Shoes for Cinderella. Hand-carved, cast in bronze and plated with 24k yellow gold. I love to dress my porcelain dolls in precious and semi-precious metals. Porcelain is such a beautiful and precious material in its own right, that, it needs to be accompanied by something equally worthy of its elegance.
Metal and porcelain seem different, but are in fact quite similar, and in my opinion, belong together. They are both geological minerals, and both have to undergo high temperature processes to catalyze into final form: Porcelain is fired at high temp, while metal is cast at high temp. Both shrink during firing and casting. Metal clothes are hard and rigid, but porcelain doll bodies are even harder and more rigid than the metal clothes they wear. But my favourite characteristic they share besides their beauty, is their resistance to entropy, due to their molecular structures. In other words, they don’t degrade from time and sunlight as fast as other materials, such as textiles and plastics. The oldest ceramics in the world are 29,000 BC year old figurines!
Humans have been making ceramic dolls since the Paleolithic!! Ceramics and metal smithing are ancient processes, developed over thousands of years of human civilization! Working with porcelain and metals like bronze, silver and gold makes me feel primarily connected to the very beginning of our civilization. These may be just little doll shoes, but their origin goes back to the Bronze Age, thousands of years ago. And that moves me so much!