Recently, I came across a reader kindly criticizing Doll Crafter & Costuming writing too many articles about Fairy dollmaking. It struck me as being true. Fairies are popular with artists and collectors.
There are a lot of dollmakers creating fairies, myself included. My own evolution has swung the gamut from primitive dolls to fairies. My reason is simply this: people pay more for fairies than they do for prim dolls. I feel I put just as much work into either kind too. But I have bills just like everyone else. So I need to follow the buying market. Also, it is more economical for me to use the same amount of supplies towards a doll that will sell at a higher price.
Let's compare fairy dolls and primitive dolls on Ebay. Today, I counted how many auctions started today, Saturday, in the Fairies, Elves, Dwarves category on Ebay. Are you ready? 105 auctions were listed today. That's a lot of fairies, elves and dwarves. But let's be honest, most of the auctions were for fairies. I think I saw one ogre and few dragons. I also noticed sellers taking advantage of the category by selling items to go with those fairy dolls, like wings, chairs and other prop pieces. Now let's take a look at the Primitive dolls on Ebay. 168 auctions started today. That's a lot of prim dolls (I noticed that there were multiple dolls listed by an artist and a lot of patterns). The difference between the two categories, as far as prices go, is that on average fairy doll auctions prices start off around $49.99 to $149.99 while the prim dolls tend to start out at $9.99 to $19.99. What does this mean to you as a fairy or prim dollmaker? To me, it says quite a few things. Among them would be that fairy dolls are more appreciated than prim dolls by collectors and fairy artists use clay while prim artists use cloth (cloth versus clay will be for another discussion at a later time). Why is this so? What do you think?
Why are collectors so enamored with those ephemeral little creatures? As a dollmaker, what is your opinion? Do you have a favorite type of doll to create? Is it fairies? Are you making fairies to pay the bills? If you do love fairies, share with us what it is that fascinates you. If you despise the little winged brats, tell us why.
