What is EffigiPie?

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EffigiPie ties images from my Material Culture research for Doll Culture in America (University Press of Mississippi, upcoming) to my day-to-day life as a doll maker, doll restorer, doll collector, and general doll user

“Effigy,” in this instance, stands for those aspects of doll use that transcend the word “doll.”

Are you, or do you know people, who say that they “don’t like ‘dolls'” but have one or more items in their possession that is small, poseable, has a face, and seems oddly trivial in the context of these people’s lives? Yet, for some reason they still keep this object around?

That small, human-looking object represents something anthropomorphized–something not human, yet given human-like qualities. It’s an “effigy” of an aspect of that person’s human existence.

A doll is always an effigy, but an effigy isn’t always a doll.

To be used as a doll, an effigy must be able to be manipulated, posed, ready to be altered at your whim. Unlike a statue or other forms of representational or fine arts, people take dolls for granted. To “be a doll” to someone may mean you are adorable, you bring gladness with your presence…or you can be easily dismissed. Dolls do not get so easily dismissed at EffigiPie.

Those of us who know dolls know differently. We know such effigies as a means to creative expression and as a tool to uncovering different parts of oneself and one’s identity with others.

Have you ever owned a “mascot” in plush or felt or other material? That little guy represented “you” to yourself in another way.

Think of it… A doll acts as your brain’s stunt double.

So, EffigiPie treats you to a new angle of doll-as-effigy use. The depictions here may make you smile, laugh, or scratch your head. EffigiPie will always hope to find for you an oddly familiar little face to be a mirror for one of the many faces that make up “you.”

For now, we enter online activities without the benefit of using touch or smell. So you won’t be able to manipulate the effigies on this screen. (K.I.S.S. dolls and avatars not being easily supported on a blog site.)

Until then, EffigiPie will provide the two dimensional details of a journey through the world of changeable little human-like forms like:

• – dolls
• –  action figures
• – stuffed animals
• – ceremonial figures
• – K.I.S.S. (online interactive dolls)
• – avatars
• – and items with faces and malleability–but perhaps no category at all.

 

action figure anthropomorphism avatar ceremonial figurescollecting doll doll collecting doll makeover dollmaking doll repaireffigipie effigy figure folk craft folklore foreign dolls hobbiesK.I.S.S. mascot material culture office culture pop culture popular culture stuffed animals stuffies