Making Marionettes - Reference Books

I receive emails through my website now and again asking which books I would recommend for people wanting to make marionettes. I will be posting a step by step guide to making a wooden marionette soon but in the meantime here are some books which I have found useful

Making and Manipulating Marionettes - David Currell

This book covers wood, casting and modelling techniques for marionette construction. It includes sections on traditions, design and stringing as well as peformance. Probably the best all round book for making marionettes, it has a lot of good photos and illustrations. Click the cover to buy at Amazon.



Another good book from David Currell is this one:

Puppets and Puppet Theatre

Covering more than just marionettes this book gives details on rod, hand and shadow puppets and gives advice on staging and scenery.

Marionettes - Art, Construction, Play - Gmelin Schmelz

This book is aimed at performers, collectors and makers. It is a great example of the Art of marionettes along with details on construction, movement and balance. Particularily interesting is the design of the Pendel control bar. Contains a lot of fantastic photos. Pendel marionettes also have a great website here

If you're interested in traditional wooden carved marionettes as I am then a great book for learning woodcarving techiniques is this one:

Although it looks a bit daunting at first, this book may be all you need on the subject with a great section on sharpening your tools which is of course the backbone to good woodcarving. Chris Pye has written some more recent books which I haven't read so they may be worth checking out too.

Music Video

Earlier on this year I hired out a marionette for a low budget music video. The video is currently being edited but should be finished soon.

I don't know who the artist is but I think the song is called 'came to do this'.
These are some production shots from the shoot. The puppeteer is Ronnie Le Drew

Backgammon Table

A couple of months ago I received a commission from a young lady who wanted me to make a backgammon coffee table for her fiance as a wedding present.

I came up with this design:

click the picture to see a bigger version at flickr

When we were both happy with the design she chose the colours for the points - two shades of red. I then made the table from Ash and it came out as follows: