Carmel woman to display porcelain dolls at show

Step into Joyce Smith’s doll room in Carmel, where a happy muddle of porcelain arms, legs and torsos housed in a small box awaits assembly. Tools, fabric, supplies, books and other doll-making paraphernalia are organized and handy. A collection of beautifully dressed dolls Smith made, from tiny to large, stare serenely from open shelves. On one shelf is a copy of “Hitty” by Rachel Field, a story of the adventures of an old-fashioned wooden doll who gets lost. The book was one of Smith’s childhood favorites.

On another shelf, the perfect height for a little girl, are dolls Smith keeps there for her granddaughter to play with. The shelf includes a copy “A Doll From Bucks Harbor,” written by Sandra Campbell.

Smith, who works as an administrative assistant at Eastern Maine Medical Center, will be among the exhibitors at the Maine-ly Dolls Club annual show 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, May 7, at the Bangor Elks Club, 108 Odlin Road. Smith’s specialty is porcelain dolls, which she makes “from scratch” and bakes in a kiln in her doll room. Her smallest dolls measure 11/2 inches tall.

“You get used to working with tweezers,” she said of the hand-painted wee dolls she creates. “The smaller they are, the more exact you have to be.” Each doll wears a postage-stamp-size dress put together with glue and a few nearly invisible stitches. Smith has made porcelain dolls as large as 28 inches tall, but has given up that aspect of doll making. She finds them heavy to work with. “I like dolls that a child can play with. A child can’t learn to love dolls if they can’t be touched,” she said.

A doll collector since childhood, Smith enjoys all aspects of making porcelain dolls, from pouring the liquid clay into molds to inventing ways to put hair on their bald heads. She also loves inventing tools to aid her in doll making – such as a tiny fork used to make teensy rosettes for decorating Lilliputian-size doll clothing. She also has an eye for things around the house that might serve as material for doll clothes. At the moment, she has her eye on a new pair of soft leather golf gloves belonging to her husband. “Those would make good shoe leather for dolls,” she joked.

Smith said she loves coming up with new ideas for dolls and prefers to make ones that are one-of-a-kind.

She became a member of the Maine-ly Dolls Club in 1989. “I never met a doll I didn’t like,” she said. As a member of the doll club, she enjoys having access to an array of research material about dolls, getting the club’s Doll News magazine and attending national conventions. “It’s like being in Neverland at the conventions,” she said. “You meet the nicest people.” She also helps maintain a doll exhibit at the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor. The next doll exhibit theme at the museum will be June brides, she said.

When Smith was a child, her grandmother made clothes for her dolls, including such details as buttonholes and pockets. Smith, too, likes the fine details of doll making.

At the doll show, Smith will display and-or sell doll patterns, miniatures, cloth dolls and porcelain dollhouse dolls. She will show molded felt dolls she has made.

Copies of Sandra Campbell’s book, “A Doll From Bucks Harbor,” will be on sale at the doll show. It also is available by calling 255-3783.

Snippets

. In last week’s column I said that an exhibit catalog is available for the Eli Leon African-American quilt exhibit, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” showing at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, and that the cost of the catalog is $5. It’s not a catalog, it’s a report, and the cost is $2.50. Visit www.mocfa.org for more information.

. The Bangor Area Sewing Guild will offer a What You Can Do with a Straight Stitch class at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 13, at the Hampden Municipal Building. The cost is $10 for guild members, $15 for others. To register or to obtain more information, call 941-8815, or 862-4367.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@

bangordailynews.net.