Art & Design

The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Handmade Props

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The latest film by Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel managed to interest the critics and won the most creative Oscars in this year’s organization, which is due largely to the work of talented graphic designer Annie Atkins, who was tasked with the creation of many of the film’s props.

Atkins had the difficult task to create all the flags, banknotes, passports, and street signs for this fictitious state in central Europe called the Empire of Zubrowka. As she states herself “Every piece I made, I started showing it to Wes in a collection of real examples from the period. We looked at hundreds of pieces from Eastern Europe early last century as a reference. ”

Using this vast database file,  Atkins cooperated with the film’s production designers Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, as it took to paint by hand and type in a lot of details like the titles of the local newspaper.