It’s been a busy week, for a sculptor.
I have an excellent forgettory. I forget, in between doing it, how tricky modelling and sculpting for dolls can be. I think, as I age, that I get much pickier. A shape that I would have been very happy to produce ten years ago is no longer satisfactory. I am wrestling currently with a partial horse. I did do a unicorn some years ago but no longer find it satisfactory or big enough, I don’t like the joints, the range of movement is not realistic and it will be in the bargain box come the autumn.
I have got all the parts for my new twelfth scale man ready to mould. There’s also a new 24th scale articulated lady, which is a portrait doll. There’s a new twelfth scale child and plenty of dolls’ dolls.
The dolls’ dolls have been very interesting. So far there are two Bartholomew babies, a jointed early Roman doll, a Hellenistic doll, a matryoshka, a thirties doll and a frozen Charlotte.
The Frozen Charlottes were one-piece porcelain dolls, popular in the Victorian era as dolls’ house residents and dolls in their own right. They were usually glazed white or skin tone porcelain with moulded hair and china painted facial features. To get the doll in the right attitude has proved tricky. The old dolls have arms that are bent at the elbow but the upper arm is held close to the body. I’d like to offer all my dolls’ dolls undressed and dressed; getting the arms in a realistic attitude but dressable has been quite tricky. Some of the Victorian dolls have tiny feet in painted boots but there is no way they would stand up. Tiny feet were a Victorian virtue. I do often think I am physically a throwback, I have sloping shoulders, a waist, a substantial bust, weeny feet and straight dark hair. I’m probably the nearest thing you’re going to get to Queen Victoria without the later sour expression and the antimacassar draped on my head.
The story of poor frozen Charlotte was that she was invited to go on a sleigh ride but was so proud of her pretty dress she refused to put a shawl on and arrived at her destination frozen solid.
It was probably the precursor of everything your mother told you before you went out: to make sure you were wearing clean underwear (in case you got run over) to put your coat on for going out but take it off in the house (other wise you wouldn’t feel the benefit) and make sure your shoes were shiny (because this was the era before upskirting, though the advice about the underwear still holds good, obviously.)
I think there are a few more dolls’ dolls to do. There is also a shoulder head, which I am thinking of as a kit, which would make a twenty-fourth resident. I’ve had a request for twenty-fourth children and babies which will be included.
If there is anything you fancy and you are coming to the show please let me know before next weekend.
In the last autumn show I had a request for blokes in a garage. I have done some of them and also made a garage box for them to live in until they get rehomed. There will be more men when I get to the dressing phase but for now
all together…Grease is a word, have you heard…?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~