Another diversion involved casting a lantern in a kind of papier-mache, using a silicone mold. “I was wanting to get away from resin at the time,” Allen says. “The trick is to keep the paper transparent, for which I can’t tell you my formula. But it was never really fully resolved, just a studio experiment. Whenever you stray from commercial production techniques, you run into problems and have to find an enlightened manufacturer to stray with you. To make one is really easy, but to mass produce it is a very different thing.”