Thursday - June 16, 2005
Weird doll day.
Yesterday, after a long trip out of town to one of our favorite clients, we decided to have lunch in Market!Market!. Kayen felt she had to put horse blinders on all of us because we kept straying into one purveyor of kitsch after another. For some reason, we kept getting attracted to un-doll dolls. My first purchase was a black stuffed thing, with two handstitched x's for eyes. Derrick scored a Mr. Bean teddy bear. Joey got a cat complete with tiny fish on nylon. Then I bought Squish for Lucien. There's Luc and Squish hamming it up for the camera. Squish has little patches of Lucien drool all over his sewn-shut mouth.
"Dolls have always been a part of human culture, in many forms and in many places. Ancient cultures often used dolls in sacrifices and rituals designed to ensure the fertility of crops or even protection from illness or war, many cultures, both ancient and modern, regard certain dolls as the repository or temporary resting place of spiritual presence."
While the commercial production of kokeshi is fairly recent, the form of the kokeshi doll is ancient. It is a very simple form, minimal and abstract. The consensus has always been though, the more abstract the doll, the more complex the emotion that attaches to them; and as everyone has experienced, the more self-conscious, precious and expensive the doll, the less fun they are to play with. The kokeshi doll, with its simplified curves and understated form, looks as if bound, wrapped or confined, emotions not altogether unfamiliar to those of one's human self."
- J.Brems