auction doll on her wedding day.

[duccio]

Maybe not simply collected, but projected, imagined: a talisman kept all these years. From the estate of someone who's children didn't spend time to reflect or realize the extent... (or maybe simply collected and now auctioned away).

Comments

[asakiyume]

She has a pretty dress and a sweet face. Is she soft? Her face looks painted rather than embroidered.

[duccio]

This was taken in Dec. 2015. I recall it was a medium sized doll maybe about 10" to a foot in length. In the photo here it looks as if the head may be cloth and painted, but looking at my original color photo, it is either ceramic or plastic, and I'd bet ceramic. The features are very shallowly modeled. I think if the head and hands were plastic, the detail would be deeper and sharper. Ceramic is more brittle, so maybe that's why the anatomical detail is so shallow. The painting of the sparse details, the mouth, eyelashes, fingers; all are very simply and economically done which seems more likely done in a ceramics factory rather than a plastic factory where the details might be more precise as they would be machine done.

Not being a doll expert, that's all I can surmise.

The auction place probably has dolls two or three times a year - sometimes huge collections of them. Most of them don't have really nice dresses like this one, or the completely fanciful facial features. The features range from cliche Barbie faces to kind of quasi realistic baby/kid mix faces - maybe 3 year old adult faces with makeup. This one was the best this particular auction, and I started thinking about the little girl who may have owned this doll and she imagining her life to come. Dolls are interesting dream objects to consider. I always look at the collections for auction and snap a few of the ones that trigger... something.

Really, auction houses like the one I go to with djaza almost every month are like museums of the unexpected. You never know what you will see; you have to go without expectations, but in the certainty you will be surprised at your reactions to certain things that you run into. And, the big plus: un like museums, you might be able to take home the object of your delight.

[asakiyume]

museums of the unexpected.

--what a wonderful concept.

[duccio]

That's why we like to go. The lighting is not the best there, especially in the so-called display cases which are often just deep bookshelves or bins, but here are details of the original photo - grainy because of the low light. You can see what I was saying about the shallow anatomical detail and the economical painted details.