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The form needs to be closed very tight to avoid the outflowing of the porcelain at the joints. After filling the form it will be taken sidewards for a longer time. After a while the still fluidable porcelain will be poured out and the hardened part stays in the form. Several repeats let grow a "layer" of some millimeters; the moulding blank itself is hollow.

During this waiting periods the form absorbs the liquid out of the porcelain mass; the mass becomes hardened a bit und looses dimension. Thatīs the reason why the moulding blank can be extracted from the form, combined with the usage of a releasing agent.

opened form

The moulding blank, weak and very damagable, needs to have some "operations" to be made with... In this step all openings in the porcelain like the eye holes, nostrils or an open mouth must be cut out of the doll using a scalpel. One wrong cut and all starts again...

During the time a large store of forms for heads, breast-plates, arms and legs is generated.

store of forms

The moulding blank is now ready for the first firing in the kiln.
A daylong finetuning follows; all bumps in the surface of the porcelain, all joints from the form, details of the face or hands need to be grinded, excavated with special tools and finished. This working steps demands a high level of accurateness because after the next firing the moulding blank becomes to hard to be grinded again.

Now the colouring and the painting of the porcelain starts. In several firering steps the porcelain child gets the later look. Depending on not always influencable factors each step causes the risk of damaging the work of days...

pile of shards

When everything has been worked out fine the parts of the doll are combined. All parts have the same colouring of the porcelain and had been shrunken for about 15-20 percent in comparision to the model...

finished legs

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The eyes can now be implemented into the head, the eye-lashes can be fixed, the neck will be fixed with the breast-plate, the opening in the head will be closed with a cap, the darned cloth-body will be adjusted with the pocelain parts and the wig will be selected. The selfdesigned and -sewed clothing will be dressed and the final styling and arrangement of the doll can be done.

This is how a dream-doll can look like:

artist doll

All photos used for this documentation have been authorized by the Broeksma-Müller artist family to be published on this homepage. Many thanks !!

artist doll 2

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