Welcome to Anderson Doll Wercks. I am Pat Dean and I am the company's owner. What started out as a childhood love of dolls has blossomed into a full time profession for me. After collecting dolls for many years, I began making and repairing dolls in the mid '70s. My membership in the Doll Artisan Guild, the International Doll Makers of America, Bell Ceramic Doll Makers, and the Doll Restoration Association keeps me in touch with current doll trends and techniques of doll restoration. My company offers many different styles and sizes of dolls for sale; from complete dolls with costumes to greenware and porcelain doll kits from my extensive collection of porcelain doll molds. As a Professional Certified Doll Doctor, I also offer doll restoration and doll appraisals for your heirlooms. My web site is in its infancy and will grow in time, so please feel free to email me with questions and comments. I love communicating with fellow doll makers and collectors.
Sincerely,
Pat Dean
Handicap Doesn't Deter Fauquier County Dollmaker
By DEBORAH SHEPHERD
Patricia Dean said for all the personalities she has already created in porcelain, there are 100 more in her head clamoring to come to life.
Visitors are greeted by a roomful of elegant Victorian ladies, cherubic babies and whimsical fairies, all from the hand of the Jeffersonton resident. With her curly auburn hair, flawless skin and sparkling eyes, Mrs. Dean looks like one of her own dolls.
Although she has collected dolls for years, she only began to make them about four years ago. Her husband encouraged her to try.
"It was a little terrifying," she laughed. "The first one doesn't look great, although her costume was nice because I was used to sewing. I keep her around as a keepsake."
Porcelain dolls begin life as "slip", or mud, in a mold. the resultant greenware is fired in a kiln, dried, sanded, painted and fired again. Mrs. Dean's workshop houses her kiln, bench-grinder and over 100 molds that took her fancy. Her shelves hold disassociated heads, hands, arms and legs in different stages of completion.
As in ceramics, working with porcelain takes a delicate touch. "You do get breakage," she admitted. "The second doll I did was a Shirley Temple doll. It was almost finished when the head flew off the bench-grinder."
Once the porcelain parts of the doll's anatomy have received their final shine, they are attached to bodies either of porcelain or of muslin. The soft muslin bodies are defined with a wire armature that Mrs. Dean inserts so the dolls can be posed.
"It probably takes two months to take a doll from start to finish. You can't force porcelain, because of the stages of drying it has to go through," said Mrs. Dean.
She wants to learn sculpting s the next phase in her growing business. Holding up one graceful porcelain arm, freshly fired and sanded, she said "I've learned, through the contours of the hands and so on, what you would and wouldn't do in sculpting."
The art of making porcelain dolls is exacting. The patience and skill required for the intricate sewing and beadwork translates to hours of painstaking work.
Amazingly Pat Dean does it all with only one hand.
Being born with a right arm that ends above the elbow is a subject she discusses with casual good humor. "It embarrasses other people more than it does me," she said. "I usually try to make a joke about it right away, to put people at their ease."
She has never used a prosthesis. "When I was young, they didn't give children prostheses. I think it was a good idea, because if you can do everything without one, why have one?"
The only thing she couldn't do without mechanical aid was play guitar. Her father rigged up a wire fixture to hold the pick. Otherwise, she's done craftwork like knitting, crocheting and sewing all her life, adapting other's methods to work for her.
"I was very fortunate that I was born with this," she said. "When you're older and you lose it, it's much harder. This has always been natural to me. I haven't found anything I can't do."
She studies books about period clothing to make sure her costumes are authentic. As a child, she learned from her aunt how to sew and has loved it ever since. She made her own clothes in school and, when her four children came along, made their clothes, too.
"Now that my children are grown and gone, these are my kids," she said, gesturing to the dolls that stand, sit in rockers or lie in bassinets all over her showroom. Along with their unique costumes, each doll is placed in an environment or holds some trinket that defines their personality.
The dolls are tagged with cards bearing the name of the company she formed two years ago, Living Dolls. Employed full-time at Fauquier Hospital, she has explored various marketing avenues. "All of my dolls so far have sold by word of mouth," she said.
Her prices range from $75 to $395. "I don't feel like I can ask the $900 to $1000 some dollmakers ask for their porcelain dolls," she said. "Maybe someday, when I make original, one-of-a-kind dolls."
She said she will accept down payments and monthly installments on her dolls. She believes that, "everybody should have something pretty."
Special orders come her way, too. A new mother ordered an infant boy big enough to wear one of her son's first outfits. "He'll outgrow it, but the doll never will," Mrs. Dean grinned.
Another described her grand-daughter's blue eyes and red hair and Mrs. Dean made a doll that looked just like her.
Mrs. Dean's favorites are the fairies, which range in size from the tiny teacup fairy to a 36-inch fairy. She likes using her imagination as she did as a child when she used to make fairy houses out of moss and twigs.
"You can make any doll a fairy," she said. She said she can get "lost" in her workshop, imagining each fairy's costume and habitat.
One teacup fairy lounges inside a champagne glass, yawning, surrounded by a froth of white fur.
Another stands in a carpet of moss, clad only in leaves, her hair wild about her elfish face.
' She has made several native American dolls, both children and adults. One of her Indian maidens, a statuesque 36 inches, wears a fringed robe of dark-brown leather. Her intricate bead collar, formed by Mrs. Dean on a special loom, features a colorful eagle. At her feet is a leather bag spilling over with beads.
"She's trading furs for wampum," Mrs. Dean explained.
Old toddler doll is named Terry, after Mrs. Dean's sister. Terry clutches a stuffed bunny and stands with her finger in her mouth and her nightdress hitched up to reveal a Band aid on one plump knee.
Tucked away in a glass case are the Barbie dolls Mrs. Dean has collected, interspersed with some small sleeping-baby dolls she has made and costumed as bunnies and bears.
Mrs. Dean is preparing for a doll show in Tyson's Corner later this year.
"It's a lot of fun and makes a lot of people happy," she concluded. "And I certainly enjoy doing it."