness and British Petroleum posters. This coincided with him meeting Tatjana Tekkel, a sculpture student from the Royal College of Art, and later textile artist, whom he married in 1960. They had two sons and in 1964 Rodney moved from Benson’s to become advertising TV producer for J Walter Thompson.
The next year he was head-hunted for the role of consultant designer for Ross Foods. The offer was at a similar salary to his full-time job at Thompson, which meant that finally Rodney had the freedom to experiment in other areas.
His first foray into children’s books was The Alphabet Book (1968), which he wrote and illustrated. Among the most successful of the many titles that followed was a series featuring Henry the elephant (1975-84). His creation Angelmouse, a naughty winged mouse whose halo visibly started slipping at the first sign of trouble, first appeared in print, and as an eponymous CBeebies TV show, in 1999, as well as on ABC Kids in the US.
Later, Rodney began writing “how to” books for an adult audience with Automata and Mechanical Toys (2002), a short history of the subject and showcasing 21 contemporary makers, followed by Making Mechanical Toys (2005), a craft book detailing how to make 17 of Rodney’s designs. Sandwiched between these was Toys and Models (2003), presenting a catalogue of Rodney’s work as “a source book of ideas”, subdivided into hand-cranked moving toys, electric models, clocks and automata, and lastly, models and characters made for picture books and television. One of the most impressive automata illustrated is The Twelve Days of Christmas (1990), a triumph of technical prowess since each day is animated by a different mechanism and all are contained within a single, wall mounted frame.
In 1978 the British Toymakers’ Guild awarded him the Charles Bolton cup for toy of the year and the following year he had an exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood in east London. I first met him in 1993 when curating an exhibition of his work, Toy with the Idea, at the Holburne Museum in Bath. More recently he had a series of retrospectives, at venues including Ruthin Craft Centre in north Wales and Gallery Oldham, Greater Manchester, in 2013, and Compton Verney, Warwickshire, in 2018.
Rodney is survived by Tatjana, their two sons, Christen and Jonathan, and two granddaughters, Georgia and Blair.
• Rodney Darrell Peppé, author, illustrator, automata and toy maker, born 24 June 1934; died 27 October 2022
