Estelle van der Merwe

(3 April 1903-) Artist and marionette-constructor. Born in Germiston, Transvaal and from the age of 12 lived in Parys in the Orange Free State. In about 1930 she completed a one year art course at a technical school in Auckland Park. Painting became her source of a livelihood and she participated in many exhibitions and completed a number of commissions over the years.

Her passion however was the marionette, an interest sparked in the 1920s by an article by Tony Sarg on how to make and operate a marionette theatre. She for many of her marionettes she tended to use characters from public sources, creating characters and plays around them. The first marionettes she constructed and used in performances were characters from Jack and the Beanstalk (1920s), followed by characters based on a Sunday Times cartoon series (Hairbreadth Harry by C.W. Kahles); a series of characters and plays based on the "Oom Kaspaas" cartoons of T.O. Honiball (1905-1990); a series based on the stories of Afrikaans journalist and author Dirk Mostert; Little Red Riding Hood.

While she used familiar characters, she often improvised her own stories for them. ,. In addition she also ; , : , ,

She also made a number of political figures (Hertzog, Smuts, D.F. Malan, and Hitler, as well as the fictional figures "Hoggenheimer" and "John Bull". However these do not appear to have been used for performance.