"X" Marks the Spot
The eXciting, eXacting work from Xenis.
By Pam North
Three talented and enterprising women — Marlene Xenis (the last name
is pronounced "ex-eenis") and her two daughters, Tania Xenis and Jesse
Geeraert — run skill and band saws, drill presses, belt sanders, and
dremels to create the wooden dolls from the Xenis Collection. Above the noise
of power machinery and amid piles of sawdust and wood, they work in their
studio in Aldergrove, British Columbia, on a five-acre parcel a few miles
outside of Vancouver, creating their dolls.
In 1993, Marlene, who has a background in art, planted the seeds of what is
now a vibrant and growing enterprise when she created dolls with Styrofoam
heads, felt features, and crude wooden bodies to sell at craft shows for
supplemental income. She subsequently tucked small music boxes inside the
dolls' bodies. Then Tania took the doll concept a giant step forward by
introducing more elaborate bodies and wooden heads whose faces came to life
with her exceptional painting. What had begun as a tiny sideline for Marlene
began to evolve into a real business and their home into a small factory.
In the early years, Marlene made room on her kitchen counter for a drill
press. She removed the kitchen implements from the shelves to hold finished
dolls, and a sewing machine was squeezed into a space in a corner. A long
worktable stood smack in the middle of the living room, providing the perfect
place for the kids to cut fabric or trim or iron while watching TV. Thanks to
their fine work and the accompanying success, the operation outgrew that
house, and they moved. Today the manufacturing takes place in a proper
studio, and Marlene lives above the studio in roomy private quarters. The
three women can no longer do everything themselves, so they've added a few
talented employees.
The Xenis dolls have evolved, too, from earlier simple-construction jester
dolls to the jointed hobos and clowns of the mid-1990s to the more
sophisticated, tall, and slender articulated divas introduced in 1998. The
earlier dolls had heads that basically were wood balls; their main charm was
the three-dimensional look of their expressions, achieved by innovative
painting techniques. The round heads now are being phased out, replaced by
more sculpted ones with more detail. Carving has been added to their elegant
Divas, giving real dimension to their appearance. But what hasn't changed is
their medium — wood.
"To make something that will be a timeless treasure to be
passed down from one generation to another is very fulfilling and
satisfying."
While wood has become an uncommon material for dolls, wood grows abundantly
in the native forests surrounding them in British Columbia. The women like
western maple, whose natural appearance suggests the warm glow of skin, so
they most often use the wood of this hardy tree indigenous to their area.
They occasionally use other woods, too, such as black walnut or mahogany, to
achieve an ethnic look for a doll.
"I like to design dolls that create an illusion, tell a story or allow the
person seeing them to use his imagination to create a story," Marlene says.
"To make something that will be a timeless treasure to be passed down from one
generation to another is very fulfilling and satisfying." Small 18-note
Swiss-movement music boxes traditionally have been a primary element in Xenis
dolls, as Marlene loves the emotional appeal music adds to the total
experience of owning a doll. But due to the dwindling availability of the
music boxes, she figures they will only be part of a few selected dolls in the
future.
So far, the culmination of their years of work are the exquisite
Pinocchio and Geppetto sets. A masterpiece, museum-quality
edition (limited to three each) of a 36-inch Geppetto and 24-inch
Pinocchio is almost sold out, but an edition of 350 pieces each of
24-inch Geppetto and a 16-inch Pinocchio are still
available. The quality is phenomenal, and the pieces are like nothing else in
the doll world.
They're planning follow-up characters including the Blue Fairy and
a different version of Pinocchio with donkey ears and tail. They
also plan to introduce a fairy tale Princess Diva line with
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Snow
White, and the Little Mermaid in editions of 40 to 90 each.
Come spring 2006, they will present their International Divas, 24-inch dolls
in four designs, offered in limited editions of 10 each.
They're limited in how many pieces they can offer as their production
process is both labor intensive and exacting. They begin by drawing detailed
sketches of the style and costuming of each doll. Then their talented staff
artist, Ross Adams, who also does much of the painting, makes the initial clay
sculpts of the head, body, and limbs. His clay sculpts are then modified by
Tania, so that the sculpts can be reproduced in resin. After the resin
sculpts are made, Tania checks them before completed casts are mounted between
blocks. Then, from the casts, Tania makes rough copies, four at a time, in a
manually run carving machine, and the rough copies are perfected until they
are finished pieces. Younger daughter Jesse handles the administrative
aspects of the family enterprise, including much of the marketing, but she
also can carve and sand when the need arises.
Body construction is extremely challenging, and for that, they often turn
to Tania for her most ingenious solutions. For the difficult and intricate
13-piece articulation of 36-inch Geppetto, for example, Tania used
her car jack to hold the strong springs apart, an endeavor that evoked a bit
of amusement but even more respect for her ingenuity. Costuming is Marlene's
domain, and she imaginatively uses fabrics and trims. Wigs are of human hair
specifically styled to each doll. Props and accessories, important elements
as well, are mostly handmade in the studio and are inspired by objects as off
the wall as a banana stand, the genesis of what became a holder for Little
Miss Muffet's spider.
Meanwhile, the Xenis women take justifiable pride in creating dolls of
exceptional quality and innovation as a family and look to their future
artistic achievements with excitement.
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