Help me identify an item in a screen used Hellboy prop

October 13, 2008 9:55 PM

Identification filter. In the bottom of the photo inside, is a small container that I'm trying to identify. (warning, geek alert!)

A few weeks ago on Ebay, I bought an amazing screen-used prop from Hellboy. Known as "Broom's Box" it's seen being consulted by Abe Sapien prior to Hellboy's encounter with Sammael in the museum, and it's the box of trinkets, books and amulets in which Abe looks up the info on Abe Sapien.

Still here?

Anyway, the box came mostly empty and I'm (because I'm a freak this way) trying to identify a piece of dressing in the box, and my google fu has been failing me.

In this photo:

at the bottom right, just to the right of the brown glass bottle, and between it and the crystal wand, is a small container that looks kinda like a clove of garlic with a black drum head on it. This is my quarry.

Looks to me to be manufactured from a circle of leather, gathered up to make a crude vessel, and then covered with a thin black leather or latex top that's cinched on. Other photos of this prop in the film reveal about 7 of these vessels scattered throughout the prop.

Now I've been a prop maker. And so I know, I KNOW that this must be a found item that the propmaker liked. It's not rare, nor was it made specially for the film. I'm sure of that. If I had to fill this thing with trinkets, I'd allocate 1 day for shopping at a couple of antique stores (that would explain the salt-cured civil war era ink bottles) and other places I'd have a high percentage of finding my filler. feel like I'd find it in a health food store, but no amount of googling "leather vessel, bottle, herb container, apothecary" etc. etc. has yielded this item. Chinese herbs? Indian spices? I've searched apothecary sites, ebay etc to no avail.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? (am I the only one who wants to remove Ben Stein from my brain's movie quote database?)

You can read the full, impossibly geeky thread about my box here:


as the above thread shows, I consulted deeply with my fellow geeks at the RPF before coming to the hive mind.

posted by asavage to sports, hobbies, & recreation (27 comments total)

I don't know what that thing is, but if you know anyone at Tippett, Adam, they did the effects on Hellboy. If they had to model that box at some point, or had to go hands-on with the practical guys, they may know or be able to point you in the right direction.

(I find it highly improbable that you *don't* know someone at Tippett, and you've probably already tried them if you do.)
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 10:49 PM on October 13, 2008

Looks to me like a simple glass jar filled with dental cotton rolls and packed in some mysterious translucent fluid. My brain insists that the fluid is chloroform, and the rolls are designed for knocking out folks on the go (for surgical purposes, fair, foul or otherwise). It's certainly what -I- would have in my toybox.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 11:16 PM on October 13, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The guys at Tippett did a bunch of the digital effects, but none of the practical ones. They no longer have a shop for anything but maquettes and prototypes, IIRC. I do know some people there, and that might be an avenue for the art dept.

Cat Pie, that's an awesome idea, but I have other photos that tell me that it's not a glass jar filled with stuff. In this picture you can clearly see many more of these items scattered about in the lid compartments. Those details are an external topology, not an internal one inside a glass jar.
posted by asavage at 11:23 PM on October 13, 2008

I think Cat Pie Hurts is onto it. I was thinking it was ceramic just because the top is so round and solid, but now that he said glass, it looks like a baby food jar with a piece of latex and a rubber band.
posted by lee at 11:23 PM on October 13, 2008

I'm guessing they're leather bowls with leather caps held on by a leather lace around the lip.
posted by rhizome at 11:30 PM on October 13, 2008

If you think it's a bottle, you might want to lose an entire week of your life clicking around here.
posted by iamabot at 11:37 PM on October 13, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Holy crap! That's an amazing site. See you all in a week!
posted by asavage at 11:47 PM on October 13, 2008

I spent an hour, and I don't even have a bottle ...err thing.. going on.
posted by iamabot at 11:49 PM on October 13, 2008

Votive candle holder? With black fabric rubber banded to the top.
posted by fshgrl at 12:05 AM on October 14, 2008

Hmm...check out some of these Victorian perfume bottles. I think they're starting to approach the correct shape.

On preview (and more searching), I think that particular style may be classified as melon ribbed (for your pleasure?).
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 12:11 AM on October 14, 2008

My first thought was that someone stuffed some leather into a speedball ink container and added some black fabric to the cap.


The cap really looks solid to me... Like some one added cloth to a plastic cap. But the container looks like a cinched up pouch Native American style. I'm not sure how those two things fit together.
posted by magikker at 12:36 AM on October 14, 2008

The cap definitely seems to be a leather round tied with a thin leather thong, as most have suggested.

The container itself...it seems clear that the shape is malleable. Seems like it could be molded paper. Like quality paper dampened and tightly pressed and secured to a similarly shaped object and allowed to dry. I keep wanting to agree with the leather assertions, but the colour and the denting just doesn't seem leather-like.

Whatever it is, this lover of urns, bottles, vases, and other vessels is fascinated and is anxious to find out the real answer.

...now to go waste the rest of the night on that bottle site.
posted by batmonkey at 12:52 AM on October 14, 2008

dangit. it could be leather. it really could...i see now that the lids alternate in colour, too. or stiffened cloth, like muslin/raw linen.

agh. I don't know...this is going to bug me.
posted by batmonkey at 12:55 AM on October 14, 2008

The thing that gets me is that the top where the black leather or latex is secured is so round and cleanly formed. I see two possibilities: 1. A soft material like muslin or suede is gathered over a stiff form, like glass or ceramic. 2. It's molded over a form from something that is malleable in one state but stiff after drying or curing, like rawhide or gourd. There's an outside possibility that it's carved bone or wood, but the irregularity and the number of objects make me doubt that.
posted by cali at 1:17 AM on October 14, 2008

Are you sure there is not a small round jar or pill bottle inside there? The top is surely formed around something like a jar lid and it looks to me like the bottom part is formed of a larger circle either cinched directly under the tie for the top or just underneath the lid. The jar part would help give it shape and if the bottom circle was big enough it would have that gathered appearance.
posted by tallus at 2:43 AM on October 14, 2008

The shape looks like the old glass calligraphy ink bottles I used to use. These had a broad base tapering to a narrower opening.

Is it possible you could get the look of this object by placing one of these bottles in a linen pouch, and then gluing a leather or vinyl piece over the open top?
posted by zippy at 2:53 AM on October 14, 2008

On (neglected-to-)preview, I think magikker's Speedball suggestion is a good one.
posted by zippy at 2:56 AM on October 14, 2008

I read this question last night and had no idea, went to bed, and dreamed about it. In my dream, the mystery objects were the tops of the bottles (which seem to have no caps). The pleated leather part went inside the bottle, and the black part was the cap. The bottles were filled with some kind of clear liquid, and the cap was pulled out, and the liquid was applied to someone's skin using the leather, which of course had soaked up liquid, and acted as a swab.

So....I don't know about the swab part, but does the thing fit on the bottle?
posted by iconomy at 5:20 AM on October 14, 2008

To me it looks like it's made of leather, with a hard rim inside the cap. Kinda like the leather water pouches you see in movies where there is clearly a hard rim at the opening with a cap, but the rest of it is flexible.
posted by thejanna at 5:41 AM on October 14, 2008

I knew that looked familiar. It's based on a homemade drum. When we made these as kids it was just using an elastic so the top covering came off if we hit it too hard. The drum crowd seems to have solved that by using wet leather and then letting it dry. I doubt yours was for a drum though, just the technic of construction. Wrapping the body in leather, which appears to be pleated BTW, before putting the cap on would create a more flimsy connection up there.

I haven't seen the movie FYI. Were drums used at all? Maybe just something to flick a finger on to create a hollow tapping noise?
posted by jwells at 5:42 AM on October 14, 2008

I know this may sound silly, but it looks like one of these to me. A fancy, antique leather one perhaps, but still an ice bag type thing. They've apparently been around since the mid 1800's.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:14 AM on October 14, 2008

It looks like a smaller version of an inking ball - maybe for a small press?
posted by plinth at 6:50 AM on October 14, 2008

it looks kinda like a glass cheese or spice shaker like the kind you (used to?) see at Pizza Hut or wherever, the squat ones with the spirally-ribbed sides. The ones in the pictures have a leather or cloth top instead of the slotted metal one. The one in the first picture would be filled with some kind of white cloth, and the second a white powder.
posted by xbonesgt at 9:37 AM on October 14, 2008

It really looks like a small jar with loose fabric around the outside, held down with a leather top cinched around tight with some kind of string or band.

It certainly could be a found item, but I would think that it would be so trivially easy to make that it could have been improvised for the shot. (Mainly because I can't really think of any specifically good reason that you would surround a jar with a loose fabric covering as a practical day-to-day item.)
posted by quin at 1:35 PM on October 14, 2008

Oh my god I love the hive mind.
Quin, you may be right, but here's the thing. Prop makers are on the clock. Making 7 of something is hard to justify, but now that I think of it, the earlier comment that the top is so... round, is compelling. I'm gonna get me some white leather, and a small piece of plastic tubing, and do some wrapping and binding. I'll let you all know where I come out.

PS. One of the Hellboy set dressers works on CSI, and since I did a cameo for them, I just got his cell number from my friend who works there. This may bear fruit...
posted by asavage at 2:31 PM on October 14, 2008

I'm thinking a pounce bag, though I can't find a matching picture. They were used bag in the day to powder the surface of something you were going to ink, and often filled with powdered cuttlefish bones.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:08 PM on October 14, 2008

I like the idea of pounce bags, I've made them for moldmaking (filled with cornstarch). But I think they're leather.

I made this tonight
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/8672/broomboxbag16tk9.jpg

I think it's not far off. I had some white leather, taped it to a tube, ran some wire around, and crazy glued the whole thing.

I just need to order some black latex sheet (dental dam?)
posted by asavage at 11:15 PM on October 16, 2008