How To Make Nana's Paper Mache Paste.

Good Paste Is The Key.

For a while now I've been wanting to share some of my knowledge with people because I find if you have knowledge and you don't share it then you run the risk of having what life has taught you lost forever. So in the spirit of "Give a mana fish and feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish and feed him for life." I would like to share with you my knowledge of paper mache. 

I started paper mache when I was just five or six years old, working for my dad who was a commercial artist at the time. I remember he was making a large Easter display  for the lobby of the Vancouver Hotel. I recall there was 4 or 5 rabbits 4 to 5 feet tall dressed in waist coats and bonnets, a giant yellow duck who moved it's beak and lots of very large flowers, bigger than your hand, along with 25 or 30 giant Easter eggs. This  must have been about 1964 or 1965 and he taught me how to paper mache and set me to covering balloons to make the giant eggs. As I recall it was some form of cruel torture and I made lots of mistakes. 

This is an Easter display my dad made around 1967. I not only worked on the paper mache on this one, but dad built this from one of my drawings.

So I started in the craft of paper mache when I was very young and I learned all sorts of stuff along the way. It's one of my mortis operandi to always hone my techniques no matter what aspect of craft that I might be working in. I've always been of a mind to experiment with new ideas and find out what is the best possible way of doing something and then sticking with that and then try to improve upon it. The path to success is through failure, so long as you learn from your mistakes then they are not failures. To learn nothing is the true failure.

My dad, Fran Dowie (a.k.a. Himself!), was an Entertainer and a Showman and produced variety shows of all manor and size for all sorts of different occasions. For instance he produced a show at Barkerville Historic Park in the interior of British Columbia for some 19 years in the summer months and he also produced variety shows for Dawson City in the Yukon. During the winter months he would do convention shows and Boy Scout shows as well as mount shows of his own.  He would turn his hand to just about any form of show business that came his way. One of the things my dad learned early was that puppet shows sold well at Christmas time. 

My grandfather Frank Dowie (a.k.a. Pop) was in the first World War and fought at Vimy Ridge. While overseas, when he was in France, he saw a rather amusing show performed by puppets and it intrigued him. He found out they were called French marionettes. After Pop got back from the war he married my grandma and my dad was born in 1920. Soon after dad was born they all moved to Vancouver B.C. from Regina Saskatchewan.

Pop became a paper hanger by trade because in those days you had to have a respectable job and being part of a theater troupe was not considered respectable. So pop would hang paper by day, but his heart was in performance and he would do what show jobs he could on the side. Pop would sing songs and do the act he created in the trenches in WW1 when he was part of the famous spur of the moment theatrical troupe called "The Dumbells" that was formed amongst the ranks to entertain themselves.  

Here's Pop doing his stuff from the Dumbells show at a Canadian Legion show around 1965.

Through the 1920s pop would perform a Vaudeville Act with a fella who was his partner for a while. One day when dad was 8 or 9 years old, so the story goes, Pop's partner was too drunk to perform. So dad stepped in and took his place and "Frank and Francis" became an act and performed in Vaudeville all throughout the Lower Mainland of B.C. 

Here are "Frank and Francis", posing for a front of house show card for the Orpheum Theater on Granville Street in down town Vancouver, B.C. in 1929. 

Today you can find my dad's "Walk Of Fame" Star on the sidewalk across the street from the Orpheum. When dad and I attended a big show at the Orpheum to celebrate all living stars from the walk of fame (my dad did 3 of his acts that night and went over big). After the show at the reception, my dad said to me sarcastically, "Oh yeah! that's a great place for my star. That way the drunks can come right out of McDonald's and throw up all over it!"

When hard times hit in the 1930s and Vaudeville was in decline pop remembered the French marionettes that he had seen in Europe and proceeded to build a show for my dad to perform. French marionettes works on the "black art" principal of puppetry, where you dress in black velvet from your neck down and you stand behind a stage that comes up just above your waist. Behind you is a black velvet curtain. Around your neck you have hanging a small 12 inch tall puppet body with arms and legs operated by black rods and as your hands are wrapped in Black Velvet, the audience cant see how the puppets are being moved, it's quite a splendid effect. Then you would sing a song, make the puppet dance around and have some sort of gag to end the act. With this idea, Pop and Dad produced a whole variety show in miniature. Pop would play the piano and my Dad and his younger brother, Oliver Dowie (a.k.a Toller O'Shae) would sing and perform the puppets. None of those puppets survive and I've never seen them, but dad told me they were made of paper mache. The little show turned out to be a real money maker during the depression. Not so much from doing the actual shows but from selling advertisements on the front curtain which was a tradition of the old vaudeville theatres. The "front of house curtain" was referred to by a nickname, "the Oleomargarine". In most big-time theaters the makers of Oleo Margarine always took the center spot on the front of house curtain what was covered with adds for local businesses and as people would take there seats before a show, they couldn't help but read the advertisements. Thus the nickname resulted from that. So Pop would make better than $200 a season just selling adds on the oleomargarine of his puppet theater. Good money for the 1930's.

My dad remained in England after the second world war which he took part in. He was a Flight Sergeant with the Canadian Air Force entertainment troupe known as "The Black Outs" where he was a comedian and also, where he met my mom who was a singer in the same outfit. After the war my parents stayed in England and performed at many of the Air Force bases throughout England and Europe with their shows. There best show was called "Pistol Packin' Rhythm" and was a musical cowboy spoof type of show. Dad would play a very small guitar and mom would accompany with a washboard with cow bells and horns all over it. Part of the show was "Stainless Steel the wonder horse", what was a pantomime horse made out of paper mache and worn by the base player and the fiddler and they had a crazy act to go with it.

The Dowie family came back to Canada in 1960. By then I was the youngest of four kids. I was born in 1958. Dad carried on with his Showbiz career and in 1962 he started performing in Barkerville Historic Park. A real original gold rush town from the great gold rush if 1862. Dad became known as the "High Priest Of Nostalgia".  Dad's Barkerville Show,"Nuggets Galore",went on tour across Canada in 1966 and 1967 for the confederation centennial celebration paid for by the federal government. They wound up the tour in LaRonde, Quebec at Expo '67.

My sister, Sally and I were billeted with a family in Richmond BC while our parents and other two siblings were on tour across Canada. One day dad showed up out of the blue. He had with him a big black box about a foot deep, 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. He proceeded to unpack the Box and inside it was a set of French marionette puppets. In fact there was an entire show. He emptied the box and turned it upside down and legs folded out and that became the stage. The box lid became the top of the stage connected by wing supports and pillars on each side of the stage and the proscenium arch what were all made with paper mache. All the bits and curtains turned into a small theater and thus, we kids started performing Christmas shows. That was 1966. I still have that box with those puppets, some of which are made out of paper mache. In subsequent years the sets got bigger and became elaborate castles, all made with paper mache. The acts got more elaborate too and a lot of that was done with paper mache. 

This is my sister Sally performing "If I could talk to the animals" from Dr. Dolittle.  Multiple animal bodies numbered about 8, mounted on a long board covered in black velvet, with a human body on one end. She would sing the first chorus as a human and when she sang the chorus for the second time, then the animal bodies would slide into view one at a time. Each animal had it's own custom movement. What you see here is the last animal, an ostrich that would lay an egg at the very end. This photo was taken at Breakfast With Santa in "The Haida Room" restaurant at the Hudson's Bay Store at Richmond Square Mall in 1968. The puppets, the puppet set and the castle theater were all made out of paper mache. The whole thing packed into a box that was 4 feet by 8 feet and 16 inches deep. The box itself is behind the valence curtain below the puppet's feet.

Dad would build large seasonal displays for a few of the larger hotels and they were almost exclusively made from paper mache. I remember one time Dad was commissioned to make two 30 foot tall Snowmen for on top of the veranda at the front of the Vancouver Hotel. He built them out of paper mache and gambled on the fact that December would be cold and snow would be falling instead of rain. But unfortunately 2 days after the snowmen went up, Vancouver had a major downpour and OH NO! There it was on the front page of the Vancouver Sun newspaper, headline- "Snowmen Melt! A Soggy Christmas!" with a half page photograph of the withering disaster. 

Dad was always building giant things out of paper mache. One of his standard rentals was a 12 foot tall Santa Claus made from paper mache and big hotels would rent it for their Lobby at Christmas time. I remember once when I was about 3 years old, dad had a shop in Ladner B.C. and one day he locked his keys in the shop. His solution was to put me through a small window at the back of the shop and have me unlock the door. Unfortunately for me at the back of the shop is where Dad stored the 12 foot tall Santa Claus. When I came through that window and was suddenly confronted with this giant man who looked so real I thought it was alive! I was afraid he would just reach out and grab me...... I froze solid. It took some coaxing from my dad to get me to move and I moved real slow so I wouldn't  attract the giants attention. That terrified me for a long time. I thought Giants were real and no matter how much my dad told me it wasn't, I didn't believe him because I had seen it with my own eyes. When eventually I realized that he had made it, the fear went away.

This is me when I was a teenager getting throttled by a giant Santa Clause. The other person is my stepmother, Louise Dowie (a.k.a. Louise Glennie ,her maiden and professional name). She was a comedian and would front my dad's puppet shows and perform her own act in his variety shows. Often she would front dad's puppet shows as Mother Goose and the goose was made from paper mache and so was the phoney arm that looked like it was holding the goose, while her real arm and hand were actually inside the goose making it come alive. This was long before radio controlled puppets were common and the effect worked well.

This is a 12 foot tall rabbit my dad made for an Easter rental for the lobby of the Georgia Hotel in Vancouver. I think he redressed Santa and just made the rabbit head, like the good Scot he was.

This big fella was built out of paper mache for the lobby of the Hotel Toronto. Almost as tall as our house! I wish you could of seen the shipper's face when he showed up to pick up something for shipment to Toronto. A deer in the headlights don't quite catch it. Seldom do you see a soul so bewildered. No worries though, it came apart in 3 pieces.

Soon after I started performing puppet shows I started making puppets myself. When I left home for the first time when I was 18, I set out on my own and built my own show with puppets and sets all built from paper mache. 

Took me near 4 years to accumulate this mess of puppets because I had to work to eat and stay alive. Lots of innovations though with mechanical stuff you can't see.

This is how I commonly use paper mache these days to build puppets. This is Sammy the Seagull from one of my own puppet shows. His skull, eyes, beak and the shell that makes up his body are all crafted from paper mache. His cloth based form is made with unbleached cotton and  all covered with short haired fur cloth and felt. His hat is a soft sculpt losely stuffed with poly batten. Kids love him. He's first mate to Captain Fink the Pirate.

This is the highest profile work I've ever done with paper mache. I made the Punch and Judy puppets that live over Santa's fireplace in the Disney movie "The Santa Clause 2". The puppets are carved from styrofoam then paper mache is applied, then it's painted and dressed. Very light puppets, much lighter than traditional wooden carvings.

This last pic is a candid shot taken on the movie set, of the two Canadian puppeteers they flew into Vancouver from Toronto just to work my puppets. I'm sorry fellas, but your names escape me. They might be in the movie credits though, but don't try to look for my name there. It's not there. I got more money if I remained anonymous and let folks think the puppets are Disney products, and in a way, I suppose they are. Of which I am very proud.

Over my lifetime I've used paper mache for more projects then I care to mention. The only constant throughout this whole story is the paste. The recipe for the paste and what's more important the technique with which it is made comes down to me from my grandma, Violet Dowie (a.k.a. Nana) who use to make paste for Pop, who was a paper hanger by trade. So every night Nana would make a great big pail of paste and then leave it on the back of her big old oil stove to keep it warm. When pop left for work in the morning, he always had a nice warm bucket of paste to keep his hands warm on his way to work. "Real nice on a cold days", he would say. When I was very young  I would paper mache for my dad, but he would always make the paste and never showed me how to do it. He just said I was too young. When I was around 10 years old my grandparents moved into a flat my dad had built behind his shop for them to live in so they would be close. One day I was doing some paper mache for Dad who was not at home at the time and I ran out of paste. I asked Nana to make me some and she was shocked I didn't know how to make paste! So she set to and showed me how to make it. I have tried to write out the recipe for her paste a few times over the years, but it's not in the recipe it's in the technique of how it's made. You can really use any amount of flower. So the only way that I can teach you is to make a video and show you how it's done. 

So with no further adieu, here is the video on how to make Nana's paper mache paste.

Making Nana's Paper Mache Paste

The almost lost techniques of paper application through paper mache and Where my knowhow and skill comes from

Hi there. Thanks for taking an interest.

Frank Dowie

My name is Christopher W. Dowie and I come from a long line of crafty people.  My Grandpa, Frank Dowie, was a natural entertainer.  He was in the Canadian Army through World War I and was one of the founding members of the famous theatrical troupe "The Dumbells" that was formed in the trenches by the troops during lulls in the fighting in order to keep themselves amused. They became quite popular and after the war the Dumbelles made a cross country tour of Canada and then recorded a phonograph record, however, Frank wanted no part of it after the war and went home to his sweetheart instead.  He was always a popular entertainer and would sing Cockney songs, like "Down at the old Bull and Bush".  He would play piano and sing 'round the pubs for five dollars a night (a lot of money in those days) as well he would do a turn on the Vaudeville stage and mount his own shows from time to time.

But back in those days being an entertainer wasn't considered a respectable job by most folks.  It was all right for a secondary thing to dabble at and make the odd bit of cash, but not as a main source of income for a family man.  So Frank also had a respectable trade as a paper hanger and he would go about the lower mainland of British Columbia putting up wall paper and painting trim, etc.  My Grandma, Violet, made him a new bucket of paste every day and he would use it all up come suppertime.  He had all sorts of tricks he would do with the wall paper paste to make things go along much smoother for himself and to save time.  Some of those tricks he shared with his son, my father, Fran Dowie.

"Frank & Fran" 1929

My dad was a full time entertainer.  He started in Vaudeville doing a double act with Frank when he was only 9 years old.  My dad's first "real" job was as a Junior Display Artist at a big department store.  At that time each store had it's own display department and the different stores would compete to see who could have the biggest and most elaborate displays.  My dad made great use of paper mache in those days building all kinds of objects from giant Cornucopias to oversize toys and more stuff than I care to explain here.  Suffice it to say that my dad was a master with paper mache and it served him well through his whole life. Building parade floats and displays for clients as well as props, sets and scenery for the multitude of shows he produced over the years. Paper mache for him was something that was taken for granted.  A natural solution to an otherwise baffling task.  

Fran Dowie

I was drafted into the shop when I was only six years old.  One of my first tasks was to paper mache forty big balloons to make giant eggs for an Easter display Dad was making for the lobby of the Vancouver Hotel. Dad never lost touch with his display work and would often get commissions from the big hotels around the country to make something special for there lobby. My first job was to make the giant eggs. So you see, I began to learned my paper mache skills at the knee of the master.

Me and Bill & Lillian Vanderzalm

I myself have done many interesting things with paper mache and I am hoping you will stick around a while and follow this blog so that I can share with you the almost lost techniques of paper application through paper mache.  In this blog I plan to share my Grandma's recipe for paste and show you how to paper mache in a way that is fast, clean and reliable.  Plus I will spill the beans on secrets to such things as the right technique to cover a balloon and how to repair furniture and make hard to finish areas look like you spent a week sanding.  Plus I will show the secrets involved in reproducing almost any object and make a paper duplicate.  I'm hoping that all this information I have on such an obscure subject will find it's way into the hands and minds of creative individuals who can use it.



Modus Opporandii:
Arm yourself with the best techniques and work on them to master them.  Try every technique you can, not every one will be right for you.  Keep what works and discard the rest and by doing that, you will build yourself a bag of tricks you can apply to the job at hand with confidence.  If you try something and fail at it, at least you found out what doesn't work. A person must know there limitations.
It's only a failure if you don't learn anything from it.
Practice makes perfect!

Yours sincerely,
Christopher W. Dowie

Dad and I on the set of my TV show "Puppet Parade"