My short but but intense aquaintance with Numina dolls

Hi everyone,

To start off this blog entry, I would like to let a beautiful doll speak for herself- please meet my "Debut" Ajuma, a mesmerizing 16" resign doll made by Dollcis Numina (sorry for the less than ideal photo quality, I took this with my iphone such as many other pictures in this post):

One of the things I like so much about this doll is her very unique and authentic head sculpt. It is a fact that many other doll companies create head sculpts that can be used for different characters of different ethnicities by just changing the color of the material. I do not blame this method as such (maybe I am going to dedicate a blog post to this topic?) but I absolutely love seeing ethnical sculpts that are exactly that: a representation of the things that make people unique (and beautiful).

Here is another picture of her wearing a Sybarite wig and a Sybarite outfit called "Bugged":

This doll really deserves a proper photo shoot with proper light and camera soon!

I was still able to stay away from Numina dolls for a remarkably long time, maybe because the first head sculpts released by them were less appealing to me personally. I started to be really interested when I started seeing more and more images of the absolutely amazing head sculpt with Asian influences, Devon. Here is a photo taken by Paul Pham, owner and designer of Dollcis, showing one of his Devon dolls:

(And please do check out the gallery of all Numina dolls to date at http://dollcis.com/wordpress/?page_id=4 )

However, I continued to resist telling myself I had no more resources (namely space and money) to collect another 16" doll line until I met Paul Pham and a few of his dolls in person at the Paris Fashion Doll Festival (PFSF) 2012 in Paris.

I was struck both by the elegant facial details, bodies and fashions of the Numinas he had on display as well as the sheer friendliness and love of dolls radiating from owner and designer Paul Pham, for whom these dolls are obviously the realization of a long dream. It is always inspiring to meet creators who just love dolls, and to learn about dolls that are so important to their creators that every single ones has been checked, touched up and worked on by them personally. I get this impression very strongly from the Numina dolls, as well as from the Sybarites and a few other "smaller" doll creators (compared to companies releasing thousands of purely factory made dolls each month). Another creator who is probably the most extreme will be featured here soon, too, and is my good friend em'lia :)

Here are a few snap shots I took at the Paris Fashion doll festival while Paul Pham was luckily not the slightes irritaed by a crazy doll fan robbing on the floor in front of his booth at the festival ;)

Here is Atropa, a limited edition doll of five for the festival. The chance to buy her was raffled among the participants interested but unfortunately my name was not among the winners. Paul mentioned she was inspired by vintage horror movies- she uses the Devon sculpt:

Here is a Prototype doll using the Ajuma sculpt but with a lighter skin color:

And here is a dark skinned Ajuma prototype- sorry for the very blurry photo, I was literally shaking in the way I only get excited when seeing beautiful dolls ;)

Last but not least, be sure to like Numina on Facebook if you want to see more pictures and updates:

facebook.com/NuminaDoll