A chair for a Mignonette

I am still working on my ball jointed French Mignonette inspired doll.  This week I worked on her hair, embellished her dress, made her shoes, and created a chair for her to sit on.  Oh what fun I had!  I still plan on adding a few more embellishments or two. 

As I promised last week, I am going to share some interesting tidbits I found out while researching French Mignonettes before creating this doll.

One interesting tidbit of information is that the earliest French Mignonettes were made in France, often had jointed limbs, wigs, and inset eyes.  The mignonettes paralleled the current doll trends and were quite elaborate.  However, the French doll makers were so busy keeping up production of the larger dolls that after the first year or so they started buying the tiny bisque dolls from German doll manufacturers.  The dolls were then dressed and completed in France and sold as French Mignonettes.

In order to share another interesting bit of information, I will need to give you a little bit of a back story.  As you may already know, my blog is called Orsini’s Angels, as is also my doll making business.  I named it after my grandmother, Dominga Orsini.  She moved to New York City during the late 1930’s where she found a job as a seamstress in the garment district.  One of my aunts, at a later time, also worked in the garment district as a pattern maker/designer.  My aunt took me to work with her on occasion when I was a child.  I would spend the day there sketching the models.  I can’t imagine where the love of fashion, fabric, and sewing came from!  Anyway, to make a long story short, I found out in my research that there were several mignonette doll designers in the early 1900’s that would then have the dolls created in bisque form by German manufacturers.  One of these doll artists was named Jeanne Orsini who lived in New York City during the early 1900’s.  Her last doll patent was dated in 1920.  All of her dolls were smiling except for one.  I couldn’t find much else about her during my search or if she is in anyway related to me but found the information quite intriguing. 

Hope you enjoyed this post and wish you a very creative week.

warm hugs,

Marla

If you are interested in learning how I use watercolors for skin tone and facial coloration on cloth needle sculpted dolls I am teaching live classes on this process.  The next class will be presented at the Quinlan Artist Doll and Teddy Bear Weekend Event.  You can find out more about the class and how to sign up here.

http://www.quinlanmuseum.com/convention/

I am also teaching a live class this summer on the same process at the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton NY.  You can find out more about the class by downloading their summer class catalog by clicking on this link 

http://www.tiartscenter.org/

 Or by sending an E-mail to Marcia Rogers

marcia@tiartscenter.org

You can also give Marcia a call at

315-686-4123 ext. 203