Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Sherlockian Relics

[lukeiswho]

I co-host a podcast dedicated to the Jeremy Brett helmed Sherlock Holmes Granda TV series that originally aired on ITV in the UK and PBS Masterpiece Theater in the US. We take deep dives into each episode looking at the original story, how the show differed from the text, discuss behind the scenes trivia and more. As the podcast has grown, with feedback from our listeners, we've decided to develop a set of prop replicas based on certain pieces used in the show, which we refer to as the Sherlockian Relic Collection. A lot of time and research has into this first volume and I will attempt to document the process here.

At the moment, we're producing 7 items: The Musgrave Ritual, The Red-Headed League contract, The Red-Headed League is dissolved card, The Blue Carbuncle, The Devil's Foot poison bottle, The Sign of Four warning card, and the Falls of Reichenbach poster.

The paper items (apart from the poster) are all screen printed, aged and weathered by us personally, so I thought I'd start this thread by speaking about them to begin with.

First off, The Musgrave Ritual - "It’s simply a copy of the singular old observance called the Musgrave Ritual. A ceremony peculiar to our family, which each Musgrave has to go through on his coming of age.”

The ritual is handwritten in the calligraphic style and spelling of the 17th century and silkscreen printed on aged and accurately distressed 90lb paper, sized to match the screen used prop.

Sherlockian scholars will have noticed the directions of the Ritual used in the original story are substantially different than those used in the show. The text of the Ritual we have created matches the on-screen prop which also differs slightly from the recitation by John Watson and Reginald Musgrave in the Granada episode.

The positioning of the text and the placement of the distinctive folds and tears were all carefully considered in the creation of this Sherlockian Relic.

 

[MattBlack]

Great work!

 

[FingerPaint]

Where can we listen to the podcast?

 

[lukeiswho]

Where can we listen to the podcast?

Apple Podcast, Spotify, just about everywhere but Amazon, at the moment.

 

[nick daring]

Apple Podcast, Spotify, just about everywhere but Amazon, at the moment.

I think mentioning the name of the podcast would help.

A link is even better!

 

[lukeiswho]

Wasn't sure about the policy on sharing links/self-promotion on this forum. The podcast is aptly named the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast. Link to iTunes here: ‎The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast on Apple Podcasts

 

[lukeiswho]

The Red Headed League Contract and Dissolved notice - "On account of the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., there is now another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of £4 a week for purely nominal services. All red-headed men who are sound in body and mind and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible."

The signed contract is a three-color silkscreen print on 70lb, aged paper. Signed by Mr Jabez Wilson and witnessed by Mr Duncan Ross, a custom RHL wax seal over threaded ribbon executes the document. Also included is the notice of the dissolve of the Red Headed league, just two months later. All dates match those referenced in the Granada Series, not the original stories. For a full description of the date controversy, see the annotated books for more info.

Through my research of old contracts, I found that the application of wax seals changed over the years. Simply melting wax and pressing it to the paper could eventually result in the seal falling off, eventually ribbons were tied to the bottom of the paper and the wax was joined to the ribbon for added support, but sometimes the paper tore and both fell off. One iteration I found that was a clever way to "thread" the ribbon through the body of the paper and attach the seal to that. As the seal on the on-screen prop is only partly visible, this addition appears to add a certain quality to the prop without changing the overall appearance.

The seal was designed by me with the letters RHL centered and prominent, the initials E.H. for Ezekiah Hopkins, the benefactor of the fund and the year it began, all surrounded by locks of red hair.

Only after watching different releases of the episode did I settle on the color for the text. The US edition of the Blu-ray seems to have performed the most accurate white balance of the footage and I was able to determine the main body of the text is green ink, not black. This meant I needed to print 3 colors: green for the body, red for the header and inside the illuminated capital "R", and black for the signatures. These layers were very tricky to line up one at a time for each color. I had to remake my screens a few different ways to get it to work. This is the most time consuming of all the Relics to produce, it's multiple steps with drying time between each, so it takes days to make.

The last step was to tint the paper. I used a combination of coffee and tea until I found a hue I liked. The end result reminded me of the Christmas taffy my great grandmother used to give us: yellow with red and green decoration. No weathering or burning of the corners on this document. I just wanted it to look old, but well cared for. The photo below illustrates the difference in stained and non-stained paper. I also experimented with when was the most optimum point in the process to tint the paper.

In addition to the contract, we've also recreated the bit of paper that was nailed to the door after the Red Headed League was dissolved. This piece was kept mostly looking "new" to differentiate it from the others in the collection.

 

[breen2057]

This is so cool, this tv show is how I was introduced to Sherlock Holmes. Your replicas are top notch, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else you make.

 

[airhead]

Welcome to the RPF! What a wonderful introduction. Your replicas are marvelous. And somewhat in line with my own recent re-watching (and listening) to all things Sherlock - pre-Universal movies, the Rathbone and Bruce films, the radio shows, of course the Granada series, and the most recent BBC Sherlock series. there is a wealth of subject matter from the canon to the recent to mine for props. I shall have to check out your podcast to catch up to my viewing (I'm up to the end of The Return as of last night with The Hound).

David

 

[lukeiswho]

Welcome to the RPF! What a wonderful introduction. Your replicas are marvelous. And somewhat in line with my own recent re-watching (and listening) to all things Sherlock - pre-Universal movies, the Rathbone and Bruce films, the radio shows, of course the Granada series, and the most recent BBC Sherlock series. there is a wealth of subject matter from the canon to the recent to mine for props. I shall have to check out your podcast to catch up to my viewing (I'm up to the end of The Return as of last night with The Hound).

David

Thank you! I agree on subject matter for prop mining, we have a long list of things we'd like to try. The Reichenbach poster is a gem. We've made a version with a couple of minor tweaks to match the show - the crop is slightly different to the original woodcut, partly because of the matte on the prop, and as it's hard to judge the size of the prop exactly, we went for the common US poster size of 24x36" on thick card stock. Still waiting on getting mine framed.

 

[lukeiswho]

The Devil's Foot poison - “Among other things I exhibited this powder, and I told him of its strange properties, how it stimulates those brain centres which control the emotion of fear, and how either madness or death is the fate of the unhappy native who is subjected to the ordeal by the priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it.”

We spent a lot of time scrutinizing footage from the show, looking at each component of the Devil’s Foot, from the bottle itself, to the root and crushed powder within, and the font, size and aging of the label upon it. There appears to be more than one prop, or at least different filling inside. In the flashback scene when Dr. Sterndale is describing the poison to Mortimer Tregennis, the filling looks very three-dimensional and more like a root, but in the scene where Holmes pours the contents out it appears quite corse and sandy. We went for a mix of both - there are root segments as well as powder from the root.

Finding the exact bottle was nearly impossible to do, and to find enough of the same style to offer them in our collection WAS impossible. So we opted for something in the spirit of the original prop, an apothecary bottle with a cork stopper. We think it's a devilishly Sherlockian addition to any fine collection of poisons, potions and toxins.

The Blue Carbuncle - “It’s a bonny thing,” said he. “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?”

We went through a number of iterations of the stone before deciding on this one. There are rhinestones available online in a similar color and shape, we even saw one referenced on this forum. All of the readily available variations come with a reflective foil on the back of the stone, and removing it ruins the finish as most of these stones are simply dyed on the front to give it the color.

The other factor for us was the size. The prop that the cast hold is difficult to size exactly. In the palm of the commissionaire that discovered it, or sitting on Sherlock's magnifying glass, it looks enormous, but in Jeremy Brett's hand it begins to show it's true size. We took our best guess and had a run of stones custom made for us. We feel our stone is the best match of the size, the cut and the color of the stone Jeremy holds in the Granada series.

 

[lukeiswho]

The Falls of Reichenbach poster - "It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamor. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss."

This was a highly requested item from our listeners so we spent a lot of time researching it to make a reproduction as faithful as possible. The on-screen prop appears to have a 3 inch matte around it's outside, which we've replicated in the white border of our print. Another slight departure from the original woodcut was the crop on the image itself. The matte appears to cover up some of the print on the top and bottom in the show. We've attempted to match the same crop.

Lastly, the size of the original. A hard thing to gauge exactly, but we've opted to print ours at a very common, modern poster frame size of 24x36" on thick card stock in black & white.

The Sign of Four warning card - "By the way, a curious paper was found in papa’s desk which no one could understand. I don’t suppose that it is of the slightest importance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I brought it with me. It is here."

A seemingly simple prop to recreate, but it is deceptively tricky to get right! It's a 2 color screen-print on what is meant to appear to be a hand torn segment of dirty paper. Getting the jagged text to match the screen used prop and seem natural was difficult enough when screen printing, but getting the tears to match was very time consuming. After much experimentation, we ended up making a template for the shape and cutting the paper with a razor blade, then scuffing all the edges with sandpaper and slightly weathering the front and back. It turned out to be a nice addition to collection.

 

[airhead]

All excellent! The results reflect the dedication to the source material. The Granada series is certainly the finest representation of the ACD Holmes. The properties and set decoration gave the shows a depth that is unmatched. And those locations.... Can't do that on a sound stage. Thanks for sharing these and I look forward to your future efforts.
David

 

[lukeiswho]

Thank you, David! I've always wanted a few of the pieces from those sets, hopefully we can keep this going. We've been in touch with a couple people that own the actual props of the Napoleon bust, so we're planning to get those in an upcoming kit.

 

[CatfoodRob]

I absolutely love your attention to detail , it's something usually only found in the Star Wars community .
Your reproductions are awesome .
I'm a huge Brett/ Holmes fan , and I have quite a collection of books from different decades and also the original magazines .
My admiration for you knows no bounds !!!!!!
Keep up the good work .

 

[lukeiswho]

Wow, thank you, Rob! Very kind of you to say. These "Relics" and the podcast itself are definitely labors of love by some pretty obsessive fans, glad to know we're getting things right!

 

[JANDERS10]

Brett, Cumberbatch, Rathbone.

 

[Caveneau]

Yes, wow thanks for sharing this. I'm already listening to The Final Problem episode. I've loved this series since I first saw it as a kid. I think the Brett series was the best depiction of what Holmes would have been like. The acting was some of the best ever shown on television, in my opinion. David Burke was my favourite Watson. Edward Hardwicke was good too but different. I love the Greek Interpreter episode too. Charles Gray was superb as Mycroft.

Great collection. Thanks again for sharing.

 

[lukeiswho]

Yes, wow thanks for sharing this. I'm already listening to The Final Problem episode. I've loved this series since I first saw it as a kid. I think the Brett series was the best depiction of what Holmes would have been like. The acting was some of the best ever shown on television, in my opinion. David Burke was my favourite Watson. Edward Hardwicke was good too but different. I love the Greek Interpreter episode too. Charles Gray was superb as Mycroft.

Great collection. Thanks again for sharing.

Awesome! Thank you for checking out the podcast! I agree on all points. Hardwicke is great, but you can't beat Burke. Brett and Burke are just perfect, in my mind.

 

[airhead]

Happy Birthday, Jeremy!