The Muppet Workshop

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The Muppet Workshop is the facility where Muppets are made.

“With the advent of Sesame Street, the Muppet workshop went from being a small room where Don Sahlin could build just about everything with a little help from his friends to being a bustling establishment where Sahlin and Caroly Wilcox needed an ever-growing staff to keep pace with the demands of a daily show... To accommodate all this activity, the workshop left 53rd Street and relocated in larger premises on 67th Street (sic). The walls were lined with drawers and boxes marked Big Bird Feathers, Large Noses or Small Monsters. Talking lettuce and garrulous loaves of bread shared bench space with musical crabs and lopsided fish. It was a magical place and an appropriate home for the Muppet characters.”

History

Around 1955, Jim Henson built the very first Kermit out of his mother's old, green, spring coat. He built the puppet in the kitchen of his parents home in Maryland. It wasn't until a few years later, after Jim and Jane Henson were married, that the first "official" Muppet Workshop would be created. It was housed in the basement of the Hensons new home during the remaining years of Sam and Friends.

Later, the Muppet Workshop moved with the Hensons to New York City.

At this time, the Muppet Workshop was home to several mice who lived in an aquarium, presumably on Don Sahlin's desk. In the book Jim Henson: The Works, Dave Goelz recalls:

“Bonnie Erickson's boyfriend worked for Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and he would liberate mice every now and then, save them from being experimented on, and gave them the dubious advantage of surviving in our shop... ...we had seven at one time, and they would all sleep together. It was beautiful to watch.

Don devised a ride for them, made out of a clear plastic sphere with a little hole cut in it that a mouse could climb through. And Don had put lines and pulleys all up and down the ceiling so that he could lower the sphere into the mice's cage, and when one of them would climb into the sphere, he would raise it and pull on another line so that the mouse would go traveling down to somebody else's desk. Then he would lower the sphere and the mouse would get out. It was a regular little tram service.

Later he created an aerial highway all over the shop. It went to chandeliers - there was one over my desk - and it went up to the top of cupboards, and down to people's desks, so the mice could move around on their own, traveling in a Slinky. It was like a mouse freeway.”

Elstree Studios

A Gawky Bird is inspected.

During production on The Muppet Show, a workshop was set up in London. It was located in an L-shaped room adjacent to Studio D at ATV's Elstree Television Studios in Borehamwood. This shop was principally staffed by Muppet designers and builders from New York, and early on, almost everything needed for the show was built and maintained at this location. However, the work was eventually split up between the London and New York workshops, even with an increase in staff at Elstree.

While the Muppet Workshop in New York had it's mice, the London shop was home to it's own "infestation". Amy Van Gilder, who was in charge of the London workshop for four seasons , recalled:

“When I first got there, there were just four of us working till four in the morning every day. We were using a lot of live animals on the show at that time, and they always seemed to find their way into the shop, so you'd come in in the morning, after not much sleep, and find a piglet running round the floor, or a huge frog blinking at you from a workbench. ”

The London shop can be seen in the documentary Of Muppets and Men in a behind the scenes look of The Muppet Show’s creation.

The Townhouse Workshop

The Jim Henson Company moved into the Henson Townhouse in 1978. The Muppet Workshop moved along with them. In an article about the renovation of the Henson Townhouse in the February 1980 issue of Interior Design, the following paragraph was printed with regard the Muppet Workshop:

“The largest structural change entailed creation of the bi-level puppet assembly workshop at the rear of the house. Its lower level was formed by roofing over what had been a service courtyard; its upper level balcony was formed by sacrificing some of the rear rooms on the ground level. Two skylights were added — one overhead in the front, the other a barrel-space, this new area provides a secondary plus: its roof becomes the basis for a planted garden. Another change involved opening up the fourth floor — formerly a closed-off storage area — for office space, and adding a connecting stair behind the central well. This opening-up feat allowed light from the skylight to penetrate the entire central shaft.”

By 1981, the Workshop was run by Caroly Wilcox, and was housed in a two-story complex in the Henson Townhouse on East 69th Street. Also working out of the New York workshop at that time: Faz Fazakas, Lyle Conway, Marianne Harms, Ed Christie and Nomi Fredrick.

Ed Christie was the Muppet Workshop supervisor from 1997 to 2004.

Jim Henson gave a tour of the Workshop in "Secrets of the Muppets," which was filmed for The Jim Henson Hour in 1989.

Jim Henson's New York Workshop

Since The Walt Disney Company's purchase of the Muppets in 2004, the Muppet Workshop has become a division of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Still located in New York City, the workshop has moved to Broadway, where it is headed by Connie Peterson as Workshop Manager, and Jason Weber as Creative Supervisor. Though the workshop is no longer responsible for the exclusive creation of Muppet characters, they have recently produced puppets for the pilot episode of Late Night Buffet, and continue to build the puppets required for Jim Henson Company productions as well as Sesame Street.

Merchandise

The Muppet Workshop has collaborated on three books: The Muppets Make Puppets (1994), The Muppets Big Book of Crafts (1999) and Quilting with the Muppets (2000). See also: Muppet Workshop Merchandise.

External links

• Muppet Studios and Offices, Richard Henry Behr Architect

Sources

CBS This Morning

CBS This Morning

CBS This Morning

Life magazine

1980

1980

UK TMS Workshop