Sometimes there comes a moment in my life when I feel an extreme need to challenge myself and my audience with something that I have never done before. I call those moments “what if moments”. So it all has started as a simple master model for porcelain BJD. Then there were long months of sculpting, the breaks and then resculpting, and more resculpting, and then molding and remolding and then finally casting and then, like if I wouldn’t have spent more than a year on this project already, came “what if moment”. “What if I would decorate a porcelain doll with sculpted roses?” – I thought to myself, and started sculpting tiny porcelain roses and adding them to a casted torso. I had no idea if they will come out nicely or if they will fall off after firing, if the doll parts themself will fall apart because of different thickness of the porcelain, if something will explode at the end… you never know when you are doing something for the first time and you have noone to ask about it… but well – it had to be done, because I would not be able to sleep without knowing the answer to “what if …?” Just in a case I have sculpted a couple more doll bodies of this type and placed everything to kiln for the first firing. WIth a trembling heart I had opened it the next day and – voila! – the doll parts didn’t fall apart and all the ornaments and blossoms were still in their places. This was encouraging. After sanding and adjusting I went for the second (the high temperature) firing, and again the tremble of the heart. Eleven hours to fire, ten more to wait for the kiln to cool down and… nothing happened! All doll parts came out nicely! What a relief! And a small moment of pride – I did it 🙂
And the a second “What if moment” has hit me. “What if I make the joint lining not the most ugly part of the doll, but the most beautiful?” A fancy lace collar on the leg joint? Some beading maybe? Yes, no matter how crazy it sounds, I have to try it! And so I did. And I absolutely love how it looks, how ever the fans of doll’s mobility and functionality would be disappointed, because the doll has lost a good part of it… well beauty comes at a price 🙂
The other “what if moments” that happened during the creative process:
“What if I use a crackle glaze on a porcelain doll” – ordered glaze, experimented a couple of times mixing different colors and firing until I have found the shade and texture that I needed for this doll. It came out beautifully. yay!
“What if I string the doll with help of a flexible wire” – bought flexible wire of different thickness, tried out several ways of stringing, spent some days on rethinking the scheme – it didn’t work, and I had to come back to a classical way. pfff… not all experiments end up successfully, but it is still a useful experience.
So let me present you my first fully jointed porcelain BJD:
“BLOOMING”
That feeling of harmony with the world and oneself, that feeling of being able to accept and to give, that feeling of fulfilment…simply blooming.
Why is my blooming full of cracles and scratches? Because it didn’t come easy at all…
43 cm
English bone porcelain
Glaze and overglaze paint
Mohair wig
Linen laces
Glass beads
The doll is stringed with metal springs.
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