Van Gilder and Jim Henson making cameos in The Great Muppet Caper.
Van Gilder with Wonder Pig.
Amy Van Gilder was one of the earliest designers in the New York Muppet Workshop, hired during the first season of The Muppet Show. She left Henson for a time in the early 1980s to start a family, but returned to work on Muppets Tonight. She also had a cameo alongside Jim Henson in The Great Muppet Caper, as a patron of The Dubonnet Club.
She was later hired by The Walt Disney Company in the Imagineering Department, where she currently helps with integrating the newly acquired Muppets property into their theme parks. Her achievements there include design and theming concepts for Lucky the Dinosaur, the first in a series of free-roving Audio-Animatronics in Disney's Living Character Initiative, which would later include the Muppet Mobile Labs.
Amy Van Gilder's children are journalist Sonia van Gilder Cooke and photographer Bartholomew Cooke. Sonia mentioned her mother as her "role model" in an interview with The Sunday Times of London.
Design credits[]
- The Muppet Show: Muppet designer; Lew Zealand character finishing, built Steel Rabbit
- Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas: Puppet designer
- The Muppet Movie: Muppet designer, Muppet Workshop coordinator
- The Great Muppet Caper: Muppet "Doctor"
- The Dark Crystal: Podlings fabrication
- Fraggle Rock: Muppet designer, built Convincing John (with Rollie Krewson)
- Dreamchild: Mechanical Design Assistant Designers
- Muppets Tonight: Muppet designer; Bread Monster
- Muppet Mobile Lab: Costumes & figure finishing
