• Woodworks Library – Over 175 complete and free books on woodworking, and related topics such as furniture design, blacksmithing, upholstery, and carving. This should keep you busy for awhile.
• University of Texas Map Collection – A great collection of historic and contemporary maps from around the world.
• Turn of the Century – A blog that purports to be “everything strange and beautiful from the 1850s to the 1920s.”
• An absolutely fascinating photo gallery inside the shop of master gunsmith Nijazi Ibragimov.

Related posts:

• Friday’s Link-tacular
• Friday Link-a-dink
• Monday Link-O-Rama

Over the weekend, they relaunched their S*P*A*M website to include a lot of useful information about who they are and what they do. Readers of this site will be familiar with the Properties Director Handbook, which was written by Sandra Strawn (a member of S*P*A*M) and includes information and photographs from a variety of other S*P*A*M members. The PropPeople discussion forum is another resource that was initially set up by S*P*A*M members. And of course, yours truly is a member.

Of greatest interest for now is the list of props internships they provide. If you were interested in learning how to work in props through an internship, this is where you will find a shop. While there may be other companies who offer internships, you run the risk of working somewhere that uses interns as free labor and impart no educational value; working long hours for little pay in a theatrical setting is not the same as learning a craft. In addition, the companies in this list are the companies that are recognized throughout the country and will help you with future employment.

Related posts:

• Why the term “prop master”?
• Bland Wade at SETC Theatre Symposium
• Finding a job in Props

Drawing and deer hoof

She began with research and preparation. Without that, you can easily waste your time building something which is not quite right. She found a taxidermist who agreed to let her come to his shop and show her some techniques. She was able to make a series of detailed drawings to work from; she also scored the back half of a deer hide (as well as the foot pictured above). As you can imagine, with all the deer heads you see mounted in hunting lodges and man caves, there’s bound to be some left over rear parts.

Layup of solid wood pieces

She decided to construct it out of a solid chunk of wood for strength, durability, and realistic weight. With her drawings, she cut the wood into their rough shapes before gluing them up layer by layer.

Cutting away at the wood

Once the form had dried together, she began rounding down all the edges to blend it into a  seamless piece. She also carved in musculature for added realism; since it would be covered with a hide, she exaggerated the lines so they would still show through the thickness of the material.

Completed wooden deer form

With the form completed, she tested it for strength. The legs are fairly skinny, so she added a bit of metal rods in the thinnest areas for reinforcement.

Painting the exposed parts of the deer

Natalie painted the hoofs and mangled parts because they would not be covered by fur. Again, the research and reference materials showed her exactly what it should look like. She had also spoke with the taxidermist about what colors would be showing on the exposed innards.

Attaching the deer hide

She began attaching the hide to the form using Barge. The hide came split down the bottom center so it was a flat piece. That meant it had a seam along the bottom and down each leg, which she had to treat carefully to keep it from becoming too prominent or noticeable.

Completed deer butt

With enough practice, you too can produce props as deer as this!

Related posts:

• Deer Butt
• Gnome Building
• Coating Foam

A fake TV Dinner made by Anna Warren

The peas in that picture above? Mardi Gras beads. Check out the Fake ‘n Bake kitchen for how she made the rest. If you leave a comment there, tell her I sent you!

Related posts:

• Fake Food – Making inedible replicas
• Milwaukee Rep’s Prop Shop
• Life of a Prop Builder

• Vintage Printables – A fascinating (and organized) collection of public domain artwork and graphics suitable for printing (and making paper props).
• Craft Rooms and Organizing – An ongoing series showcasing the spaces of crafters. It’s a great inspiration for setting up work and storage spaces in tight quarters.
• Photos of my Models – A photo gallery of Michael Paul Smith’s incredibly detailed models of a mid-century American town.
• 75 years of Band-Aid – A brief history of Band-Aid with a great gallery of their bandage packages throughout the years.
• Stan Winston props circa 1986 – Videos of an out-of-print laser-disc featurette on Stan Winston’s special effects, most notably the props and models from Terminator.
• Louvre database – A (still incomplete) database of all the artworks in the Louvre museum.

So if you can’t stand missing out on future links like this, as well as my unparalleled humor, go ahead and check out my Twitter.

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• Animatronics and Automata
• Monday Link-O-Rama

Natalie came up with a quick jig to ease this operation. It’s a small piece of quarter-inch MDF with each edge giving a different “deckled” pattern.

So get out there and tear it up this Friday!

Related posts:

• Props on Paper
• How to make a deer butt
• A wooden table

Deer Butt

We went because Natalie had her deer butt in the show. She didn’t make it for this production though; she made it at Ohio University over seven years ago. Matt Hodges, the prop master for the current production, found it in his search for a deer butt; it just so happened he was in our shop around when Tom Fiocchi, the prop master at Ohio University, told Natalie that someone had bought her butt. Thus, I was able to score some tickets, and Natalie was able to see a prop from her past.

Remember kids; build a prop well, and it can live for years to come!

Related posts:

• How to make a deer butt
• Prop People across the news
• Behind the scenes in a props shop

A Peep into the Interior of an Opera House

The Property Department

The word “property” implies that vast variety of articles which, after the scene is placed and the actors are dressed, are still required to complete the picture. It is easier to name some of these things than further to define their general character. Among them are stage furniture – tables, chairs, sofas, ottomans, curtains, draperies, musical instruments (other than those used by the orchestral performers), flowers, vases, garlands, helments, swords, spears and shields, thrones and canopies, animals, jewel caskets, crowns, coronets, and sceptres, guns, halberds, wings and wands for fairies, altars, cabinets, goblets, banquetting boards, tombs, sledges, carriages, garden seats, chandeliers, banners, trophies, croziers, flags, mitres, candlesticks, beds, clocks, looking-glasses, lanterns, emblems, masks, palm branches for angels, and torches for devils. With such a specimen of the varieties, each of which is “a property,” some idea may be formed of the ingenuity, readiness, and industry which send up all these things when wanted, and a thousand others, from the bowels of the theatre itself. For nearly everything is manufactured on the spot. Descending through some labyrinthine passages, and below the level of the put, the explorer finds a series of apartments where day does not seem to come, but where eternal gas more than supplies its place, and where – under the superintendence of the most talented of property masters, Mr. Bradwell – a body of workers male and female, are engaged in making and ornamenting these articles, renovating old ones, and transforming them from one fashion to another, or skillfully carving, and gilding, and painting new and fresh ones. The scene, as may be imagined, is extraordinary, from the miscellaneous character of the manufacture. For while some of the objects are substantial and real, others are but imitations. A chair or a sofa, for example, is solid and steady – which is well, for Signor Lablache may chance to sit upon it – whereas the spear of the angel, or the pickaxe of the peasant, which is to be wielded by some young lady in the wings or a jacket, as the case may be, is of some light wood, with silver paper counterfeiting steel, or a little dark paint affecting to look like iron. There is, of course, a separation in the labour, but to the unaccustomed eye there is a series of visions of gold, shavings, bright colour, carpenters’ benches, diamond stars, tenpenny nails, goblets of rosy wine, and unmistakeable gluepots. But it requires a more intimate inspection of the work, and a comprehension of its heterogeneous character, to do justice to the extraordinary ability of the property master. When a new opera or ballet is to be produced, he makes out, very early in its history, a list of everything which can possibly be wanted upon the stage, and he is responsible for the scenes lacking nothing when the curtain rises.

Originally printed in The Critic, London Literary Journal. Volume 10, Published by J. Crockford, 1851 (pg. 183)

Related posts:

• Historic Description of a Props Master
• Santa Fe Opera
• The Property-Man in Vaudeville Theatre

This elephant is from a French show in 2006 called “Visit From The Sultan Of The Indies On His Time-Travelling Elephant”. It was designed by François Delarozière, made mostly of wood and needed 22 handlers to operate its hydraulics and motors. But wait, there’s more.

This guy was gasoline powered with a 4 cylinder Ford engine. He was built around the 1950s by Frank Stuart, and his company, Mechanimals.

As we head back to the 1940s, we find this motorcycle engine-driven elephant built by Jim Smith named Jumbo the Mechanical Elephant.

Wow, Eric. They made mechanical elephants all the way back in the 1940s? That’s nothing, I say! All the way back in 1798, the famed prop-maker Alexander Johnston created quite the spectacular mechanical elephant for the stage:

One morning, Mr. Sheridan, John Kemble, and myself, went to the property room of Drury Lane Theatre, and there found Johnston, the able and ingenious machinist, at work upon the horses, and on the point of beginning the elephant, which was to carry Blue Beard. Mr. Sheridan said to Johnston, “Don’t, you think, Johnston, you had better go to Pidcock’s, at Exeter Change, and hire an elephant, for a number of nights?” — “Not I, Sir,” replied the enthusiastic machinist; “If I cannot make a better elephant than that at Exeter Change, I deserve to be hanged.”

(Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, by Michael Kelly and Theodore Edward Hook. 1826; pg. 290)

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The term “property master” is in reference to the old European guild systems. In a guild, a person would apprentice to a master for several years, learning the trade. He (or she) would then become a journeyman, traveling from one master to the next, practicing their craft in exchange for housing and a daily wage. Finally, one would apply to the guild for membership, often having to complete a masterpiece showing competence in your given trade. Only a master could run their own shop. Thus, a props master denotes one who is proficient in the craft of props, and is qualified to run a props shop.

Did props people actually belong to a guild in the Middle Ages? Probably not; as seen in my previous post, guilds supplied the props for Medieval pageants. Thus, the bread was supplied by the master bakers, and the ships provided by master shipwrights. A “property-master” would be redundant. It would appear that the term did not exist while guilds were predominant in Europe.

The term “property” was used in a theatrical sense since at least 1425 A.D. We have evidence of what these properties are from the late Middle Ages on through the Elizabethan Period. We know that the companies accumulated and stored props, that they commissioned special props from the guilds, and that the actors themselves would supply a lot of the more personal props. However, we don’t know the term for the person who would head the organization of all these props. Perhaps there was none, and the duties were split between the owners, managers, and artists of the company.

We first hear about a general “property-man” in 1749. W.R. Chetwood’s A General History of the Stage describes a property-man as “the person that receives a bill from the prompter for what is necessary in every play; as purses, wine, suppers, poison [etc.]“. The earliest occurrence of the term “property-master” I could dig up is in England in 1831. This sentence appears in “The Royal Lady’s Magazine”:

The other parts were filled as usual, Curioni being the Idreno, and Lablache the Assur. Curioni makes a woful [sic] mistake in dressing himself like a Cherokee Indian: somebody should instruct him, that there is more than one India, and that he errs in thinking he is king of that which is in the west. Talking of costume, cannot the property-master find something more resembling a crown than the bottomless tin-pot which is at present stuck on Arsace’s head.

The Royal Lady’s Magazine. July, 1831 (pg. 56)

It would appear than that the head property-man began to be called a property master well after the guilds had begun their decline. This terminology is also confusing because a props shop does not operate as a guild in the legal sense. Some occupations, such as electricians or contractors, are required to be licensed, which is similar to the requirement that a crafts-person belong to a guild in order to participate or run a shop. A property master does not need a license nor any specific schooling or degrees to operate.

Unofficially of course, a props career still operates like a guild in many ways. I began as an “apprentice in props”, followed by a property carpenter journeyman position at the Santa Fe Opera. The Actors Theatre of Louisville where I once worked also hires journeyman. (Check out “The Wanderers“, an interesting look at the modern revival of journeymen artisans in Europe.) The idea, if not the name, of journeyman can be seen in the career paths of many theatre artisans as they travel from theater to theater taking a variety of seasonal and over-hire positions to build their resumes and portfolios.

You don’t hear a lot about formal apprenticeships anymore, where a beginner spends five to seven years cleaning the shop of a master in exchange for knowledge and housing. Many theaters have apprentice programs (sometimes called “internships”) which last for a season or a year, some of which are quite good. There are of course, many other theaters which hire apprentices and interns and use them merely as cheap labor, imparting no guidance or knowledge whatsoever. We all like the satisfaction of solving a problem on our own, but the value of being taught the basics in the beginning cannot be underestimated. It is highly inefficient for so many people to be reinventing the wheel every year in theatre, especially when there so many more worthy prop challenges.

But I digress. What I’ve described here is the most reasonable sounding theory I’ve heard on why the head of a props department is called a “property-master”. If you’ve ever heard your own theories, or heard additional evidence either for or against this one, let me know!

Related posts:

• Historic Description of a Props Master
• Medieval Theatre and Trade Guilds
• Natalie Kearns, Prop Master