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We featured an article by Jean Littlejohn on Margi Hennen's dolls in the January 1999 issue of The World of Embroidery and it was received with delight by doll makers (and many other interested stitchers). This is the first of a two-part article and features the work of Sue Dove and Grace Meijer from the UK and Dianne Gibson and Margi Hennen from Canada.
My dolls began to evolve out of my embroidered face brooches and my feeling that I would like to make a whole head instead of a two-dimensional face. From there, the body grew piece by piece. I still work in this way, beginning always with the head, not having a 'finished' idea of the 'doll', but working from drawings and collages and areas of previous dolls that have inspired others.
My first dolls and creatures were fully hand-embroidered and no more than 25 cm (10 in) high. I wanted to go bigger and so started to combine hand and machine embroidery but, although they were bigger, they were still very time consuming and my ideas were flowing faster than the making. I then decided to work with canvas and thread so that I could paint the canvas areas. This has proved very successful and I am more excited by the combination of paint and thread than I thought possible. The painted areas complement the threads and make them richer and more special. I can work as big as I like now and, indeed, the dolls are getting bigger as I write.
The latest series of dolls I have called the 'Merry Maidens' after one of the mysterious stone circles scattered around Cornwall. This one is between Penzance and Lands End and were said to be naughty girls turned to stone for daring to dance on a Sunday. I liked the idea of my dolls as naughty girls all standing in a circle. There are only three as yet but more are waiting to come to life and hopefully will be doing lots of dancing together, especially on Sundays.
Since discovering the pleasures of 'alternative' doll making, I have found it hard to go back to the two-dimensional. The possibilities of pushing embroidery towards 'sculpture' are endless.
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Dolls have an attraction because we can all relate to human figures and understand the emotions that they are able to evoke.
I seem to have reached an age where I'm thinking more about life, our inner spirits, our relationships, how we present ourselves to the world and how we touch others or are touched by them. My inspiration is often an emotional response to these thoughts.
I enjoy the challenge of working out construction details, deciding how individual pieces will be made, how they will be assembled and what materials to use. I love texture and combining mixed media (wood, wire, paper) with textiles.
Currently, many of my dolls have simplified shapes that give an impressionistic representation. A number of the figures do not have faces or have only a suggestion of features. I don't always think that faces are necessary and often feel that the statement is stronger without. These dolls can be anyone or everyone, letting viewers participate by using their imagination. Designing and creating fills a personal, inner need but I always hope to achieve that extra satisfaction which comes when a piece is able to draw a response from a viewer.
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I attended a workshop by Salli Lampi, the American doll maker, which changed the way I look at dolls. These were not dolls for children; this was more a caricature. The over emphasised features represented a type of person or profession.
Over the past few years, I had been collecting small articles from the Saturday Telegraph magazine by Victoria Mather and illustrated by Sue McCartney-Snape about social stereotypes, meaning one day to do something with these. These formed the caricatures for my dolls. The heads are made from double knit jersey, dyed pink and over-dyed with tea if necessary. The facial characteristics are made with a single thread and long needle. Accents for eyes, mouth and nose are executed with a fine felt-tip pen. The body and limbs are made in heavy calico, machine stitched and very firmly stuffed. The limbs are attached to the body with buttons to make them adjustable. Wool, fur and cotton is used for hair and, to dress the dolls, I use buttons, beads and all kinds of scraps. The more the caricature is over-emphasised the better.
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I worship Mother Earth, and people, especially women people. I am proud to work in fibre, a product of the earth traditionally used by women. My heavenly bodies are angels, spirits, goddesses or just women with a celestial bent or a leaning for levitation. Mark Twain said, 'there is no humour in heaven'. Maybe it's time we did something about that. I'd rather be irreverent than irrelevant. I take fabric, thread, life as a woman, current affairs, experience at life-drawing and portraiture, and the instincts of a dustbin scavenger. These are then run through the cuisine art in my head and used to produce funny creatures with dead seriousness, or serious creatures with a sense of humour.
Every artist has her own way of working. Mine is to make something, and then decide what it is telling me. A recent example is 'Emily Remembers'.
I wanted to make something that incorporated some of the luscious burgundy dogwood which stands out so here in our winter landscape, so I collected some and looked for fabric to go with it. I settled on a beige cotton which had typing on it, although the letters didn't form intelligible words, some tea-dyed hand-made paper and a piece of unravelling burlap. It wasn't until the doll was finished that I realised that the incoherent words and disintegrating fabric were about Alzheimer's disease, which had claimed my mother many years ago. So I decked her out with birds, which my mother loved. The dogwood has become only a small element on the finished piece.
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This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 51 No.6, © Collated by Maggie Grey.