Jeremy Brett Sherlockian Relics Collection Vol. 2 (Photo heavy)

[lukeiswho]

I'll be doing my forum posts backwards this time around as the months and years working on this set just flew by! So I'll start with some photos and a video of the completed set and go back from there.

Just like the previous set, these prop replicas are specific to the 1980s/90s Jeremy Brett version of the Sherlock Holmes series by Granada TV in the UK, about which I co-host a podcast. On our show, we dive into the minutiae episode by episode, from actor and crew bios, to story and screen comparisons and even interviews with cast and crew. Along the way, we've fixated on specific props from the series, as have our listeners, and as a way of giving something back we've produced these prop replica collections. All of the items are things Sherlock would have interacted with or pieces of the mystery he's attempting to solve and as our offering to "The Game", we've developed a sort of provenance for how Watson would have ended up with each piece.

In this set, the centerpiece is the plaster bust of Napoleon from the story The Six Napoleons. Within its base, we've also hidden the Black Pearl of the Borgias as a nod to the original storyline. We're offering it in its bare white, unpainted form as well as a fully painted variant to match the show prop where the jewel was found. It comes with a custom made faux shipping container from Gelder & Co, similar to the large wooden boxes seen in the episode.

Next we have what we refer to as The Death of Sherlock Note... the handwritten letter Sherlock leaves for Watson at the top of the Reichenbach falls at the time of his fateful meeting with Professor Moriarty. The original prop is difficult to see, but one can just make out the three, small individual sheets of paper from Sherlock's pocket sized notepad mounted inside a silver frame.

We've also produced another long sought after prop from the show, the Victorian style "traveling picture frame" containing the Irene Adler portrait. Holmes famously refers to her as "The Woman" and keeps her photo locked in his desk drawer as a sign of respect.

Lastly, the famed "Persian" slipper in which Holmes keeps his pipe tobacco. Another lovely prop which is visible in nearly every episode of the show.

While we did require outside help on a number of the items, I will attempt to go over the process of production in my followup posts. These were a long time in the making. After years and years of hoping to come across similar items, we decided it was time to attempt to make them ourselves. Hopefully there's some Jeremy Brett fans out there who've also been on the hunt for these!

Video of Vol. 2:

-Luke

 

[lukeiswho]

The jewel at the center of the entire series of Sherlockian Relics has to be the plaster bust of Napoleon from The Six Napoleons episode of the Granada series. It's as important and sought after by Sherlockians as the Fertility Idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark... only trickier to get one's hands on! Most of us have had to settle for a more generic but likely more historically accurate bust that we find in an antique store or after a lonely night scouring eBay for the 10th time, hoping one of the show props accidentally finds itself listed. Listeners to our podcast will regretfully attest to this.

After the very positive reception of the first volume of Sherlockian Relics, we dedicated time over the next 2 years to producing a very faithful reproduction of the show prop. Having our own Sherlock podcast came in handy here as we were able to find two listeners with family members that worked on the show that got their hands on castings seemingly from the original prop molds. They sent us lots of reference photos, measurements and answered as many questions as we could find to be useful. There seemed to be some significant differences in the two castings. This was possibly down to a difference in focal lengths of the cameras used to photograph them or the fact that one appeared to be covered in a thick coat of Mod Podge or a similar sealer, but between the 2 good references we had and screen caps from the show, we had a pretty great starting point.

The face of Napoleon on the bust in the Granada series does not bear a great resemblance to emperor himself, which, through our research and discussions with crew members including the director of that episode, David Carson, we managed to cobble together a plausible story about its creation. Effectively, the thinking is that the props department found a bust of Napoleon and were tasked, very quickly, to scale it up by eye and by hand to more than double its original size. Because of this, the bust on the show is quite singular with its own unique characteristics and for fans of the series, an ordinary off-the-shelf bust just won't do.

On one of those aforementioned late nights of trawling eBay, I happened to come across what APPEARED to be original bust that the show prop was based on. It's a 3 inch tall, hollow, metal bust with the correct pose and all the correct medals and buttons in all the right places. This was another very encouraging find. The mail could not be delivered fast enough that week!

After I received the bust in the mail I immediately took to trying to get a 3D scan of it. After some YouTube research, I landed on the process of photogrammetry. Surely known to members on this forum, but for the uninitiated, the process involves setting the item down under some soft light, adding position markers (and some baby powder in this situation to avoid reflections), then taking 30-40 photos of the item in a 360º circle around it and repeating the process from different heights to capture all the features. Once the images are collected, they're fed into photogrammetry software where they are interpreted and stitched together to create a 3D model. From there, it was a matter of scaling it up and manipulating the 3D model to match the show prop.

I attempted to the same basic process with the props we had images of, but as they weren't captured in the same way, the scan didn't work well and came out very bumpy and with no real detail, but it at least gave me some markers on sizes of things like the hat, the shoulders, and the basic way our Napoleon carries himself. I roughed out the outlines from all sides of the model and referred to my notes on the various measurements we had access to until I felt I was in the ballpark. At that point, I commissioned a 3D print by a local friend to see what I was dealing with. Short answer, a pretty series fail. His printer wasn't calibrated to print to the detail that we required and nor was my model. And because of the height of the prop and the constraints of his printer, it came out in two pieces.

But it was a promising first attempt! It was still incredibly rewarding to hold something even THAT close in my actual hands having lusted it after it for so long. After seeing the first print I went back in and spent a lot of time refining the 3D model. I should point out, this was my first time undertaking this process. So the time I spent on it including learning how to use 3D modeling tools. For reference, I ended up using Blender as a couple of my friends were familiar with it and I could ask basic questions of if I could seriously stuck.

A while later, I commissioned another 3D print. This one was a great improvement, but the print lines were so thick that I wasn't happy with the end result, even after filling them in with primer and sanding them back. The model itself still needed further refinement. Mostly fine tuning of the posture, how far the shoulders lean forward, and size of the hat... but the awkward elephant in the room was that the face was still a bit too "handsome"... so I focused on manipulating the placement of the cheeks, the shape of the nose, the angle of the chin, and the almost confused expression in the eyes. Eventually I got the point of diminishing returns where I could no longer notice any of the tiny improvements I convinced myself I was making and decided to commit it to plastic.

This time I found someone with a resin printer and wow, this one felt like a winner! Not only did the model look right to my eye, the finish on the initial print was nearly as good as after actual DAYS of priming and sanding on the previous print. So it felt like the home stretch, finally!

I did a few passes of primer and sanding and effectively "polished" the surface with high grit sandpaper until it was slightly glossy.

After a few promising side-by-side photo comparisons with the show prop, I was confident in our model. There seemed to variation in all of the prop photos and screen caps I had, so this felt like a decent middle ground from what I could judge from 2D photo reference. Now it was time for mold-making R&D...

 

[srspicer]

Excellent work!
I am a huge fan of the Brett Holmes!!
As I was reading, I was hoping you would abandon the MFP and go to resin.....and you did. Looks fantastic. I have never listened to a pod cast, I guess I will give your's a try.
Looking forward to more.....

 

[unerhij]

Fantastic work, attention to detail and what not only following your passion with a podcast but making replica props from the show is amazing!

What have you got up your sleeve next Luke? Guessing only time will tell..

 

[lukeiswho]

Excellent work!
I am a huge fan of the Brett Holmes!!
As I was reading, I was hoping you would abandon the MFP and go to resin.....and you did. Looks fantastic. I have never listened to a pod cast, I guess I will give your's a try.
Looking forward to more.....

Thank you! We'll see what you think of the rest of my decisions on this adventure.

Our podcast is something like a live-action forum. Lots of research and discussion, going very deep into the details of the show. It's available on all podcast apps as well as YouTube. It's simply the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast.

 

[lukeiswho]

Fantastic work, attention to detail and what not only following your passion with a podcast but making replica props from the show is amazing!

What have you got up your sleeve next Luke? Guessing only time will tell..

Thank you! There's always another project looming...

 

[lukeiswho]

The next phase of making the Napoleon bust involved research into mold-making and casting techniques. This meant watching many hours of YouTube videos to re-familiarize myself with the process and see how the methods have evolved since I last attempted it, some 15 or 20 years ago. In short, not a ton, but as the internet had grown since then, the range and access to products has drastically improved.

I realized very quickly that silicone would be my first stop. After watching a number of the Punished Props video tutorials, I settled (initially) on Mold Max 30 by Smooth-On. It seemed to be a good middle ground for ease of use, flexibility and price... and incidentally, there's a retailer near me, so an added plus. I drove down and picked up a gallon tub and a trial pack of Rebound 25 just in case. I did a couple of initial tests with the 3in Napoleon bust as a simple dump mold, cutting an opening up the back of the figure to release it with as few seam lines as possible. It let me get used to the material and the basic methods for casting. I did some test casts with plaster of Paris to familiarize myself with which parts of the mold could be problem areas for seams and bubbles. After a few "near-enough" successes, I moved on to the full size test.

I landed on trying a straight-forward 2-part box mold for this. I laid down a bunch of oil clay to create the barrier for the silicone to cure against and become side 1. Then I created some mold walls out of foam core and hot glue around the clay, which I shaped to be a ~90º angle to the side of the 3D print with a perimeter that would be sturdy without wasting too much silicone.

I put some registration keys in the clay and got to mixing the silicone. I needed nearly a full gallon of silicone to get the mold made, which I just mixed with a paint stirrer and poured from a great height to break up the bubbles, as I didn't have a vacuum chamber.

The mold actually turned out quite well. Effectively no air bubbles in any of the key features and a relatively ok seam line. I started making test casts immediately and was relatively pleased when the first Napoleon bust was born. Now it was time to settle on a plaster and after some reach I landed Hydrocal as it's said to be slightly finer and harder than plaster of Paris, which is "probably" what prop busts were made of, because I knew we'd be shipping them internationally.

At some point in the casting process I got frustrated with the seam lines and the time it took to clean them up properly and made an educated guess that remaking the mold as a 1-part glove mold with a hard mother mold would be more time effective, even if it mean another day or two in the mold-making process. This proved to be true. I picked up some Dragon Skin 10 from Smooth-On and started prepping the mold.

I made a video of the process for making this mold, but it was just a brush-on glove mold with the 3D print hot-glued to a piece of melamine. After 3-5 coats of the Dragon Skin, I made the 2-piece mother mold and fashioned the shape of it to match the on-screen mold seen in the episode. A little extra authenticity never hurts!

With the new mold, everything seemed to run smoother and faster and the castings were more consistent. I gave myself some leeway on the quality of casting as it could be considered more accurate to have a few air bubbles, as the on-screen props DO have bubbles... but I thought I would strive for good all-around castings. Through testing and practice, I came up with a decent method for casting these fairly repeatably and without major issues, and even timed out when exactly to insert the second prop, the Black Pearl of the Borgias, into the base of the drying Napoleon, as per the original story and the episode.

Once I had a fair few busts, I set aside the early ones for testing now and breaking later. We tested different paints and possible finishes until we were happy with something that looks accurately handmade. (We offer them in white and painted variants.) While the busts we make are completely solid, I did make a couple castings that were particularly thin so they could be broken on camera and used as props.

Finally, here's a bit of footage from behind the scenes of the video shoot where I follow the storyline and attempt to free the Black Pearl from its plaster hiding place with a hunting crop. Warning: possibly upsetting to any with an idée fixe!

 

[srspicer]

Outstanding work and great Podcast! Thru the first season and the Fry interview.

 

[lukeiswho]

Outstanding work and great Podcast! Thru the first season and the Fry interview.

Thanks very much, and thanks for checking out the podcast! We got to talk to some cool people, including Watson from the first series, David Burke, which comes up a little later.

 

[lukeiswho]

Another item I wanted to reproduce from the show which turned out to have a practical use was the Gelder & Co shipping box.

These old style, wood shipping containers can be seen strewn about all over Gelder's workshop set in the episode. Our assumption is that they were actual shipping containers that just got spray painted by the props department with the Gelder logo to add some visual interest. The boxes are very distinct and mostly the same dimensions, all with metal banding on their outer edges. The props department spray painted them with a couple different "Gelder & Co" stencils in various orientation. In my mind, this was became the perfect box to house our Napoleon busts in, and if we could make them the way I envisioned, they could be displayed alongside the bust in any orientation that suited the owner.

So I studied the logo and came up with a decent reproduction of it in photoshop based on a patchwork of various screen caps. I then printed it out and used a scalpel to create a quick stencil. I sprayed black paint onto white paper 5 or 6 different times, with the can held at different angles and allowing the stencil to occasionally lift in certain spots so I had some variation. Then I was able to position them how I wanted in photoshop.

I worked with a box company to make a prototype box out of Kraft paper / cardboard with silver foil around the edges and magnets in the lid flap. I wanted to make the boxes the exact dimensions of the show props, but I also didn't want to waste a lot of space around the bust, so a compromise was made to leave around 1 inch on all sides of the bust to be filled in with packing material. I used wood wool or "excelsior" to stand in for the shipping straw that was used in the show as it was readily available and hypoallergenic.

To me, the end result adds a lot to the collection. And if you need a place to store some nicknacks, now you have a pretty stylish option!

 

[airhead]

Luke - Great work! Pre-order placed.
David

 

[lukeiswho]

Luke - Great work! Pre-order placed.
David

Excellent! Thanks very much, David! I appreciate it. We're actually through all of our pre-orders now, so we'll be shipping yours imminently. Thanks for finding us!

 

[lukeiswho]

Following the Gelder & Co shipping box for the Napoleon busts, I decided the natural next step was to recreate the title shot from the Six Napoleons episode where two workers are seen loading the busts to ship to Morse Hudson. I knew this would only be used as a prop in the video to advertise the busts, but as it was relatively simple to recreate, I gave it a go.

I roughed out the basic size using the busts and rounded up to the nearest measurement that made sense. In this case, 24" x 24". It seemed reasonable that the Granada props department would have made a similarly basic decision. I used some leftover 1/4" plywood from a previous project to make the entire box, with the exception of a few 3/4" plywood supports.

Now that I had the rough dimensions, I could work up the Morse Hudson label. I did my best to match the screen used fonts and placement. Once I had this, I eventually shrunk it down to include a small version to go along in the box with the busts.

I used brad nails and wood glue to put it together. I kept it pretty rough and ready (apart from the box joints on the sides) as it only needed to to perform a basic function, but I was quite happy with how well it turned out. The supports on the sides actually created enough friction on the lid that it stays in place without any additional mechanism. Next, I took to staining and weathering it.

I used a wire brush attachment on my drill to give it SOME texture, tho it barely showed up, so I attacked with a screw driver and a few scrapers to just give it a bit of personality. A few drag marks, a few dings and I used my old Gelder & Co stencil to add a little extra something to it.

Now that we shot the video, it just sits in my office... but I suppose if anyone wants a set of six busts, it could be included!

 

[airhead]

Luke, I wanted to thank you for the collection No. 2 - it is beautifully done. I need to find a proper place to display these along with the first collection. The resolution just isn't there in the DVD set, but Holmes' board of clues leading to the solution of the Six Napoleons would be excellent paper props to accompany the box and bust. I have made a Notice of Death for Beppo that's tucked in with the group. Great work! I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

David

 

[lukeiswho]

Excellent! Thank you for all your support, David! airhead

I still haven't worked out a great way to display my own set... Just have scattered pieces here and there.

The death notice for Beppo is a great idea. Can you post a photo of it? I did try to add a few more little Easter eggs in the video... the torn photo of Beppo and Lucrezia, the newspaper clippings... but the hardest thing is knowing when to stop! Too many things in the box and I feel like it becomes a burden.

 

[alexbailey]

Love this project, tremendous work, thanks for sharing. I will definitely have a listen to the podcast.

 

[CatfoodRob]

As a huge Holmes fan , I’m thoroughly enjoying this thread . Can’t wait for the next instalment .
Well done ,very inspirational indeed.

 

[CatfoodRob]

Did I read that you were considering holmes magnifying glass ? I was talking to it’s owner at the weekend and he didn’t seem overly against allowing measurements and detailed photographs .

 

[Sir Richard D]

Great initiative and what great achievements! Thanks to you!

 

[lukeiswho]

Did I read that you were considering holmes magnifying glass ? I was talking to it’s owner at the weekend and he didn’t seem overly against allowing measurements and detailed photographs .

It, or "one of them", is on our ever-growing list. But I send you a PM about the you mentioned.