Wooden dolls

#01

BEHIND THE SCENE

Character design is part of my professional training and and I have loved toys since I was a child and I love to and i like to play even now.
I have always collected dolls, fetishes, figures, masks and toys. Better if they’re made of wood or ceramic, because they are warm material.

Wood has always been part of the culture of human beings and which I have particularly missed lately.

Wood smells, is warm and gives a good mood to the all environment and, of course, reminds us where we come from: nature.
During an artistic residency in Gressoney, I met the autochthonous carpenter Rudy Maher, who fascinated me with his stories and his huge knowledge about wood.
Back home, his words continued to resonate with me and I decided to contact him to make my figures cut out of wood.
Here are 4 of the 12 characters I plan to make.

Their names are: Bob, Maribella, Lola and Gustavo.

They are made with cedar and willow wood, painted in acrylic + acrylic resin for protection, and have a thickness of 3 cm.

They have dimensions that vary from 21 cm in height to 6 in width.

They love to run around the house in the night and sometimes they run away, chased by the shadows that hide there during the day. But they are not afraid by them, they are all strong and courageous and have a ringing voice.

You can see them on my Pictofolio gallery

To purchase go here

Ask me anything about this project or if you are interested in an ad hoc creation of a wooden doll.

Sketches and ideas

A source of great inspiration were the Wooden dolls created by the great master Alexander Girard for Vitra. I love the uniqueness of Girard’s artistic line on the wood and its expressiveness.
The tenderness and cuteness of those dolls made them known and loved all over the world. Personally, a dear Dutch friend who owned a pair of them, showed them to me. It seemed that her dolls inhabited the shelves of her library and really lived among her books.
It seemed that those shelves were the place they had ever lived.

I chose a color palette with quite saturated and lively tints. My dolls would like to be the translation of my projects on paper. The elements that compose them, the big eyes, the polygons that are part of their shapes, the clean lines of their silhouettes, are a choice to arrive at the simplicity of their shapes. Furthermore, my will is to make them almost archetypal in the imagination and that they are often funny and ironic at the same time. And cute.