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Indy gets propped up

© Lon Mills

One doesn’t have to have a Ph.D in archaeology, or be an expert in world cultures to obtain ancient artifacts to adorn your mantle or bookcase. All you need is a little ingenuity, craftsmanship and passion and you can bring the world right into your own home without having to make travel plans. The treasures of Indiana Jones can be yours.

An Indiana Jones fan, who goes by Indy Magnoli, creates his own artifacts based on the swashbuckling adventurers escapades.

“I'm a history buff, and the artifacts from the Indiana Jones universe are an interesting combination of fact and fiction,” Magnoli said.

Those artifacts range from the Fertility Idol from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to the Sankara Stones from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and the Holy Grail from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and everything in between. Magnoli has even ventured outside the realm of the movies and crafted an Atlantean horned idol, the key artifact in finding the lost continent of Atlantis in the Dark Horse comic book mini-series “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.”

Everything on Magnoli’s Web site is hand-crafted by him except for the resin Webley. Hand-crafting these collectibles not only requires a passion for Indiana Jones universe and history in general, but it also requires a lot of time that isn’t available to make the artifacts look “artifacty.”

“The main unifying factor to most replicas is the aging process. My favorite aging process is applying what I affectionately call "Aging Juice" (a combination of coffee, paints and water) with a spray bottle,” Magnoli said. “I do a lot of work in wood and paper so this process works great for those. I'm glad that, as of yet, I haven't been producing pieces out of resin. Although these are replicas of props, I prefer making things based on the fictional pieces rather than their prop counterparts.”

Magnoli takes his work seriously. And, as with any artist, has pieces of his work that stand out for him on a personal level. His two favorite pieces aren’t even artifacts that Indiana Jones found, but rather pieces the archaeologist and his father started that document their careers.

“It'd be a close tie between the two journals: Henry's Grail Diary and Indy's personal diary. Both took a great deal of research and have been tweaked time and time again. Not only are they pieces of art, but they both tell a story. That's something that most props can't do,” Magnoli said.