Duffy

Duffy is down on his luck... times are hard, you know. He's making a living selling snake oil, whiskey, and whatever else he can convince someone to buy. He's even sold his only suit of clothes... and had to make himself a new suit out of old newspapers.

This doll was made as a gift for my son's 29th birthday. I let this one "evolve" and sort of create himself. I only started out with a few main ideas... that it had to be about 12 inches tall, and intended to hang on a wall... and it had to be male (a first for me).

I had a stack of old newspaper, circa 1900 and older, that my grandmother had saved, and was inspired to somehow incorporate that. It is so old and brittle that the only way was to use lots of gel medium and collage it to brown craft paper.

I first had to design his suit, so created a craft paper pattern, sewn on the machine, with seams on the outside. Decided I liked that look... so the final newspaper suit has the same exterior seaming.

I clipped some of my favorite ads from that newspaper, including one for "Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey... for medicinal purposes only!", which became part of the left front leg of his pants. I started calling him Duffy in my head after that... and it stuck.




Construction is as follows: Wire armature, cotton batting, sculpted paperclay, vintage newspaper, craft paper, gel medium, acrylic paint, wool fleece, cloth, polymer clay.