The past year I’ve complete several new costumed dolls that I’ve been keeping secret. I’ve also been working on custom orders for porcelain nude dolls.

A client requested me to create a fusion of two different dolls of mine they loved, in one single face. They wanted me to china-paint the makeup of my doll White Peacock, who is Asian, onto the facial sculpt of my other doll Primavera, who is Caucasian.

Surprised at first, I had to think about it before agreeing, but with a caveat that I didn’t know if the outcome would be what either of us expected, and that this was experimental territory.

I said that I would do my best to adapt make up designed for Asian features onto Caucasian bone structure, but this new doll might look like neither of them, or both of them, or have a whole new face neither of us have imagined yet, but I would only make one attempt, and there was no do-over. This is the nature of china-paint: it’s made of glass, and once kiln-fired onto porcelain, it’s permanent.

My biggest concern was adapting the elongated eye liner shape of Asian White Peacock, to the enormous round eyes of the Caucasian Primavera. My other concern was how much light purple eye shadow would reflect in her deeper eye sockets, and how Peacock’s brows would sit on Primavera’s taller brow ridge.

But the client trusted my skills and was open-minded, adventurous and keen to experiment, which I always appreciate in a collector of my dolls. They wanted me to go ahead despite the unknown outcome. They also wanted me to give her freckles.

And Elixia the result of that fusion of features, and she is striking!

Her purple eye shadow looks richer in the deeper eye sockets of the Caucasian sculpt, and the eyeliner gives her enormous round eyes a slightly elongated, exotic shape.

So does she look like White Peacock, or Primavera, or both, or neither? Tell me what you think of this experimental face.