Making an Izannah Walker Replica Doll
- It’s the journey, not the destination that makes the trip.
I hope I can do this – I’ts been a long time since I used this webpage.
Our Izannah Journey started in about 1995. A new copy of a doll magazine had arrived, and it had an article about the Walker dolls, with some really good pictures. I took the magazine into Ralph, who was sculpting in his studio, and asked, “Can you make something like this?
And so he did!
Our first dolls were clay, with cloth bodies. People liked them, and they were simple and fun to make.
These are painted clay heads, circa 1995 So for years we played around with Izannah, even making some kind of goofy ones.
I know…I was playing, OK? So years passed, grandkids and furkids get born, tomatoes get raised, husbands have major surgery, and then one day, earlier this year (2010), I was cleaning (!!) and I found this doll. The head is pressed cloth, and it is dated and signed by Ralph, 2008.I couldn’t remember how we had done it. And why did we make only one? I dug around some more, and found the mold….making that first head had destroyed that mold! So we searched some more, and found the masters.
This was our first serious attempt at an Izannah. The clay head is from the mold, but the doll has a pressed cloth face, and the two halves are stitched together. This doll has molded ears, and a bun on the top of her head. So now the game is on. This time, I resolved to make a diary as I worked. The first date is around September 1, 2010.We first collected all the pictures and information we could about the Walker dolls. Fascinating!
We sent for the old magazines, we dug out the entire collection of old doll books, we acquired the UFDC study disk for Izannah, sent for more books, and stumbled on to a most excellant website, The Izannah Walker Chronicles, run by Dixie Redmond.
Together, Ralph and I studied all the Izannah faces we could find, and then he modified our first mold to reflect those changes.
He made new molds, and multiples of those molds. I could hardly wait until they were dry!
By pouring plaster into the clay that has set up in the mold, you create a stable surface on which you can resculpt and make changes.
You will need multiple molds of one sculpt. Once you have made your sculpt, you need at least two duplicates, plus your master.Some people like to sculpt in plastalina, but we use low fire white clay, without grog.
I don’t know what what effect any residue from the plastalina will have on the wax part of this process, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Be sure to label the molds and the master that made them. In the negative all the faces look alike, but if you get different faces confused, it will have a bad effect on the doll.
Izannah Walker used a press mold in making her dolls. The cloth was pressed into a mold, then taken out and covered with batting and another layer of cloth, and then pressed again. This information comes from the text of her U.S. patent, taken out in 1873.
I found out very very quickly that I couldn’t take the clay head, which we already had, cover it with a layer of cloth, and then put it back into the mold. It won’t fit!
An article in Cloth Doll Magazine suggest making the positive and negative parts of the mold from different materials, one of which would shrink more, and thus allow room for the head and the cloth.
That is one possibility, but this is what I did:I had a total of seven molds, all alike. I put one away, for the master, and left two in reserve.
I took two complete molds to the kitchen of the big house, the Victorian, and the other two went to the kitchen of the little house.
In the big house, I melted household wax in a double boiler. Be careful! Wax is not only really hot, but it is flamable.I put the molds in the kitchen sink, and filled the sink with water.
I know that sounds terrible, but soak in water is what the molds must do. They are ready when they stop releasing air bubbles.
Meanwhile, assemble some clamps (hardware store) and some kind of dam that you can fit across the bottom of the mold.
You are pouring each half of the mold separately. For this pouring, you are going to stop the wax about one half inch from the edge of the mold.
Resoak the molds. It will not take as long this time.
Meanwhile take enough aluminum foil to fold in half, and fit across the face of the mold.
Melt some more wax. Household wax is available at a large supermarket. Get several boxes.
This time, you will be putting the mold halves together, with the foil in between, right down the middle.
You must be absolutely certain that the two halves match exactly. This is another reason you labeled your molds carefully, so you do not mix them.
Take some more aluminum foil and make a little tray under the mold, incase you have not aligned the mold adequately.
Use the clamps to hold the mold halves together. Clamp firmly. You should have two clamps for each mold.
Now, pour the mold with hot wax. Go slowly at first, and watch to see that you do not have any leaks.
When you are finished with this process, you should have eight pieces of wax, four for each mold.
Two of them, for each mold, with be “short halves” and the other two, having been divided only by the sheet of foil, will be the whole size of the head, only cut in half.
