Hello everyone,

I am very new to puppetry. I am a graphic design student and very passionate about an idea that seems harder to realize than I expected. I love  cloth dolls with a folk art touch and wanted to make a book of photography using dolls in different postures (as in dance for example). I was thinking of keeping it really simple and plain in color. The problems I have been facing though are related to jointing a cloth doll in a way that she can hold different postures. Immediately the idea of strings (and marionettes) came to mind. After 2 days of internet research i have the feeling that there are no complex cloth marionettes, or am I mistaken? I saw the lovely teddy-bear tutorial of puppetsinprague and it was of much help but I am thinking of a more complex marionette. Is the weight of wood the sole reason for its use (next to clay, latex etc..) in marionettes? Will i always need dowels or skeltons? Maybe there is a way of weighting a cloth doll so it will function the same way?

I would really be grateful for any kind of advice on this subject as I dont know where to look anymore.

Many thanks in advance!
Cotton strings

Hi Cotton strings, i found this interesting site were you can find cloth and doll patterns


http://plushie-database.deviantart.com/

No you can make a cloth bodied marionette. In fact thier used to be a book out there that was just that.  I got it when I was still a youngster so it is not in print any more but you may be able to find it in a library or used book store.  You might even get lucky and find it via Amazon so I'll go ahead an embed the code for Amazon. They show five used at the moment.

Link no longer available.
Marionettes: Easy to make! fun to use!
By Edith Flack Ackley
Publisher: J.B. Lippincott Company (1957)

The secret is in the weighting of things like the feet, hands and butt of the puppet. In fact I use weights even on none cloth marionettes to help balance the puppet.

Really if you are going to be using these for still photography then it may be better to make them poseable figures. You can put wire inside the fabric bodies that allows you to pose the doll, figure.

thank you so much for your reply, i wasn#t expecting anything today! You are right about the posable dolls with wire armature, it's just that I believe one would have to make many dolls since the lack of joints kind of limits the number of poses one can make (if the leg is in one piece you can only bend it so far without having it look ackward). And since i am putting an effort into building a jointed doll, it might aswell be durable and useful- as a marionette . I will also try making a "regular" ball jointed doll with wooden beads and see what works best.Hope it works out...

anyway thanks a lot for the book recommendation, i hadn't seen that one before!

Cheers from Germany,
cotton strings

oh, one more question , since I won't be able to get the book immediately in Germany: can u tell me which types of weights to use? I am a little insecure about just how heavy they should be and wether i can use "household" materials. thanks again!!

What a sin, it is in Amazon, too, but both distributers are in the US.
http://www.amazon.de/Marionettes-Ackley-forty-one-drawings-Marjorie/dp/B000NWVF5Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298910572&sr=8-1
You can get lucky, though. Last time I made an oder by marketplace it took a week from the states to Germany. On the other hand: it might take 3-4 weeks. Maybe you could e-mail the marketplace member, telling them you need the book now for an assignment an are willing to pay for express shipping?

I use lead fishing weights in my puppets.  It really does not matter what you use though.  I use the fishing weights because they are small but heavy and since lead is a soft metal you can pound them into any shape you want with a hammer.   They are also pretty easy to find in any sports sections of a store or sporting goods shop.

Thanks a lot Rikka and Shawn!
@Rikka: i think i found it on amazon.co.uk and much cheaper...somebody must have missed the value of this book...its a shame that many books are so hard to find in Germany!
@shawn: i might end up using these tiny stones they sell in the deco section next to colored sand etc. Just not sure if they will nicely slip into place since they dont have much of a smooth surface. Plastic pellets may not be heavy enoug, i think I'll have to get used to some trial and error:). I am too much of a chicken to use lead

Well, I heard the English editon of Fettigs great book on table- and rodpuppets is next to impossible to find and really expensive, too. But I got the German copy this December from Buchhandel.de. I fear that there is not that much doll and puppet culture in Germany. Not anymore, anyhow. Most of what we get now is this sickening sweet doll collectors stuff on HSE or similar. But it used to be different:
http://www.lotte-pritzel.de/index-e.html
(I adore her work). Never found a German page like this one here- Thanks Shawn!

that link is beauuutiful <3.thanks!
 Yes HSE...you mean like porcellaine dolls? sometimes it seems to be more about the lace dresses than the dolls:)