Fast Making #5 & #6 - Clay Teddy + Ceramic Doll Repair

I’m grouping these two together because they’re both dealing with air dry clay in different ways.

First, the less interesting one—the woman I live with has a big collection of ceramic dolls, and she asked if I could fixed a beheaded one…

For a ceramic piece broken like this, my and most other potters’ first thought is kintsugi.

But I’m not interested in mending & repairing things much, so I didn’t want to invest in the proper supplies to do a kintsugi repair. For all these fast making projects, they cost basically nothing to make, and the way I see it that’s how it should be; the maximum amount of learning/testing new materials while using the least amount of resources, using what’s already available to you.

Most ceramic repair, including kintsugi, involves simply gluing each piece back together, filling cracks with putty, then scratching off imperfections.

Since this was only broken into two pieces, and it’s not for eating on, there’s no reason it can’t be done with hot glue and air dry clay.

I filled the head and neck with hot glue they’re not hollow and easier to put together. The head kept falling off before I did that, even when the glue was dry,

I shaved off any leftover glue with a box cutter. Then, I shoved air dry clay into the cracks, using water to remove in from the surface and keeping it in the cracks.

Since this is an object meant to be looked at not too closely on a shelf, I don’t feel a need to paint over it. I could try to match color of the skin & hair then mod podge over it but something about that makes it feel cheap to me. I’d rather just show it as it is. As well, this way, I can change my mind and tap off the head and repair it differently if I wanted to.

With all the leftover clay, I cut out shapes of a teddy bear pattern (from project one, bought from Denmark months ago) just like I would for a normal sewing pattern.

Then I just put each part together, smushing them together rather than sewing. Air dry clay is much more prone to cracking than regular clay, so I realized I would have to sculpt on the seams rather than leaving each part partially unsmushed together.

I think it would be an interesting idea in the future to take a pattern, cut each part, leave holes in the edges and then sew it together post-firing. I think that will be my first project after this fast making brief.

Then all the pieces were attached to the body.

I’d really like to paint it, but this is meant to count for “one material only” prompt, which specifies “no glue”—I think paint would disqualify it as well.

I think that it’s just raw clay makes it interesting to look at anyways. I love ceramic art that looks like different objects; there’s an artist named Brett Kern on Instagram who makes clay dinosaur balloons, and I’ve seen many iterations of clay pillows and fleshy objects.

I also think most of it’s a bit gimmicky, though.