Category Archives: Toys and dolls
Annie Hutchinson: Textile Animal Dolls
Textile artist Annie Hutchinson is born in Wales and she graduated from Cheltenham Art College in 1989. She experimented in different media as a part of her study of Fine Art Sculpture, but she sticks mostly with textiles because of its ‘limitless supplyof pattern, texture and colour’. She like the possibility of creating and developing the ideas while she is working on her art pieces, and that is something that thread and textiles allow her. Annie says, “Life in the 21st century can be a bit hectic: everyone is in such a rush, wanting things done yesterday… when I’m hand stitching or needle felting it allows me to jump off the merry go round.”
Christine Alvarado and Du Buh Du Design
Christine Alvarado is an artist and doll maker originally from the Monterey Peninsula and she currently resides in Bend, Oregon with her husband and son. Her background is in fine art, sculpture, printmaking, etc.. She earned an AA in Graphic Design at Monterey Peninsula College and her BA in Art at San Jose State University’s School of Art & Design.
The Secret Life of Socks: Gordana Rakulj Radovanovic’s Dollmaking
“The secret life of socks” is the place where socks lives their own magic life. This new life give them Gordana Rakulj Radovanovic, sculptor and applied artist. Gordana came across the many pictures, tutorials and books about dollmaking, and she got an idea to make her own dolls. She tried to do something else and new.
Lynne and Michael Roche and Their New Old Dolls
Lynne and Michael Roche have been making artist dolls for 30 years. They are well known for their porcelain headed dolls with finely carved and articulated lime-wood bodies. They have also made a variety of ranges of different bodies for the dolls over the years, at the moment tiny all bisque jointed dolls compliment their larger wooden and porcelain collection.
“Queen Anne” Style Dolls
A jointed body and carved face decorated with stylized eyebrows and brightly rouged cheeks characterize the “Queen Anne” style dolls. English woodcarvers and craftsmen began making these dolls in the 1600s which continued through the 1840s. Affordable only to affluent families, the vast majority of Queen Anne dolls where owned by women, who dressed them in the fashions of the time.
Forever Young: The Teddy Bear
The history of the teddy bear is a lovely story from President Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a captive bear to Morris Michtom and his wife creating what is now accepted as the first of the modern Teddys’ Bear.
Making a Cloth Doll in 9 Steps
Cloth dolls are often a children’s favorite toy and they are very easy to make from spare pieces of fabric or unwanted older fabric that would otherwise be turned into rags. In putting a cloth doll together, a unique personality forms every single time.
Bisque Dolls
Bisque dolls ,with heads made from unglazed, tinted porcelain, are among the most elaborate and valuable of all collector’s dolls. The finest French bisques, made by leading makers such as Jumeau, Bru, Gaultier and Steiner, were expensive status symbols even when first made, and remained very much the province of pampered children from the most affluent homes.
The earliest French Bisques resembled fashionable ladies and came equipped with wardrobes of elaborate clothes, based on fashion plates of the day.
