Hello, I will be making a bjd and slip casting her this spring for my advanced ceramics class. I am wondering however what size of doll is good for such a thing. I love making small dolls (20cm and below). Is that too small for slip casting or is small ok? I really need to know as I must start sculpting this doll if I ever hope to cast it this spring.
For slip casting hollow parts bigger is easier, but so long as you keep an eye on how thick the edges of the cast are getting while it's in the plaster you should have no problems. Keep in mind while sculpting that your doll will shrink after being fired, so if you want it to be 20cm after firing sculpt it bigger. If you don't mind the doll being even smaller then you should just sculpt at the size you enjoy most. After casting the porcelain will need refining at any size, so don't worry too much about the fine details on tiny dolls, you can make them clearer after casting the greenware or the soft fire. There are people who make and cast 1/12th scale dolls house miniatures in porcelain, and there are a couple of really tiny slip cast doll makers in the BJD community that I can think of. Cureilona here on the Joint makes beautiful tiny porcelain dolls. Box_x_dolls makes dolls that are 14.5cm when completed and have some truly minuscule parts. That link is to an in progress photoset that shows her doll parts after they're out of the molds and drying, and then being refined. I wouldn't let size deter you at all. Once you have made molds you can pour the slip as many times as it takes to get it just right.
Wow! Beautiful! Thank you for the links Irandom. That is extremely helpful! It is very good to know that I can work small.
Personally, I like the idea of making a doll large enough that I can easily design clothing for it. From: Wooden Fashion Mannequin I am interested in being able to make a full set of slopers for my doll, then using the slopers to design many different types of outfits for her. Once I get the first set of slopers made properly, I will never have to change them because my doll will not gain or lose weight during her lifetime. As in the above photo, I am also interested in learning how to drape my doll to design clothing. I enjoy knitting, and a 1/3 size doll may allow me to use full-size patterns for humans with smaller needles and yarn, to make sweaters and other knitwear for my doll, things that I am not interested in making human-sized, but may make 1/3 sized. Smaller dolls than 1/3 size start to get too fussy for me. I am getting old, and my eyes are not as good as they used to be. Also, my digital dexterity is not as good as it used to be. For me, personally, a 1/3 size doll should be just right for making doll clothing, shoes, and accessories. Calculating Shrinkage Revisited (^_^)
Great question! I recently struggled with this very problem. Like kwmelvin, I find sewing for larger dolls more rewarding. At first, I was attracted to 1/3 scale. But I have found that the larger the doll, the more difficult it is to handle, pose, display, and store. After much thought, I decided to work in 1/4 scale for my first porcelain dolls. Martha Armstrong-Hand seems to have chosen this scale for the example in her book. Though the 1/5 scale employed by Marina Bychkova and others is popular, I would probably find it frustrating to sew for (I've found sewing for Barbies at 1/6 scale pretty annoying). I figure 1/4 scale is large enough to costume the way I want, but small enough to appeal to many collectors. I also like the thought that my dolls could be accessorized with salesmans' samples, which are often 1/4 scale. There are lots of 16" fashion dolls that are more or less 1/4 scale; perhaps their accessories would work with my dolls too. So: for a 16.5" doll depicting a 5' 6" adult female, using porcelain slip that (supposedly) will shrink 15.5%, I am sculpting a figure that's 19.5" tall.
