26
Nov
Gremlins Movie Prop Puppet Conservation
A foam latex brown Gremlins movie prop puppet restoration.
The screen used brown Gremlin puppet arrived at our New York studio in need of a bit of conservation and subtle repair, but mostly proper support. The neck of this Gremlins movie prop puppet (much like other original puppets used in the movie), needed a bit of attention from years of the body weight hanging on it in storage. With aging foam latex movie props, support can often make or break how it displays and holds up over time.Click here to see some of our other Gremlins movie prop restorations.
In this Gremlins 2 prop’s case, the back of the neck seemed to get the worst of it, showing some large cracks and a medium sized hole through the foam latex skin. We patched the cracks in the puppet’s neck, using archival materials to rebuild the missing skin and match the textures of the original sculpture. We also created an internal support to take the stress off the neck.
This sort of step is often the most important element of the conservation work we do at our studio. The fragile neck now no longer supports the weight of the entire puppet. Over time, this will help minimize further damage to the foam latex neck. An custom made, archival insert fills out the body of the brown Gremlins movie prop puppet and simple, polished metal base helps him display beautifully.
In addition to those steps, the Gremlin puppet’s lips and eyes also needed a bit of minor repair. They showed minimal post-production damage but still needed a bit of gentle restoration to bring them back to their original look. As always, only careful spot-painting was done, which means we paint the small patches we’ve repaired and don’t paint over any original material. This ensured the screen used movie prop remained as original as possible.
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