Happy birthday to me. As a present to you, here are some links:
Vintage Depot – They sell hundreds of vintage advertising and similar collectibles. The images are too small for direct usage, but make good reference, and you can buy them as well.
Cerebro – Cerebro sells pre-World War II label art. The images are slightly larger here.
If you’re new to this site, or if you follow it in a blog reader, you should check out the Blogroll links in the sidebar. These are other sites and blogs of prop-makers and prop-masters and general crafty people. Here’s a sampling of some of the recent posts from these sites to entice you to check them out:
Via Propnomicon, I’ve found this collection of 11 old and grungy film textures. I’m going to use these to make some aged daguerreotype for our upcoming Merchant of Venice.
Anna Warren continues to impress with her documentation of all the fake food props she makes at Fake ‘n Bake. One of my favorite recent posts is how to make Roast Beast in gravy.
Instructables is an incredible resource to find information on techniques you want to learn or materials you’ve never used before. Two tutorials I’ve enjoyed are:
Casting a Pear – Probably the quickest and grittiest way to cast something I’ve ever seen.
Sci-Fi Handgun – There are a lot of Instructables on making or remaking weaponry from science fiction movies. These are a good way of showing how a uniquely shaped prop can be broken down into simpler parts, and how found objects and tiny details can transform a prop from simple parts into a homogoneous object.
Who doesn’t love old maps? Maybe you don’t love them so much that you made your wedding invitations in the style of an old map (like my wife and I did). But maps pop up in plays all the time. Whether you need a large wall map for King Lear, or a small battlefield map for Arms and the Man, here are some sites that will help you find what you need.
David Rumsey Map Collection – Over 22,000 maps, focusing on 18th and 19th century North and South America, though other continents and time periods are available.
World Digital Library Maps – Over 300 high-quality scans of original historical maps (browse the rest of the site for lots of other historical artifacts).
Genmaps – Old maps of England, Wales and Scotland, navigable by county.
National Maritime Museum– Over 1700 historical sea charts and maps from the medieval period to the present.
Library of Congress – Some of their map collections are available online, though the navigation is horrendous.
Old Map Gallery – Another site selling maps with many images.
If you still haven’t found enough map porn, you can peruse larger lists of sites at Odden’s Bookmarks. The site is a little out of date, so many of the sites are no longer available.
Here are some links I’m sharing with you on this glorious Friday:
Time Out New York has a slideshow on the set of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which just opened here at the Public Theatre. Check out all the work that Jay, Meredith and I did with Donyale Werle and her assistants to transform the theater.
Courtesy of Jesse Gaffney is this article about building fewer cages and dropping more keys. Basically it sums up (much more eloquently) a lot of the reasons why I started this blog; by sharing what I do, what I know, and what I learn, I hope to help everyone reach the next level of skill so we can all create better work.
LUNA Commons are a collection of hundreds of thousands of historical images and items from institutions and universities from around the world. If you need a reference image of an “I Like Taft” necktie or a seventeenth-century map of the world, you can find it here.
I hate the word “green”. I believe the “green” movement has largely been co-opted by marketers and advertisers in an attempt to sell the same stuff in a new feel-good form. “Green” bottled water and “greener” disposable packaging still has a negative effect on the environment and community.
That being said, I whole-heartily subscribe to what “green” should mean. We can’t pretend that things disappear when you put them in the garbage, and you have to understand that everything comes from somewhere else; how it is made (or mined, or harvested, etc.) has a real impact on people’s lives.
Every bit of lumber we use means less trees somewhere else. In some cases, they come from a place where trees are replanted to replace the ones taken, and a whole group of people are able to make a living for their families. In other cases, entire ecosystems are destroyed as forests are removed, and the native people who live there are pushed aside and left with nothing to sustain them. This is true of all materials. Being green is not some feel-good philosophy to make animals smile. Choosing greener products is a declaration that the materials you buy for making props are less important than razing a village and giving cancer to children.
As props people, we are already predisposed to being green. We collect and reuse things from the past that were destined for the dumpster. We keep our budgets down by trolling thrift stores, eBay, and Craigslist. We let others borrow, rent and buy the items we’ve accumulated. We are largely pack-rats; the only reason we get rid of things is because we physically run out of room to store it in our already overstuffed storage areas.
Being green is also safer. If a product releases toxic chemicals when being used, chances are it also damages the environment in its creation. A shop which chooses less-toxic alternatives in its materials and supplies, which provides proper safety equipment and ventilation, and which is aware of the affects of what it uses (by studying and maintaining its MSDS collection) is already greener than a shop which doesn’t.
For more practical tips and additional information about green theater, you can explore the following links. None of them have to do with props specifically, but combining the information on scenery, costumes, and offices will give you a good start.
Check out the 50 things you can do towards being a green theater. Some suggestions are great – make fabric mock-ups with thrift store sheets rather than new muslin. Others are somewhat counter-intuitive – print brochures to let the public know what you’re doing.
I briefly mentioned the ecoTheater blog last year in a post about careers in technical theater. Though updates there have slowed down a bit, it’s still a great jumping off point for a cornucopia of other sites and information about sustainable theater practices.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
