Bisque doll
Encyclopedia
A bisque doll or porcelain doll is a doll
made partially or wholly out of bisque
porcelain
. Bisque dolls are characterized by their realistic, skin-like matte
finish. They had their peak of popularity between 1860 and 1900 with French and German dolls. Bisque dolls are collectible, and antique dolls can be worth thousands of US dollars. Antique German and French bisque dolls from the 19th century were often made as children's playthings, but contemporary bisque dolls are predominantly made directly for the collectors market.
Colloquially the terms porcelain doll, bisque doll and china doll are sometimes used interchangeably. But collectors, when referring to antique dolls, make a distinction between china doll
s, made of glazed
porcelain, and bisque dolls, made of unglazed porcelain. When referring to contemporary dolls the terms porcelain and bisque are sometimes used interchangeably.
porcelain and a body made of another material. Bisque is unglazed porcelain with a matte finish, giving it a realistic skin-like texture. It is usually tinted or painted a realistic skin color. The bisque head is attached to a body made of cloth
or leather
, or a jointed body made of wood, papier-mâché
or composition
, a mix of pulp, sawdust, glue and similar materials. Doll bodies are only rarely made entirely of bisque because of its fragility and weight. Bisque dolls usually have eyes made of glass. They vary widely in size, from lifesize down to half an inch.
When producing a bisque doll, ceramic
raw materials is shaped in a mold and fired at more than 1260 °C (2300 °F). The head is painted a more than once to create skin tones and facial characteristics, and then fired again after each layer. Antique German and French bisque dolls from the 19th century were often made as children's playthings, but contemporary bisque dolls are predominantly made directly for the collectors market.
s, made predominantly in Germany between 1840 and 1880. China dolls were made of white glazed porcelain, giving them a characteristic glossy appearance, and their hair was painted on. Parian dolls were made in Germany of white unglazed porcelain from the 1850s onwards.
French and German bisque
dolls began taking over the market after 1860, and their production continued until after World War I
. These dolls wore wigs, typically made from mohair
or human hair. Between approximately 1860 and 1890 most bisque dolls were fashion doll
s, made to represent grown up women. They were intended for children of affluent families to play with and dress in contemporary fashions. These dolls came from French companies like Jumeau, Bru, Gaultier, Rohmer, Simone and Huret, though their heads were often manufactured in Germany. In the Passage Choiseul area of Paris an industry grew around making clothing and accessories for the dolls.
Up until the mid-19th century, most dolls were made to represent grown-ups, and when child-like dolls first appeared it was a big shift. By the late 19th century child-like dolls overtook the market. Foremost among these were the French Bébés from doll makers like Jumeau, Bru, Steiner and Rohmer, which grew in popularity between the 1860s and 1880s. These were high quality dolls made with great skill. Like the earlier fashion dolls, they were made for children and dressed in contemporary children's clothing. In the 1890s German doll makers began taking over the market with less expensive dolls. In response, the French doll makers began making dolls as a consortium under the name Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets
(S.F.B.J.) but these later French Bébés were often of lesser quality.
German child-like dolls were predominantly produced between 1890 and 1930. The earliest ones are often referred to as dolly-faced dolls and were made by companies like Armand Marseille, Simon and Halbig, K*R, and Kestner. Many came from the Thuringia
region, which has natural deposits of the clay used to make the dolls. In the early 20th century companies like Kämmer and Reinhardt, Heubach and Kestner began making more realistic and expressive child-like dolls, often called character-faced dolls.
Small lower-priced all-bisque dolls known as penny dolls were common from the late 19th century to the 1930s. They were unarticulated and made of a single piece of bisque. A few German manufacturers like Kestner also made more detailed dolls entirely of bisque with articulated necks. Bisque was the most common material for doll heads until the turn of the 20th century, when composite material took over. In the early 20th century the bisque doll production began moving to the United States
. American Kewpie doll
s from the early 20th century were made of bisque, before celluloid
became more common.
Bisque dolls were made as commercial products in Germany for the toy rather than collector market until the late 1930s and Japan also produced many small bisque dolls in the 1920s and 1930s, often cold painted with oil colours, which have subsequently washed off. At about the same time, just before the Second World War, hobbyist production of reproduction dolls, firstly elaborately moulded female doll heads from the 1860s and 1870s, began in the US with doll artists such as Emma Clear. Reproduction bisque doll making grew slowly as a hobby in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, expanding greatly during the 1970s and by about c. 1980 spreading to Europe, Great Britain and Australia, via companies retailing moulds and supplies such as Seeley's and Wandke, which ran large scale networks of classes and seminars. Another branch of bisque doll making that also emerged during the 1940s in the USA was "artists dolls" which were original creatively designed and moulded dolls that were not copies of 19th century or early 20th century dolls, or cast from earlier dolls. These dolls were intended for the adult collector market.
In the 1980s bisque dolls had a revival with the growth of the collectors market and towards the end of the 20th century production began to move to China. China produced many cheap bisque dolls that were sold in discount department and chain stores often as decorator pieces. This production was at an industrial rather than hobby/studio scale. Cheap mass produced bisque dolls can still be found around the world in bargain stores retailing goods from China. More expensive industrially produced bisque dolls may be found by mail order or in gift shops or even in exclusive, upmarket toy shops as decorations for girls' rooms. Reproduction and artist made bisque dolls still appear but the scale of the hobby is not as great as in the 1980s.
bodies, are valued higher than stiffer papier-mâché
or leather bodies.
French 1860-1890 fashion dolls are commonly worth over US$2000, and dolls from well-known doll makers like Jumeau, Bru and Huret can be worth over US$20,000. Among the French Bébés early dolls from Jumeau and Bru generally go for several thousand dollars, while later S.F.B.J
dolls may be worth only a few hundred. Among German dolls, the character-faced dolls are the most collectible, with rarer dolls fetching several thousand dollars. At the lower end of the price range are dolls that can be found for a few hundred dollars, like dolls from Armand Marseille and common types of dolls from Kestner. Unmarked dolls that can't be identified as coming from a specific manufacturer also fetch lower prices. Small all-bisque penny dolls can be found at low prices as well.
Doll
A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...
made partially or wholly out of bisque
Bisque (pottery)
Bisque porcelain is unglazed, white ceramic ware Examples include bisque dolls.Bisque also refers to "pottery that has been fired but not yet glazed...
porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
. Bisque dolls are characterized by their realistic, skin-like matte
Matte
Matte may refer to:In film:* Matte , filmmaking and video production technology* Matte painting, a process of creating sets used in film and video* Matte box, a camera accessory for controlling lens glare...
finish. They had their peak of popularity between 1860 and 1900 with French and German dolls. Bisque dolls are collectible, and antique dolls can be worth thousands of US dollars. Antique German and French bisque dolls from the 19th century were often made as children's playthings, but contemporary bisque dolls are predominantly made directly for the collectors market.
Colloquially the terms porcelain doll, bisque doll and china doll are sometimes used interchangeably. But collectors, when referring to antique dolls, make a distinction between china doll
China doll
A china doll is a doll made partially or wholly out of glazed porcelain. The name comes from china being used to refer to the material porcelain...
s, made of glazed
Ceramic glaze
Glaze is a layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fired to fuse to a ceramic object to color, decorate, strengthen or waterproof it.-Use:...
porcelain, and bisque dolls, made of unglazed porcelain. When referring to contemporary dolls the terms porcelain and bisque are sometimes used interchangeably.
Bisque dolls
Most bisque dolls have a head made of bisqueBisque (pottery)
Bisque porcelain is unglazed, white ceramic ware Examples include bisque dolls.Bisque also refers to "pottery that has been fired but not yet glazed...
porcelain and a body made of another material. Bisque is unglazed porcelain with a matte finish, giving it a realistic skin-like texture. It is usually tinted or painted a realistic skin color. The bisque head is attached to a body made of cloth
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
or leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
, or a jointed body made of wood, papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
or composition
Composition doll
A composition doll is a doll made partially or wholly out of composition, a composite material composed of sawdust, glue, and other materials such as cornstarch, resin and wood flour. Composition dolls were marketed as unbreakable and hailed as an improvement in doll making from the fragile bisque...
, a mix of pulp, sawdust, glue and similar materials. Doll bodies are only rarely made entirely of bisque because of its fragility and weight. Bisque dolls usually have eyes made of glass. They vary widely in size, from lifesize down to half an inch.
When producing a bisque doll, ceramic
Ceramic
A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...
raw materials is shaped in a mold and fired at more than 1260 °C (2300 °F). The head is painted a more than once to create skin tones and facial characteristics, and then fired again after each layer. Antique German and French bisque dolls from the 19th century were often made as children's playthings, but contemporary bisque dolls are predominantly made directly for the collectors market.
History
The earliest European porcelain dolls were china dollChina doll
A china doll is a doll made partially or wholly out of glazed porcelain. The name comes from china being used to refer to the material porcelain...
s, made predominantly in Germany between 1840 and 1880. China dolls were made of white glazed porcelain, giving them a characteristic glossy appearance, and their hair was painted on. Parian dolls were made in Germany of white unglazed porcelain from the 1850s onwards.
French and German bisque
Bisque (pottery)
Bisque porcelain is unglazed, white ceramic ware Examples include bisque dolls.Bisque also refers to "pottery that has been fired but not yet glazed...
dolls began taking over the market after 1860, and their production continued until after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. These dolls wore wigs, typically made from mohair
Mohair
Mohair usually refers to a silk-like fabric or yarn made from the hair of the Angora goat. The word "mohair" was adopted into English before 1570 from the Arabic: mukhayyar, a type of haircloth, literally 'choice', from khayyara, 'he chose'. Mohair fiber is approximately 25-45 microns in...
or human hair. Between approximately 1860 and 1890 most bisque dolls were fashion doll
Fashion doll
Fashion dolls are dolls primarily designed to be dressed to reflect fashion trends. They are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adult collectors. The dolls are usually modeled after teen girls or adult women, though child, male, and even some non-human...
s, made to represent grown up women. They were intended for children of affluent families to play with and dress in contemporary fashions. These dolls came from French companies like Jumeau, Bru, Gaultier, Rohmer, Simone and Huret, though their heads were often manufactured in Germany. In the Passage Choiseul area of Paris an industry grew around making clothing and accessories for the dolls.
Up until the mid-19th century, most dolls were made to represent grown-ups, and when child-like dolls first appeared it was a big shift. By the late 19th century child-like dolls overtook the market. Foremost among these were the French Bébés from doll makers like Jumeau, Bru, Steiner and Rohmer, which grew in popularity between the 1860s and 1880s. These were high quality dolls made with great skill. Like the earlier fashion dolls, they were made for children and dressed in contemporary children's clothing. In the 1890s German doll makers began taking over the market with less expensive dolls. In response, the French doll makers began making dolls as a consortium under the name Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets
Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets
The Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets was a large doll making consortium founded in France by the union of a number of major French doll companies including Jumeau and Bru and the Franco-German doll company Fleischmann and Bloedel in 1899. The company went out of business in the...
(S.F.B.J.) but these later French Bébés were often of lesser quality.
German child-like dolls were predominantly produced between 1890 and 1930. The earliest ones are often referred to as dolly-faced dolls and were made by companies like Armand Marseille, Simon and Halbig, K*R, and Kestner. Many came from the Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
region, which has natural deposits of the clay used to make the dolls. In the early 20th century companies like Kämmer and Reinhardt, Heubach and Kestner began making more realistic and expressive child-like dolls, often called character-faced dolls.
Small lower-priced all-bisque dolls known as penny dolls were common from the late 19th century to the 1930s. They were unarticulated and made of a single piece of bisque. A few German manufacturers like Kestner also made more detailed dolls entirely of bisque with articulated necks. Bisque was the most common material for doll heads until the turn of the 20th century, when composite material took over. In the early 20th century the bisque doll production began moving to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. American Kewpie doll
Kewpie doll (toy)
Kewpie dolls and figurines are based on comical strip-like illustrations by Rose O'Neill that appeared in Ladies' Home Journal in 1909. The small dolls were extremely popular in the early 1900s. They were first produced in Ohrdruf, a small town in Germany, then famous for its toy-manufacturers....
s from the early 20th century were made of bisque, before celluloid
Celluloid
Celluloid is the name of a class of compounds created from nitrocellulose and camphor, plus dyes and other agents. Generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine in 1862 and as Xylonite in 1869, before being registered as Celluloid in 1870. Celluloid is...
became more common.
Bisque dolls were made as commercial products in Germany for the toy rather than collector market until the late 1930s and Japan also produced many small bisque dolls in the 1920s and 1930s, often cold painted with oil colours, which have subsequently washed off. At about the same time, just before the Second World War, hobbyist production of reproduction dolls, firstly elaborately moulded female doll heads from the 1860s and 1870s, began in the US with doll artists such as Emma Clear. Reproduction bisque doll making grew slowly as a hobby in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, expanding greatly during the 1970s and by about c. 1980 spreading to Europe, Great Britain and Australia, via companies retailing moulds and supplies such as Seeley's and Wandke, which ran large scale networks of classes and seminars. Another branch of bisque doll making that also emerged during the 1940s in the USA was "artists dolls" which were original creatively designed and moulded dolls that were not copies of 19th century or early 20th century dolls, or cast from earlier dolls. These dolls were intended for the adult collector market.
In the 1980s bisque dolls had a revival with the growth of the collectors market and towards the end of the 20th century production began to move to China. China produced many cheap bisque dolls that were sold in discount department and chain stores often as decorator pieces. This production was at an industrial rather than hobby/studio scale. Cheap mass produced bisque dolls can still be found around the world in bargain stores retailing goods from China. More expensive industrially produced bisque dolls may be found by mail order or in gift shops or even in exclusive, upmarket toy shops as decorations for girls' rooms. Reproduction and artist made bisque dolls still appear but the scale of the hobby is not as great as in the 1980s.
Collecting
Antique bisque dolls are collectible and can be quite valuable. The most expensive bisque doll ever sold went for US$200 000. But prices vary widely depending on the quality and condition of the doll. Preferable qualities of the bisque include a slight translucency without spots or holes. Dolls that are painted with more skill and have detailed features are valued higher. More articulated bodies that can be posed more freely, like jointed wood or compositionComposition doll
A composition doll is a doll made partially or wholly out of composition, a composite material composed of sawdust, glue, and other materials such as cornstarch, resin and wood flour. Composition dolls were marketed as unbreakable and hailed as an improvement in doll making from the fragile bisque...
bodies, are valued higher than stiffer papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
or leather bodies.
French 1860-1890 fashion dolls are commonly worth over US$2000, and dolls from well-known doll makers like Jumeau, Bru and Huret can be worth over US$20,000. Among the French Bébés early dolls from Jumeau and Bru generally go for several thousand dollars, while later S.F.B.J
Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets
The Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets was a large doll making consortium founded in France by the union of a number of major French doll companies including Jumeau and Bru and the Franco-German doll company Fleischmann and Bloedel in 1899. The company went out of business in the...
dolls may be worth only a few hundred. Among German dolls, the character-faced dolls are the most collectible, with rarer dolls fetching several thousand dollars. At the lower end of the price range are dolls that can be found for a few hundred dollars, like dolls from Armand Marseille and common types of dolls from Kestner. Unmarked dolls that can't be identified as coming from a specific manufacturer also fetch lower prices. Small all-bisque penny dolls can be found at low prices as well.