Victorian Belsnickel - Part 1

Taped wire armature with dowels.

Once again I have to apologize for the picture placement.  It seems that when I have a long post, the blogging platform starts giving me trouble for where I want to place the pictures.  It will not let me place the pictures where I want to place them.  Keep scrolling down to see the other two pictures.

I have started a new doll, a Victorian Belsnickel.  In my last blog post I wrote about some of the folklore of the Belsnickel.  I have done a little more reading since them and found a little interesting factoid that was worth mentioning.  I had mentioned that the Belsnickel was known to carry a bunch of Witch Hazel sticks used for smacking naughty children.  From further reading, I found that the Belsnickel was also said to carry Birch sticks.  Probably, both of these descriptions are right, but it depends upon which time period and country being referenced.  Witch Hazel is a new world plant that was introduced into Europe after settlers came to this country.  The settlers adopted its medicinal uses from the Native Americans.  Prior to the introduction of this plant, the Belsnickel was said to have carried Birch branches.  This seems reasonable because Germanic folklore has long had an association with the Birch tree.  The Berkana rune meant Birch and had numerous pronunciations and spellings in Old Norwegian, Old Icelandic, and Anglo Saxon languages.  The rune carries the symbolism of birth, growth (maturity), and rebirth.  I could see both of these plants having symbolic uses within the more obvious use of swatting naughty children.  Children are frequently sick, so hitting them with a stick that represented healing could be a symbolic healing.  Hitting with a stick that represented growth and maturity could be a symbolic imparting of those qualities.  Anyway, it is just one of those little interesting things that come up when I start poking around on the internet.

Torso padded with cotton batting strips.

Now, onto making the doll. 

There are a lot of decisions to be made when making a doll, and I blogged about them fairly extensively when making my last doll.  (See Father Christmas doll posts made in December 2015 for that information.)  I won't rehash the whole thing here, but will write about them as I make the decisions on this doll.  There are many ways to make a doll.  That is not that one way is necessarily better than another.  How you make a doll depends on what you want for a particular doll.

Once I decided that the subject of the doll was to be a Victorian Belsnickel, I was on to the decision how the doll would be posed and how it would stand.  I wanted the doll to be self standing rather than have an external stand and be able to pose the arms.  This means that the doll will have to have some internal armature that will support the weight of the doll and allow it to stand on its own.  In this case I mean that it will stand without having to lean up against something.  The support structure will be internal so that it won't be visible when viewing the doll. 

Final layer of fiberfill and batting.

I made a wire armature using galvanized steel wire.  The armature is very basic:  arms, hips, spine and legs.  The head will be constructed separately.  The shoulders will be created by bending the arms downwards.  It is easier to work with the doll at this point with the arms out straight.  Once the armature wire was bent into shape it was covered with masking tape. I wired and taped half inch diameter wooden dowels into the legs and hips of the armature.  It is important to note that the dowels have to be at least a half inch in diameter.  Thinner dowels can sometimes break under the strain of working the armature into position.  Some breaks will require extensive rebuilding to fix the doll.

The dowels extend beyond the length of the bottom of the foot.  The dowels will extend through the boots and into a wooden stand.  Holes will be drilled into the stand.  I will use hot glue in the holes and insert the dowels into the holes.  The doll will be standing then without a visible support. But that comes much later in the process.  For right now, the main idea is to get the dowels attached to the armature.

After the armature was covered with masking tape, I wrapped the figure in cotton batting to pad the armature.  I have to digress for a moment to address a question.  I am sure that some people are wondering why in the world I used small pieces of batting to wrap the doll.  It would be much quicker to wrap the figure lengthwise with long rectangular pieces of batting.  Yes it would.  But, my first answer to that question is Scraps.  I had some narrow pieces of batting that I wanted to use up.  Making dolls can quickly become a very expensive proposition.  If I can find a way to use up a scrap of fabric in a segment of the doll that will not be seen, I count that as a win.  A second reason for using narrow pieces is that they can be used to shape smaller areas of the doll without adding bulk where you don't want it.  So for this section where I am adding bulk and shaping, the scraps work well.  The photos show that I was able to add more padding to the abdomen, hips and rear end without having to have as much bulk in the back and upper torso.  This is just the first layer of batting.  The entire armature will be covered with more layers.   One of the photos above shows the shaped torso of the doll and limbs that have not yet had additional layers added.  I sewed these strips with thread to hold then in place.  Some people use hot glue.  That works also, but I like to sew mine. 

Once the body has more or less the shape I want it to have, I move onto the next layer for the final covering of the body and for the arms and legs.  This layer is constructed from rectangles of batting over some polyester fiberfill.  The rectangles are placed on the body fiberfill side down and sewn into place.  I keep adding layers as needed until the arms and legs look as if they belong with that body.  As this body will eventually be covered with pants and a long heavy robe, I did not feel the need to do more sculpting of the arm and leg muscles.  Once the body is covered with as much batting as necessary, the entire body is covered with a layer of muslin for skin.  I usually use a brown muslin to represent a skin color, but in this case, I had some white scraps, so I covered the body with white cotton quilt backing.  None of this will be seen when the doll is complete.  I plan to sculpt the face and hands from bake in the oven clay, so the fabric choice is not an issue there.

I had a picture of the body covered with the cotton fabric, but I moved the photo from one file to another and now I cannot find it.  I will post a picture of it on the next blog post if I can figure out what I did with it.  If not, I will take a new photo.  Check back Thursday for the next blog post.