Crass Commercialism

I have some bottled specimens up on Ebay that you may enjoy. I think they're pretty nifty, but I can relate if your wallet is feeling a little light. Might I suggest checking out these tutorials on making your own?

The Arkham Advertiser

The eponymous host over at "RPG Plotter" has posted a handy customizable PDF recreating the Arkham Advertiser newspaper.



As the creator admits, there are some potentially awkward limitations imposed by the embedded fonts and formatting. He's helpfully provided the header graphic so you can tailor your own version to your exact needs.

Via Yog-Sothoth.

Dr. Jones, I Presume

Tóbal over at the Albino Dodo has posted some details about his impressive collection of Indiana Jones props. A large part of my own Mythos propmaking is an attempt to duplicate this kind of prop porn.

First, Do No Harm

When Nyarlathotep emails I pay attention.

The Crawling Chaos himself dropped me a pointer to a fantastic resource for all sorts of vintage medical equipment and ephemera.

"Tucked away on the London Science Museum website is the History of Medicine objects collection, which contains a veritable trove of medical artifacts from throughout history. The collection includes various medical devices, advertisements, posters, drug boxes and bottles, certificates, samples... and so on. Though the collection consists mainly of items from the UK, and contains not an insignificant number of objects from outside the early 20th century, it is nonetheless an amazing and inspirational photo archive."

If anything, his description of the voluminous gallery of artifacts understates how incredible it is. The pictures below are just a small sample of the thousands on display, ranging from period medicines to the state of the art in medical technology. As with so many of the great web archives, you can literally spend hours browsing around from section to section. It's an invaluable resource for prop research, but I also found myself thinking what kind of Mythos stories the objects themselves could help tell.

A vintage blood transfusion notice. What if the donor was also passing along something more ominous than blood with each donation?



A classic patent medicine advertisement. What if the ingredients included extracts from certain alkaline herbs found on the Plateau of Leng?



A vintage nursing certificate. I've seen enough Hammer horror films to know the potential dangers of English nurses dressed in starched uniforms.



Dosage ampules for a compound used to treat "Nervous Debility". Sweet Jebus, they're already marked "POISON"!



A tin of amyl nitrate inhalers. One part of me is thinking they'd make nifty additions to a Miskatonic University expedition display. Another part remembers my dissolute youth and shudders.

Andrea Bonazzi Interview

Shane Mangus has posted a great interview with artist Andrea Bonazzi over at "Swords Against the Outer Dark". It's an interesting look at the creator of some of the most interesting art and artifacts in the genre. Sadly, it seems we'll be seeing little or nothing new from Mr. Bonazzi.

"This stuff has no market at all, here in Italy. I sold very few pieces between 2000 and 2005, but there is no interest. And almost none, among the very few interested people, is willing to pay a congruous price for unique pieces that needed a lot of work hours. Better perspectives from abroad, but Italian shipping expenses are terribly high, and higher are also the probability of damage in shipping such frail sculptures. Once, I sell a tablet in the USA, and it arrived damaged in Texas, even if carefully packaged in a heavy wooden box. So, how can I sell unique pieces that could arrive broken in many pieces?"

I first encountered Mr. Bonazzi's work via Christian Matzke's "Propping Up the Mythos", the website that inspired the creation of Propnomicon.

The Worm Shall Turn, Redux

Following up on Sunday's post about the "squirming worm" video, a kind emailer pointed out that the creator of the clip removed the original sometime during the week and then posted a new version.



It turns out the video was part of a contest entry by the creator, "GOT", in a Halloween prop contest over here at HauntForum. His entry includes a full materials list and build description.

Arkham Sanitarium Business Cards

Interactive versions of the Arkham Sanitarium business cards from "anniv111701" have now been posted. These add customizable form fields to the PDFs from earlier in the week. You can download the files from Google docs here and here.