restoration and copy of Little Frank’s head.

I was commissioned to restore a papier mache head of Little Frank (Sidebottom) and make a copy as a spare.  

I was contacted through my website some time in 2011 to refurbish Little Frank’s head and make an exact copy. Little frank was Frank Sidebottom’s puppet. I had been a big fan of Chris Sievey’s alter ego ‘Frank Sidebottom’ for many years. I had been a fan of the humorous comic ‘Oink’ in the 1980s, which had cartoons of Frank Sidebottom in, so it was amazing to be asked to do this. Chris Seivey had died in 2010 and I think there was going to be an exhibition at some point. There had been quite a number of Little Frank heads over the years, and as you can see, they took a lot of battering! It was quite a tricky task getting the proportions and the feel right, but I managed to make a little Frank twin who was almost identical and also repair the original, making sure I kept some of the original lived-in feeling as per the brief.

It is possible to see clips of Frank Sidebottom and Little Frank on YouTube, and though they are not of this head, they give a feeling of the spirit of the Franks, which was very much rooted in the punk/do it yourself/surreal/cult comedy genres. There is also a documentary ‘Being Frank’ and a film starring Michael Fassbender as Frank Sidebottom, called ‘Frank’ which was also very good.