Tiny rabbit, big prices as Aardman sells 50 years of puppets
A 9cm-tall clay rabbit just sold for almost £10,000. It was one of more than 200 Aardman pieces to go under the hammer as the Bristol studio closed its 50th birthday auction on 24 September 2026, with the money set aside to train new animators, according to The Guardian.
The sale was run by memorabilia house Propstore. Bidding ran from 4 to 24 September, ending in a live auction, after a public exhibition in London from 10 to 13 September, Propstore's listing shows. Every lot opened at £100.
The catalogue reached across nearly every Aardman production, the studio said in its September announcement. Original Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Feathers McGraw puppets led the collection. Stop-motion, the craft of moving puppets a fraction at a time and photographing each step, means each figure carries the fingerprints of the shoot.
Prices climbed fast for small things with big screen histories. Storyboards from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, signed by creator Nick Park, sold for almost £4,000. Morph and Chas, the small Plasticine figures made by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord, sold for £3,780 including buyer's premium.
The top lots were not all puppets. A lunch for six with Lord in Bristol sold for more than £11,000. The rabbit, a tiny clay model from Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, sold for almost £10,000.
Recent work sat beside the classics. The sale included Wallace and Gromit models from Vengeance Most Fowl, the 2024 film, alongside Chicken Run figures and Shaun the Sheep puppets. One lot sure to raise a smile was a Feathers McGraw puppet disguised as a nun.
What makes this stand out is the reason for selling. Aardman turned 50 this year. Rather than locking the archive away, it is using the profits to fund training for the next generation of animators.
Fans have bought Aardman figures for good causes before. A separate Bristol auction of 53 Gromit sculptures raised more than £2 million for a children's hospital, the BBC reported. This time the cause is the craft itself.
