The Museum of Miniature Found Objects salutes this splendid work by the Brazilian artist Néle Azevedo. In 'Minimum Monument' these ice men briefly existed on the steps of the Custom House in October this year as a part of the Belfast Festival.

The Museum of Miniature Found Objects will now be closed until 13 January 2013, and wishes all its visitors a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Young visitors to the Museum of Miniature Found Objects on Saturday were delighted to witness the arrival of Father Christmas. A popular tradition at the museum, a large crowd of young folk had gathered in readiness for the tinkle of sleigh bells that heralds Father Christmas's arrival each year. And they were not disappointed. Through the frosty night air, and serenaded with a charming medley of traditional Christmas carols, Father Christmas arrived, dispensing festive cheer to one and all, and took up residence once again in his Christmas Grotto. 

Whilst visiting the museum, parents are encouraged to take their children to visit the magical Grotto, where they can take photos of their little ones with Father Christmas, as they share their Christmas wishes. A treasured memory for all the family.

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Found objects:

= boy with glasses: 8.34am, Friday 7 December 2012, Dunsmure Road, north London;

= large gold stars: 11.02am, Saturday 24 February 2012, Queen Elizabeth's Walk, north London;

= red tinsel with hearts: 10.52am, Saturday 18 February 2012, Stoke Newington High Street, north London;

= small gold stars: 12.01pm, Thursday 21 July 2011, Elthorne Road, north London.

Fashionistas and celebrities alike flocked to the Etruscan Lounge at the Museum of Miniature Found Objects yesterday. In an evening of glamour and high fashion, the cream of London and Los Angeles celebrated the opening of the exhibition 'Found Footwear'. Fashion icons Karl Lagerfeld and the Duchess of Cornwall dropped by for a surprise visit, and Ludmilla Pomodoro, the show's curator, was delighted to give them a personal tour. Karl Lagerfeld described the show as 'inspirational', and a little bird has it that the entrance foyer's forthcoming makeover may indeed have his stamp all over it.

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Found objects:

= pink high-heeled t-bar shoe: 8.28am, Tuesday 20 March 2012, junction of Seven Sisters Road and High Road, north London;

= silver and black high-heeled sling-back shoe: 1.55pm, Saturday 1 December 2012, Clinton Street East, Nottingham;

= teal platform shoe: 2.05pm, Tuesday 11 January 2011, Highbury Pool, north London.

The current great moment in world history on display at the Museum of Miniature Found Objects commemorates the moment on 2 January 1492, when Abu 'abd-Allah Muhammed XII, the final Moorish ruler of Granada, looked across his beloved city and the magnificent Alhambra palace for the last time, as he and his family moved south into exile. Grief-stricken by his banishment, the rocky prominence on which he stopped for this last view is know as el último suspiro del Moro (the Moor's last sigh).

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Found objects:

= blue glass faceted star: 6.20pm, Monday 5 September 2011, Fairholt Road, north London;

= blue/green glass faceted earring: 11.28am, Sunday 23 September 2012, Dunsmure Road, north London;

= clear glass faceted button: 2.33pm, Sunday 19 August 2012, Fairholt Road, north London;

= gold stars: 11.02am, Saturday 24 February 2012, Queen Elizabeth's Walk, north London;

= green faceted plastic teardrop: 1.02pm, Monday 28 May 2012, entrance to Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, central London;

= hairclip with green glass pattern: 4.41pm, Sunday 29 July 2012; Forest Gate tube station, east London;

= large blue plastic floral shape: 7.31pm, Saturday 20 October 2012; Wilderton Road, north London;

= large red plastic faceted bead: 1.37pm, Friday 23 February 2012, corner of Broad Lane and Fountayne Road, north London;

= multi-coloured star-shaped hairclip: 1.17pm, Tuesday 15 May 2012, Highbury Pool, north London;

= purple faceted square crystal button: 6.20pm, Monday 5 September 2012, Fairholt Road, north London;

= purple metallic snowflake: 6.54pm, Thursday  25 July 2012, De Beauvoir Square, north London;

= red hairclip: 6.04pm, Friday 22 June 2012, Holloway Road, north London;

= silver metal star: 10.27am, Friday 29 July 2011, Lyne Crescent, east London; 

= small blue plastic floral shape: 9.46pm, Sunday 21 July 2012, Euston Road, north London;

= small metallic bubble bead: 5.28pm, Thursday 31 July 2012, Fairholt Road, north London;

= small metallic faceted bead: 6.30pm, Monday 23 July 2012, Manor House tube station, north London;

= small silver metal bead: 11.24am, Thursday 14 July 2011, Old Street, central London;

= twisted copper ring: 8.51am, Tuesday 9 August 2011, Earls Court Road, west London.

It's a Bird

As part of the ongoing Festival of Film and the Found Object, the Museum of Miniature Found Objects was delighted to host an evening of stop-frame animation on Saturday. The event showcased a selection of films in which found objects were used to explore issues of identity formation in the twentieth century. The programme was greatly appreciated, with Charles Bowers' It's a Bird (1930) regarded by many as a profound insight into the West's dislocation of self. The evening ended with a spirited session led by Ludmilla Pomodoro (Keeper of Collections), in which a lively discussion ensued on how this has fed into the current global economic crisis and destabilised an already shaky sense of identity.

To enlarge It's a Bird, double click on the image. For forthcoming screenings, check the museum's listing for events in the Marsala Potts Ballroom.

The Museum of Miniature Found Objects is delighted to announce the exciting new exhibit, 'Great Moments in World History'. On display in the entrance foyer, this cabinet will feature a historic moment, curated from the museum's collection. Extensively researched and carefully crafted, there will also be a series of evening talks over the course of the month, exploring key aspects of that month's historic moment. The inaugural historic moment, on display here, depicts the Tudor boy king of England, Edward VI, at play with his whipping boy Barnaby Fitzpatrick, son of the Baron of Upper Ossory, on their first morning of lessons together. Details of the forthcoming series of talks are available from the booking office in the entrance foyer.

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Found objects:

= black plastic bow: 10.41am, Thursday 9 June 2011, Liverpool Road, north London;

= hairclip with black fabric bow: 12.13pm, Saturday 28 January 2012, Queen Elizabeth's Road, north London;

= Pokémon (large): 1.26pm, Tuesday 9 August 2011, Highbury Corner, north London;

= Pokémon (small): 1.23pm, Tuesday 9 August 2011, Highbury Corner, north London;

= red plastic golf ball: 10.15am, Friday 21 September 2012, Lordship Road, north London;

= red plastic heart: 11.11am, Saturday 28 May 2011, Lordship Terrace, north London.

The Museum of Miniature Found Objects is a great admirer of Chris Ware's work, from Building Stories and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, to Quimby the Mouse. Ware marries the pictorial and narrative aspects of cartooning to great effect. He creates tautly rendered surfaces with an economy of line, and his narratives describe a world in which desperation is about the best anyone can hope for. It's the rift between the expectation of warmth and humour, an expectation created by the stylish deftness of the cartoons, and the bleakness pervading these beautifully rendered sequences that make this work spark. Quimby the Mouse's world is pervaded with slapstick, as the mouse attempts again and again, and fails again and again, to connect with others. Quimby is destined never to understand the futility of his endeavours, or his own agency in this futility.

Interestingly, Fred Quimby was the producer of MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1940 to 1955, and was noted for his lack of humour.

Here's another splendid cartoon by Berger & Wyse. According to their publisher Absolute Press, Joe Berger and Pascal Wyse met in a lift. Overcome by disappointment, they'd both stormed out of separate meetings with their respective agents who'd been struggling to find publishers for their cookery books. These ground-breaking works contained a thoughtful selection of condition-specific recipes (Wyse's Zimmer Gently: Recipes for the Elderly and Berger's Strain into a Bowl: Colonic Gastronomy). To see more of their work, click here.

The American cartoonist Saul Steinberg used a sparing two-dimensional line to observe the world around him and the artist within it. As well as producing many covers for the New Yorker over a sixty-year period, he created an elegant but illegible calligraphy, which he used to manufacture 'important' documents: certificates, passports, diplomas and licences. All were fake, and as a form of mockery of the self-importance of officialdom, they are superb, and as artworks quite beautiful. To see examples of these, click here.

The Museum of Miniature Found Objects has admired André François, the graphic artist, for many years. His simple style belies a great skill, the kind that comes through many thousands of days spent drawing and drawing. This image was one of a series of four he produced for Citroën in 1960. What was so novel about these images is that it was almost unheard of at the time to advertise cars without actually having a car in the advertisement.

He produced many lovely images over a long working life. At the age of 87, in 2002, fire destroyed his studio, along with all his original work not held in public or private collections. Despite experiencing one of the worst things that can happen to an artist, he began again, and within a short period of time produced two major Paris exhibitions — Ordeal by Fire at the Centre Pompidou and a retrospective of posters and book-jacket designs at the Bibliothéque Forney. He died in 2005.

As reported in the media this week, a dramatic ram raid took place at the Museum of Miniature Found Objects. At 3.28pm on Tuesday a Volvo estate car smashed through the entrance doors of the museum. Four masked men, brandishing machine guns and machetes, then entered the exhibition hall. They snatched a number of items on display and fled the building on foot. 

The ticket office in the entrance foyer suffered severe damage in the attack, though no staff or members of the public were harmed. The men are currently being sought by the Metropolitan Police and Interpol.

The thieves' haul included the famous Byzantine earring know as 'The Empress's Tears'. One of a pair, the earrings were a gift to the Empress Theodora of Arabissus in 1355 from Tsar Ivan Alexander. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the earrings' whereabouts were unknown until recently, when one of the pair was found on the south-west corner of the junction between Downs Park Road and Pembury Road, in east London. The earring had been generously donated to the museum. A spokeswoman for the museum described staff as 'distraught' at the loss.

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Found object:

= earring: 10.02pm, Monday 23 July 2012, junction of Downs Park Road and Pembury Road, east London.

The Museum of Miniature Found Objects has enjoyed a recent surge in donations to its collection, curiously many of them heart-shaped objects. The museum is delighted to be able to give an advance showing of a small selection of these, which will shortly be appearing in the forthcoming exhibition 'Human Organs: Voyages in Dystopia'.

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Found objects:

= filigree metal heart: 5.59pm, Saturday 18 June 2011, Hackney Town Hall, Mare Street, east London;

= glass heart: 2.30pm, Tuesday 10 July 2012, Hillside Crescent, Stanstead Abotts, Hertfordshire;

= heart-shaped sweet: 10.08am, Friday 29 July 2011, Guildsway, east London;

= 'I Love You' pink plastic heart bubble kit: 6.11pm, Friday 10 August 2012, Dunsmure Road, north London;

= metal heart with arrow: 8.51am, 9 August 2011, Earls Court Road, west London;

= metal heart with Eiffel Tower: 9.15am, Tuesday 14 February 2012, Glen Osmond Road, Adelaide, Australia;

= pink striped plastic heart: 6.13pm, Monday 3 September 2012, Dunsmure Road, north London;

= plastic heart with dog's face: 11.38am, Saturday 23 June 2012, Stoke Newington High Street, north London;

= silver metal heart: 6.31pm, Tuesday 24 April 2012, Woodberry Down, north London.