No. 11

(Name to be confirmed)

French Antique Reproduction

Details

Original

French (maker to be confirmed)

Artist

Anna Miller

About this doll

A doll in a cream lace dress with a matching lace bonnet and small flowers. Brown hair, a slightly open mouth and rosy cheeks give her the sweet look typical of a French bebe.

The porcelain artist Anna Miller made this reproduction of a French antique doll. The French firm that made the original is being confirmed.

Background

'Bebe' is the name given to the child dolls made in France in the late nineteenth century. After Emile Jumeau introduced the 'Bebe Incassable' (unbreakable baby) with glass eyes and a jointed composition body in 1877, the Paris firms Jumeau, Bru, Steiner and Gaultier all competed to make bebes. In 1899 they merged into a single consortium, the SFBJ.

A reproduction doll is made by pouring porcelain slip into a plaster mold taken from an antique head, firing it at more than 1,200 degrees Celsius, and then painting it with china paints and refiring several times. Because porcelain shrinks in the kiln, a reproduction is slightly smaller than its original. The artist incises her initials and the year on the back of the head before firing, so that the doll can always be told from an antique.

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