By Jill Jackson

“If someone had walked up to me 10 years ago and told me I would end up making dolls,” begins Donn, the sole creator of Bishonen House dolls, “I would have been a bit surprised, but not shocked.

After attending art school, I worked for about 12 years doing puppetry and animation work for film and television. Although to some it may seem a bit of a stretch, puppet making, animation, and doll making are all very similar at the core—it’s all about creating the illusion of life.”

In late 2003 Donald Kinney, as he was then known, had just finished working on several animated show pilots but was beginning to feel restless with his career path. “I had always enjoyed working with my hands and working in traditional media,” recounts the artist, “so moving around polygons on a computer screen was leaving me a bit empty.”

Donn was seriously beginning to consider a career change but in the summer of 2004, while walking around the art show at Otakon (a large anime convention held every year in Baltimore, Md.), he encountered his first Asian ball-jointed doll. “One of the exhibitors had a Volks Dollfie on display at her table,” he recalls. “I immediately was entranced. I had never seen anything like it; the way the doll was jointed and completely poseable, and the customization features.” The first thing that went through Donn’s mind was, “I wish I could get something like that, except with a slightly more mature sculpt.”

When he returned home, Donn began to research Asian ball-jointed dolls. “I couldn’t find anything that suited the characters I wanted to create, so I began sculpting and experimenting with different materials. I had worked with silicones and resins back in my puppet-building days,” he says, “but casting resin for puppet parts and casting resin doll parts that had to be perfectly blemish-free was completely different. I had never used a pressure caster before, and for a while I was actually a bit afraid of the device, but after a while I got the hang of it.”

It took nearly a year of experimentation to find a high-quality resin with the slight translucence, resistance to yellowing, and perfect matte surface on the parts just as they came out of the mold. “Smooth and shiny is easy,” says Donn, “porcelain matte is not.” 

Eventually, with molding techniques perfected, Donn was ready to launch his new company, Bishonen House, a name derived from the Japanese word bishounen, which roughly translates into “pretty boy.” For easier Internet name recognition, he spells his name “Donn,” rather than “Don,” and he initially set out to make only male dolls.  

Donn’s first doll was released in 2005. The artist admits his first year in business as a doll maker was slow, “but I still sold enough dolls to get by,” he says, “I was hungry, but I was happy.” During his second year business picked up, and before he knew it the doll novice was completely booked with commissions. During his free time between commissions Donn began to work on his second doll.

“My first doll was sculpted in Chavant clay, but my second sculpt I did in Super Sculpey firm,” continues Donn. “The gray color made flaws and mistakes much more visible so they could be corrected before making final molds. I wanted my second doll to have a more realistic and less stylized look.” To obtain this degree of realism, Donn sculpted the doll from the skeleton outward, building layers of clay like muscle and skin. The dolls’ limbs were sculpted in one piece, and following this a mold was made from the one-piece limb. A resin cast was then made from the mold, which was then cut apart and the joints sculpted.

“I learned a lot from making my first doll,” says Donn, “and I put all of that, and then some, into my newest sculpt. Aside from being very poseable with locking legs in both standing and kneeling positions and double-jointed elbows, he has a magnetic faceplate system that allows easy removal of his face to make changing the eyes easier, and better ability to change his facial expressions.”
Donn is a one-man show, making his dolls completely by himself, from first sculpting to molding to casting and finishing. This allows him to release new dolls in limited editions. “Selling dolls in very small limited editions gives me more time between releases to come up with new dolls and to complete commissions for one-of-a-kind dolls, which I really enjoy making,” says Donn. 

While the doll bodies are completely made by Donn, their costumes are not. Dreux Priore, whom Donn has known for more than 10 years, designs and fabricates (as he prefers to call the actual making of the costumes) all of the doll clothing for Bishonen House. 

These days, Donn is booked with commissions and has recently broadened his scope of doll-related items, referring to his latest projects as “doll imagery.” He creates his own “scaled-down” sets and props for his dolls. He has begun taking his own photographs, used for this article, and selling framed photos of his dolls as art pieces. A book on doll art is also under consideration. “The most wonderful and frightening thing about being an artist is not having to follow a set path,” says Donn. “There are dozens of different directions I can go with making dolls, and I enjoy having all those options.”
Donn reveals plans to release several new dolls for the spring and fall of 2008, possibly adding the first female.

“I’ve been making dolls now for a little over three years, and I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he says. “Doll making takes nearly everything I enjoy doing and combines it into one. Aside from that, it’s a continually evolving art form that has nearly limitless possibilities. I find that very exciting!”

To find out more about Bishonen House dolls, visit www.bishonenhouse.com.

Buy This Issue: December 2007