Model Making Week 5 – Puppets 

There isn’t a lot to show for my most recent session of modelmaking, as it was a slow, preparation-heavy evening. We had to decide between making props or making puppets, and I opted for puppets.

Continuing with the recent Christmas theme, I thought I would go for a Krampus figure marionette. Krampus, for those of you who have been living under a rock, is a monstrous member of Father Christmas’s entourage, dragging naughty children back to his cave to devour them.

He has become a popular figure in recent years, with great Krampus runs taking place every year. His origins are obscure, but there are many similar folk characters across Europe who participate in traditional festivities, often around St Nicholas’ Day or Christmas or Twelfth Night or Shrovetide or Easter or May Day.

It’s hard to tell at this stage exactly how he’ll turn out, but here he is…

The book I’m using for inspiration is the brilliant ‘Wilder Mann‘ by photographer Charles Freger, who has travelled across Europe taking images of people in the traditional costumes of wild folk characters, often in the context of wonderful, windswept, bleak landscapes.

The photographs are so atmospheric, and although they each appear quite simple, the more you look the more you see, and the more you feel that these straw bears and djolomari and babugeri and devils really are born out of the wildness of the land.