The History of Reborning

A short history of reborning - the art of beautiful babies.

The history of reborning, as best as I've been able to research it for you! Details are sketchy on the exact beginning of the art form.

Reborning dolls began in the late 1980's. Porcelain dolls were very popular and many doll makers who create reborn dolls now, created beautiful porcelain dolls back then. A new doll arrived on the market called a Berusa from Spain and the Berenguer dolls in the US. These were vinyl baby dolls that were beautifully realistic in their faces and detailed hands and feet. They were sold as toys to happy little girls playing 'mommy' everywhere.

Someone ( I have yet to be able to locate the original reborn artist - if it's you - please contact me ! I'd love to interview you.)probably a porcelain doll artist, got the incredibly brilliant idea to make a realistic doll look even more realistic. This involved first taking apart the existing doll, removing the factory painted hair and blushing with acetone or paint stripper, removing the factory eyes and sanding off the molded hair lines.

Then the doll was repainted with beautiful lifelike tones, given newer more realistic eyes and eyelashes, and a new wig or hand rooted hair. Paints used in the past have been stencil creams and artist oils, and more recently, Genesis heat set paints and various air dry acrylics. Thus a new baby doll was 'reborn' and the phrase has stuck through the years. Now these original reborn dolls were so incredibly lifelike that they started being sold on Ebay as 'reborns'.

As the history of reborning evolved, doll manufacturers and incredibly talented sculptors started to create blank vinyl doll kits - so that reborn artists could start with a blank slate , rather than go through the process of disassembling an existing doll. The term used for reborning a doll kit is actually 'newborning' and is used just as widely as reborning in terms of the terminology of the art.

Reborn dolls explode in 2000 with the help of the internet

Once reborn dolls first appeared on ebay, doll collectors everywhere were immediately searching for them and doll artists everywhere tried to learn the art of reborning. New methods and techniques developed, with the ultimate goal of surpassing the realism of one's previous doll with the next. The bar has been raised incredibly high now with artists perfecting micro-rooting the hair and eyelashes, fine details such as capillaries and milk spots, painted on hair is being tried by a few artists and the dolls are becoming more and more breathtaking.

Many artists are also branching out into sculpting their own dolls so again the bar has been raised as existing artists hone their skills and branch off into new directions. The quality of supplies has improved - from the paints to the mohair to the tiniest of needles for micro-rooting.

The history of reborning will continue to evolve as new artists come and previous ones become even better. The goal for all reborn artists is to create the most lifelike baby dolls possible, to be admired and passed down for generations to come.

From the History of Reborning back to Realistic Reborn Dolls