Okay, sure, my birthday is still six months or so away, but that just gives one of my terribly generous friends out there time to save up the money to get me something really, really cool. Like, oh, I don’t know… maybe a Han-Solo-in-carbonite desk! (Although for my purposes, a coffee table would probably be better… I already have a nice roll-top desk.)

Seriously, though, this thing is really cool. It was custom-made by a company called Tom Spina Designs; if you like movie stuff at all, I recommend you go over there and have a look around. They’ve done a lot of other custom display pieces (some Star Wars-related, much that is not), and there’s a fascinating page showcasing some the restoration work they’ve done on original movie props and masks. Latex is not the most durable material and most movie companies make little effort to preserve costumes and props after shooting wraps, so the actual physical artifacts behind our favorite cinematic fantasies tend to degrade pretty quickly. This company has done some very impressive work on, among other things, puppets from The Dark Crystal and Gremlins, and a whole slew of Ughnaught masks from The Empire Strikes Back. Nice to know that somebody cares about saving this stuff… it’s all precious in my book. As Indy would say, “it belongs in a museum!”

Oh, and for the professional courtesy bit, this item was via Boing Boing. Of course.