Antique or Reproduction Dolls – What’s the Difference?
Doll collector expert tips to identifying the difference between antique bisque or China head dolls versus reproduction porcelain dolls. Antique China dolls don’t have fine crazing lines in the glaze that many reproduction dolls have and the body is of lesser quality, softer pottery in a reproduction.
The quality of a porcelain body is more like fine China in an antique dolls. The lesser quality reproduction dolls often are made of a softer pottery like material. Antique China head dolls often have small black specks embedded in the glaze, it is dust that settled on them during the firing process and is known, called “peppering”.
Antique doll face paint is applied with a quick consistent flow of color, reproduction dolls are usually painted in a less polished and more hesitant way. If a doll head mark is Jane Smith 1972 the mark itself indicates the doll was made by Jane Smith in 1972, it is obviously not an antique head doll.
This doesn’t distinguish antique from reproduction, but the earlier China heads are usually pressed into the mold, later antique China heads were poured into the mold and are smoother inside. In the 1980s to 1990s Hartfeldt made reproduction China head dolls marked Hartfeldt.
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