Archive for June, 2011
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
I wrote about Japanese Ichimastu dolls in my last blog.
This time I would like to introduce another kind of wonderful doll created by my friend Vita Soyka who is an extremely talented doll artist from Ukraine.
Her dolls are inspired by early European wooden dolls from 17th ~18th centuries, but they are all her original designs, not reproductions.
She hand carves lime – wood to make the base of a wooden doll then coats the wood with a chalk priming mixture. She finishes the facial painting with an old method of egg tempera and sets glass eyes to give life to the doll.
Vita hand sews all garments and dresses for the dolls by using a combination of modern and antique materials.
Oftentimes antique fabrics are too fragile to handle and choices are very limited. But by combining both new and old materials Vita has the flexibility to create a wide variety of dresses.
She carefully chooses fabrics made from natural materials in order to preserve the integrity of a vintage look to her dolls.
To make that vintage look even more authentic, she uses antique glass eyes,and the wigs are made from antique human hair .
I was just blown away when I first saw her dolls because of their artistry.
Compared to using molds to make porcelain dolls, hand carving each doll is extremely time consuming and requires a high level of artistic skill. I am already taking my hat off at that point.
My dolls are my own interpretation of antique dolls but still ” reproductions”.
Vita’s dolls are all originals made from scratch. I truly envy her talent and thank her for giving me an opportunity to learn something new.
You can read more about Vita’s dolls from these links.
Vita hand carved this beautiful body. Look at detail of these feet! Wow !