And on to Granny

Like I said in the first posting, I love to make porcelain dolls. I have made several of them and have several more in varous stages of being completed. I have my own kiln. I don't have a lot of the molds, so I buy most of my greenware on the internet (mostly ebay). I have sold some dolls and would love to teach classes.

The doll I am working on now is a granny doll. My sister-in-law wants granny for Christmas - a couple of years of ago, I gave her granpa. I thought I would take pictures of the stages of granny coming to life. Here, is what granny looks like when she is almost ready to go in the kiln for the first firing - this is the hot fire. The kiln gets to almost 3000 degrees with this firing and takes about 8 hours. Anyway, I still have to clean the greenware for about 3-4 more hours before she goes into the kiln. You have to make sure that the porcelain is clean and smooth and any details that you want are there. Once the porcelain is fired, you can't change it. After the hot fire, the porcelain gets painted and fired again. The china paint firings only get to about 1800 degrees and takes about 4 hours. Granny will have 2-3 china paint firings.

At this point, I have already spent about ten hours cleaning Granny and she is almost ready. So keep checking in to see how Granny is coming along. Granny is one of my favorite dolls as she looks exactly like I remember my great grandmother.