My perfect daughter 🫶

Oh and shoutout to whoever at the neokyo warehouse packaged this for me because god damn he was SECURE. Box got dinged up during 2 months of sea mail but doll was perfectly in tact 👌.

What do you want to know?.

Links :-).2010 blog post : High quality PDF of memorial exhibition flyer:.

Dolls in a fine arts context has been one of my biggest research areas for school this year, because I'm making a body of work involving my own handmade dolls! Having this doll to be able to appreciate in person is really inspiring and an amazing opportunity.

My biggest questions regarding all this are how did this mercari user get so many of Norma Araki's dolls, why are they selling them on mercari of all places. And why now! Really random I'm not sure I'm gonna get answers because sometimes strange things just happen.

Storage efforts. His clothes are very yellowed and stained, his hair was extremely tangled and dirty, he had rust stains on his wrists and neck from the elastic hooks, and there are numerous plaster chips and cracks.

He's tension strung like any other BJD, though his head is all one piece. He's strung very loosely but I'm nervous to tighten it because the plaster is already showing signs of wear at the joints. Speaking of, this doll was kind of in awful shape which I assume is due to poor -.

I believe his hair is human! And it's glued to his head, not a wig, which makes sense because Araki's work was for a fine arts context and wasn't necessarily intended to be treated like a doll in the traditional sense.

He's actually really lightweight for his size (73cm), I think the primary material is actually plaster which came as a surprise to me because I thought he would be some kind of bisqueware. The colouring is really beautiful and lively, there's so much of her hand in it.

As for my doll! I called him Angelo before I even made the purchase because I thought it fit him so well. I didn't see the doll's body in the listing pictures so I didn't know he's actually sculpted with female anatomy, he's still Angelo to me because that's how I first saw him.

these photos came up when I googled her name in Japanese, but the links were inaccessible to me. I'm sure there is much more information about Norma Araki's work out there if you're more proficient at bilingual internet researching. There were many broken links in my searches

I also found this 2010 blog post from someone who went to see one of her shows. This also seems to be a clunky translation.(Link at end of thread)

Further research lead me to this flyer advertising an exhibition of her doll works in memorial after she passed away. Please note that this translation is probably very clunky. (High quality version linked at end of thread)

And the most recent to sell (I WANTED HER SO BAD I REALLY HOPE WHOEVER BOUGHT HER GIVES HER A GOOD HOME)

Another

Another from the same seller

The listing said that it was a doll created by Norma Araki. The seller had sold one of this artist's dolls before this and would sell 3 more after (one just last week). This was the first doll sold

I stumbled upon this doll on mercari Japan and immediately fell in love with his sweet face. I knew I would hate myself for not buying him so I did, since he was under 200 AUD before fees and postage which is shocking considering the context. These are some of the listing photos.

Compilation of information Ive found on the late doll artist Norma Araki! 🧵

Also after cleaning I'm fairly sure his hair is human. Which freaked my mum out a little bit but I think it's really interesting 😭.

Neeever shutting up about this doll