Porcelain Dolls

This section brings together what is known about the technique and creation process of Porcelanas Inglés dolls — not the pieces in the Personal Collection itself, but how they were made. It will keep expanding as more technical details are documented with reliable sources.

Evolution of the articulated body

The construction of the dolls evolved over the years, in three stages documented by Antonio Ten Ros: first, a single-piece porcelain body, with the legs hidden under the dress like a column; then, a full body with only the arms movable (via an internal elastic-band system); and finally the classic articulated doll —head, arms and legs separate, all in porcelain— following the pattern of the Franco-German tradition (Jumeau, Bru, Armand Marseille) that Josefina Inglés encountered in Paris.

Moulds

When Ramón Inglés left the Nalda factory (Almàssera) in 1970 to found his own brand in Bétera, Víctor de Nalda gave him several old moulds of house figures —by sculptors such as Vicente Beltrán, José Doménech and Fulgencio García. Some pieces signed by Inglés, especially among the rarest, are cast from these inherited moulds rather than his own design.

Craft process

The pieces were hand-modelled. According to Ten Ros's documentation, a particularly elaborate piece could require more than six months of work, from initial modelling to final assembly — the time varied greatly depending on the piece's complexity and its costume, the latter made to measure.

The Segorbe expansion

With production moving to the Segorbe factory in the early 1980s, the dolls' faces became more elaborate: independent eyes were introduced, and in some pieces even a tilting eye mechanism.

More context on this period in the story of the factories.

Sources

• Antonio Ten Ros, El escultor Ramón Inglés Capella y su obra en porcelana, Universitat de València.