DECIDEDLY DOLLY 2

Hello Everyone

Earlier this month (June) I went to the Discover Dolls Fair in Peterborough. This was a new event, set in a Holiday Inn, which proved an excellent and spacious venue with plenty of car parking. Often, doll fairs are set in small halls with limited parking space, but as all keen collectors know, it's essential to park nearby as dolls are large and bulky. If you're anything like me, you soon get laden with carrier bags and can end up staggering under the weight if you can't easily get to the car.

Anyway, when we arrived - my daughter was my chauffeur for the day! - we were amazed at the queue waiting to get into the fair, as normally doll fairs don’t attract large crowds. In fact, the organiser later told me that before the fair opened, the queue had stretched right along the corridor, through the lobby and out into the car park. I’m hoping this is a good sign - for too long dolls seem to have been the poor relations in the collectables world. This particular fair centred on reborns and newborns - artists’ dolls which resemble new babies, often uncannily so. Many of the dolls are works of art, with hair individually rooted using a fine needle, and ‘skin’ coloured with realistic baby blotches and marks.

Some collectors are unsure of the difference between reborns and newborns - basically, a reborn is a baby doll made from a kit or from a doll which has been taken to bits and reassembled after repainting. The ‘reborner’ paints the pieces of the doll with a purple or blue paint on the inside of the limbs, and this colours the vinyl to give a newborn baby flesh tinge. They also open the nostrils, repaint the lips, replace the eyes with realistic eyes, reroot the hair, treat the nails so they are shiny and white tipped, and often use a special glaze to create a teary look around the eyes. They might add delicate thread veins, birthmarks and, usually, make a soft poseable body for the doll, weighting it to feel like a real baby. There is a lot of work involved, and many reborners are skilled at the technique.

A newborn is the term used for a realistic baby doll which the artist has modelled from scratch, using various substances, but usually a polymer clay or Cernit. These newborns can, like reborns, be startlingly realistic - often they cause people to take a second look to see if they are actual babies. The artists who make these dolls sometimes sell them as one offs, or limited editions, and sometimes their designs are chosen by major manufacturers who issue them in larger quantities.

Large companies who market newborns, include Ashton Drake, whose ‘Truly Real’ range of silicone babies are proving exceedingly popular, and offer a chance for those of us who can’t afford to invest in a artist original the chance to own a realistic baby doll of our own. Though mass produced, many of these dolls are delightful, and though might not perhaps be finished to the same exacting standards as the original artist doll, they are still lovely to collect. The photo at the top of this page is 'A Kiss For Jennifer' from Ashton Drake.

Happy dolling

SueX