Blanche Harding was a sprightly 77 years old when she began carving the 16 puppets for the Lewis and Clark show. During all of 1985, she wrote the script, designed and sewed the costumes and recruited ...

Schroeder Cherry brings his hand-carved puppets and stories to town for “Can You Spell Harlem?” with shows at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 3-4, at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Ave.

Jim Henson modernized the age-old art of puppetry by using foam rubber to coat the puppets’ limbs. Previously, most TV puppets were made of carved wood. But Henson believed that foam rubber and cloth ...