!#8# Porcelain Figurines - How Are These Beautiful Pieces Made?

!±8± Porcelain Figurines - How Are These Beautiful Pieces Made?

I love porcelain figurines! These graceful and precious hand-painted statuettes from modern manufacturers like Lladro, Goebel Hummel and Dresden, as well as the thousands of antique specimens still in circulation through many retail antique dealers and auction houses, are as popular today as they were decades and centuries ago. Indeed, there seems to be quite a resurgence of interest and fascination with porcelain figurines, as seen in the last decade, when they racked up over a billion dollars in sales. That's an amazing figure, when considered against our copious purchases of all the modern technological devices we thrive on. Perhaps it's the contrast of being able to settle our eyes on something beautiful, older, and more handcrafted than just the sleek black and silver boxes and modern kitchen appliances, as we look around our house.

Whatever it is, I thoroughly enjoy these grown up "dolls," and have many of them dotting different corners of my home.

There are porcelain figurines of gracefully posed ballerinas, dancing lovers, Victorian parlor scenes, and Japanese geisha girls. There are many of doe-eyed children on swing sets or holding umbrellas, many of animals, and many combining animals and children. Looking at any one of these porcelain works of art, with their amazing detail and delicacy, perfect in scale and representation of the human body, right down to the tiny fingers and toes, it's natural to wonder, "How do they make these things?" And whether it is a one-off statuette done by hand, or a production figurine repeated 40 or 50 times in one of the larger manufacturer's factories, the process is quite protracted and exacting.

First, a concept for a specific posed figure is drawn out in precise detail by an expert draftsman. Once the artists agree on all the details of the new shape, the drawn artwork is transformed into a masterful sculpture in clay, with beautiful precision in every detail. This sculpture will be used to form the mold from which numerous figurine castings can be produced. Every detail must be perfect, so it is not uncommon for several iterations of the core sculpture to be discarded before the final one is chosen.

It should be noted that, due to the delicacy of fine appendages - hands and fingers, feet and toes, ears, etc. that could be harder to cast and more easily broken during the molding process, the mold is often separated into several pieces, producing a torso and separate arms and legs that will be reassembled later.

The molds are made in two box halves of extra fine plaster, clasped around the sculpture, and let to dry over two or three days. Then the halves are separated, the sculpture is removed, and the empty mold is rejoined.

Now the actual liquified porcelain clay "slip can be poured into the mold, filling every nook, cranny and detail. The plaster will quickly absorb a thin layer of this slip, and within in as little as a half-hour, this thin layer will be staring to dry, allowing us to pour off the excess inner liquid. When the remaining thin layer is fully dry, after another long wait, the mold's two halves can be separated, and the "greenware" figurine gently tapped out. It is at this point, while still in green stage, that any other pieces of the figure can be carefully assembled.

Then it's time for first firing in the kiln, masterful painting with a variety of colored glazes, and more firing to produce the lustrous, hardened finished product.