Marionette: A DIY Guide to Making Your Own 9-String Puppet
Marionettes are more than carved wood, string and cloth, they convince us they think, breathe and feel. This book is a guide, a catalogue and a celebration all at once: clear instructions for building a working 9-string marionette at home, alongside some of the people who keep this 600-year-old British craft from disappearing.
Published to mark Little Angel Theatre’s 65th anniversary in 2026, and made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
£9.99 | Published by Social Art Publications | Launches 21 August 2026
The story
This book began as a single, practical question: how can we teach you to make your own marionette? Little Angel Theatre Associate Director and marionette maker Oliver Hymans set out to answer it in the plainest possible terms: a step-by-step guide that needs no workshop and no formal training, only patience and a few evenings’ work. The marionette in the guide was built by marionette maker trainee Jess Shead, following the same instructions you’ll find inside.
But a craft can’t be reduced to instructions alone. Marionette making survives in Britain today because a small number of people have kept it alive, largely through apprenticeship rather than institutions. In 2023, marionette making was added to the Heritage Crafts Association’s Red List of Endangered Crafts. This book exists partly to change that.
Alongside the guide, the book highlights some of the people who matter to the craft’s history from past, to present and future. The three essays by Oliver Hymans, Sarah Wright and puppeteer Stephen Mottram, place the craft in that wider context which has captivated audiences for centuries, and how it so nearly disappeared.
“Endangered crafts survive because people choose to practise them, teach them and pass them on. If this book helps even a handful of people discover the same fascination I felt standing backstage at the Little Angel Theatre all those years ago, then perhaps we have helped ensure that marionettes will continue to dance for generations yet to come.” —
–Oliver Hymans, Associate Director, Little Angel Theatre
What’s inside
- A Guide and More — editorial by R.M. Sánchez-Camus (Applied Live Art Studio)
- Holding the Strings — an essay by Oliver Hymans on falling for marionettes, training with the country’s last remaining masters, and the campaign that got the craft onto the Red List of Endangered Crafts
- A Family Attached by Strings — Sarah Wright on growing up inside Little Angel Theatre as the daughter of founders John and Lyndie Wright
- 600 Years on Strings — Stephen Mottram on the marionette theatre’s history and its uncertain place in contemporary performance
- Marionette People: Past & Present:— profiles of the makers and performers behind the 2026 exhibition
- A full illustrated, step-by-step guide to carving, jointing, controlling and stringing your own working 9-string marionette at home, using basic hand tools — no workshop or prior woodworking experience required
Featured makers and contributors
Ash Appadu, Mallika Gray, Maria Herbert-Liew, Gren Middleton, Stan Middleton, Oliver Hymans, John Kaye, Ronnie Le Drew, Peter O’Rourke, John Roberts, Sarah Vigars, Jan Zalud, Sarah Wright, Stephen Mottram, John Wright, Lyndie Wright and Soledad Zárate.
Credits
Editor: Oliver Hymans Co-Editor: R.M. Sánchez-Camus, Applied Live Art Studio (ALAS) Graphic Design: Pablo Larrosa Published by: Social Art Publications ISBN: 978-1-913309-11-4 Copyright: Little Angel Theatre, 2026
With thanks to Little Angel Theatre staff, Yan Tang Law, Jess Shead who made the marionette featured throughout the guide and Lily Osman.
This project is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players.
The Marionette Heritage Project is delivered with Applied Live Art Studio (ALAS) CIC.
Publication artwork by Pablo Larrosa.