Miniature Rod Puppets

I made these puppets around 1979 after inspiration of Clyde Hollifield and his monkey puppets, which were 6 inch tall monkey rod puppets. They have amazing articulation (see video gallery). These are characters inspired by Brian Froud and Alan Lee's book "Fairies". I made them with maple (elf), black walnut (Quagmire Ankledeep & Leprechaun), bone (fairie, elves legs), Oak (troll). I showed a friend who said Jim Henson was filming a movie using Froud's work and so went to NYC and visited the studio trying to get a job on the movie with my puppets. I met Froud and showed him the puppets, also showed them to Foz Fazakus who then showed my his little stuff and mechanism which were brilliant. They said they were moving the production to Englaand and they were layinfg off , not hiring. Then they said look around and visit the workshops within the studio. I met the engineer/ machinist, a guy name Lee who suggested doing a more traditional rod puppets with the same scale. So made lengthened the troll's control using K&S engineering tubing and music wire rods. Lee inroduced me the K&S engineering supplies which are a must for puppet engineering. I also saw foam carving for the first time and one of the craft artists showed me briefly how to carve the stuff with finesse. I went back to North Carolina and combined the Henson tech with Clyde's simplified engineering ideas and from there was ablre to find my own style of making puppets.