The doll makers
The class that teaches you how to make an heirloom
Limbs were being carried around in trays and women were fussing over which one was theirs. As soon as they had found their match, shoulders and heads needed to be claimed. It may sound like a scene from a horror movie. In fact, it was the beginning of the second session of a course on how to make porcelain dolls. The students were merely collecting their ‘body parts’ from the previous lesson.
Elisabeth Nicolaou is the person responsible for encouraging this interest in the making of porcelain dolls in Cyprus.
“It was a visit to an exhibition in the States that had me hooked and keen to find out more,” she explains.
That was nine years ago, and since then Elisabeth has quit her job and focused on designing and creating porcelain dolls. She has now made over 2000, and earlier this year, she began a government-funded programme to teach others how to make these widely loved delicate figurines.
“I have people from all walks of life taking these lessons,” she says. “From young girls, who come in with their mothers to teenage boys and older women. It’s one of two ways of getting your hands on a porcelain doll, and it’s fun and creative”
Dolls have been cherished possessions since prehistoric times.
Amongst the earliest were those made of flat pieces of wood, painted with various designs and their hair made of strings of clay or wooden beads which have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. The ancient Greeks and Romans also put dolls in graves.
It was with the introduction of wax dolls in the 17th and 18th centuries that children first played with more delicately made dolls. By the early 1800s the Germans were producing the earliest porcelain dolls, and by the late 1860s they had crafted a way of producing dolls to look more like human images.
A mixture of clay and water was poured into sculpted head moulds and then baked in ovens at temperatures of 2300?C. The German craftsmen would then remove the mould, allow the pieces to cool and then paint features such as eyes, lips and rosy cheeks on the faces. The dolls were then baked additional times to deepen colours, thus producing the first porcelain dolls.
This is more or less how things are done at Elisabeth’s classes. “There are various moulds one can choose from,” she explains. “There are smaller ones, almost childlike and then larger ones, if someone wants to make a bigger doll.”
The liquid porcelain is imported from America as are all the accessories and other bits and bobs needed to create a doll. The thick liquid is poured into the moulds and left for five to seven minutes. Then the mixture is left in the sun for a further five hours, to avoid any moisture locking within the mould before it heads to the kiln.
Once removed from the kiln, the various parts are scrubbed to smooth the surfaces and a special paint is then softly applied to create the doll’s skin colouring. The pieces are then sent to the kiln again for a further 18 hours of firing at 1210?C.
Once they have been removed, the limbs and head are attached to the torso, a bag-like piece of cloth stuffed with tough materials such as glass fibre which is the only soft part of the doll.
The next part is the fun part, as the doll is given life, through painting, wigging and costuming.
“This is where you can be very creative,” says Elisabeth. “Whether you are buying or making, this is something you can customise entirely from the type of wig, to the colour of the eyes, to the type of dress and shoes.” Eyelashes and eyeballs, which again are imported from America, are stuck on with a special glue.
Porcelain doll making is a unique art. Watching a bowl of clay turn into a valuable doll is fascinating and uses multiple creative skills. “These dolls are collector pieces,” says Elisabeth. “I’ve been told that during auctions the prices can skyrocket making it almost impossible to buy, especially if they come with a certificate of authenticity as ours do. However, the fact that they are heirlooms, I think is much more fascinating. In America, the logo is from mother to daughter and from grandmother to granddaughter and I think that says it all!”
If you’re interested in taking lessons to learn how to make a porcelain doll or simply want to buy one, you can call Elisabeth at 99 332936 or 22 532335
