Dolls by Jerri®

Jerri is best known for her sweet and innocent children dolls in all mediums. They depict the true essence of 

With each doll, DOLLS BY JERRI lives up to it’s slogan "The Symbol of Excellence in American Doll Making".

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CREATING   A

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JERRI   DOLL 

PORCELAINS

  VINYL

Creating and producing a porcelain doll is both labor intensive and time consuming.  At Dolls by Jerri we still use many of the methods followed by old world European doll makers.  This means, of course, that our dolls are carefully detailed and result in a more realistic doll that many other manufacturer's dolls.  It also results in the high quality that we insist upon for each of our dolls.        The first step is sculpting the doll's head and body parts.   Jerri works with clay, molding and sculpting a model until she realizes exactly the expression and proportions desired.  This model is then given to the mold maker who carefully prepares the plaster molds.  When the molds have dried, liquid porcelain is cast to form the head, body, arms and legs.  When this porcelain slip solidifies around the edges, it is drained, which leaves a shell that is very gently removed from the molds.  At this stage, porcelain is called "greenware" and is extremely fragile.

The greenware is allowed to dry thoroughly, then it is cleaned and each doll's eye openings are carved by hand, along with any mouth openings as required.   The greenware is then fired in a kiln to a temperature of approximately 2250 degrees.  After the initial firing, the rough porcelain is referred to as "bisque" which is then hand-sanded until the very smooth finish associated with fine porcelain is attained.

Next the head and parts are "china painted."   Porcelain is not porous and paint does not soak into it.  Therefore, to assure color permanence, the porcelain is fired in a kiln to a temperature of approximately 1300 degrees.  Since a doll's head is painted with several colors, it must be fired each time there is a color overlap.  It is not unusual for a doll's head to be fired as many as five or six times.

The doll is now ready to have its eyes inserted and securely plastered to the inside of the head.  Then the doll is carefully assembled, its parts strung together and held with a very strong, tough elastic cord.  The doll is now ready to be dressed and to have its wig attached and styled.

Upon completion, the doll is inspected for the final time, attractively boxed and shipped to you.  

For many years, Dolls by Jerri was only known for porcelain.  In 1990 after much consideration   of their collectors, they agreed to produce vinyl dolls.  This allowed the collector to have a Jerri doll at a much lower price.  Also, if children were around, there was no danger of breakage. 

Vinyl molds are more costly to produce than porcelain molds.  They are a tremendous investment.  The difference comes with the production.  Vinyl can be produced rapidly, with multiple molds, while porcelain is total hand work, meticulous, and extremely time consuming.

Once the vinyl is produced, the hand painting procedure starts.  First, the mouths are meticulously painted, then the eye lashes, followed by the eye brows.   This is a slow process and could be sprayed with a mask, but we feel that individual attention to detail is extremely important in an Artist doll.

The final painting step is air brushing of the eye shadow and last, the cheek blush.  Next, eyes are inserted and  lashes attached.                                          

   Lastly,  the head is mounted on the cloth body which has been stuffed with fibre and a beanie "butt" pad for weight.  The vinyl arms and legs were previously attached to the cloth body.