Tidings of Comfort & Joy - Ashton-Drake Holiday 2021

While all of our dolls are made up of sugar, spice and everything nice, there is variation in the materials we use to create them. With each doll, we evaluate a number of materials to determine which one would best showcase the features and the personality of each individual doll. Among the materials we work with are silicone, vinyl, resin and porcelain. Each of these materials has unique benefits.

For example, consider “Ava,” created by Master Doll Artist Linda Murray. Ava is a beautiful doll, with delicate hand-painted features, long baby lashes and incredible details including her sweetly dimpled hands. You’ll also notice that her legs even have a realistic swing and movement to them when you pick her up for a cuddle. The reason Ava looks and responds the way she does is because we handcrafted her using our proprietary TrueTouchTM silicone. Silicone is very pliable and soft, and it really captured the realism and emotional impact of Linda Murray’s original sculpt.

Ava Baby Doll

For other dolls, vinyl is the best choice. Tasha Edenholm’s “Little Peanut” is a tiny, lifelike treasure. You’ll immediately notice her baby smooth skin and sweet complexion. We can achieve this by using our proprietary RealTouch® vinyl, a firmer material than silicone. Like silicone, vinyl captures fine details in the artist’s original sculpt, but it also enables us to incorporate movement, such as a gentle breathing motion. Some of our vinyl dolls even respond to your touch by curling their fingers around yours in an amazingly realistic way.

Little Peanut Baby Doll

For poseable dolls, we tend to use either porcelain or resin. These materials allow for precise and realistic accuracy in our recreations. Our “Mother Teresa Canonization” sculpture is a perfect example. This memorable piece is cast in artist’s resin and is carefully hand-painted to capture every lifelike detail, from her welcoming smile down to the fine lines on her hands and feet. On the other hand, the cool smoothness of porcelain really highlights the gorgeous complexion and high cheekbones of Master Doll Artist Renata Jansen’s “Midnight Stargazer.”

Mother Teresa Canonization Sculpture

It is incredible how every detail of every single Ashton-Drake Galleries doll is so carefully considered, but the end goal is always the same: to create a doll that evokes emotion.

Want to learn more about how we make our dolls? Comment below with any questions you might have, or send us an email. We love hearing from you!