A Hebridean Doll Making Ritual

A Hebridean Doll Making Ritual

My recent Gather the Keeners Grief Pilgrimage involved doll making. I had thought I would be teaching doll making and so not making a doll myself. I was wrong.

I was lucky enough to have a talented artist assistant, and as I showed folks the procedure of making these wire armature dolls, she picked it up immediately and so left me with time to create.

Doll making involves a series of stages. There is covering the wire armature with wool, and then creating a symbol on the doll which holds meaning and intentions, and a way of speaking to this mysterious process.

A replica of the Woman of Westray, photographed at Skara Brae, Skaill Bay, mainland Orkney

Doll Making, An Ancient Tradition

Doll making is an ancient tradition. A tradition which travels back through time, back to the hands that carved the Woman of Holles Fells, just 6 cm tall figurine created 35-42,000 years ago. It’s a tradition that links us to the hands that created the Woman of Willendorf who is just 11 cm tall and 30,000 years old and to whoever etched out the Woman of Laussel, 18 inches long in the rock face 25,000 years ago. Closer to home shores is the creation of the Woman of Westray, who was found at the Links of Noltland site on the island of Westray in Orkney in 2009.

I was gifted what seems it might be a guilimot beak, from a bird long dead. I added it to the bundle as I walked the beach. A gentle keening over these doll bones. A bringing to life song, a holy holding.

She is still within her bundle, slowly forming. Her should, or becoming cloth, a vintage Irish tweed with Hebridean sea hues.

This is the linage of doll making, ancient and ensued with meaning, symbolism and ritual.

A little clay figurine inspired by the ice age icons. Photographed on Laig Bay, Isle of Eigg.

At each stage of doll making, between the layers of meaning and listening, of creating a symbol the figure is wrapped in fabric, much the cloth we might be wrapped in throughout rituals of our life - a newborn shawl, a wedding or partnership ritual, an older age shawl and an end of life shroud.

This fabric holds the bundle as the doll is forming. It is a bundle of becoming. For dolls are of both worlds, there is the physical aspects from this world, the wool and the wire which is surrounded by our intention, our prayers, and there is this magical spark, in the making, in the becoming. In that space of creating we are often met with something else. Sometime it feels we are met with the spirit of the doll itself, and guided to this colour or shape, this story and meaning.

Having this time on the pilgrimage I began assembling a doll. She represents an unravelling of things I’ve gathered. A sense of deepening, rather than one of collecting. A time of descent, of discovering.

I had a feeling to hurry her, but she demands to sit within the bundle for a longer time. Forcing me to slow down.

I was gifted what seems it might be a guillemot beak, from a bird long dead. I added it to the bundle as I walked the beach. A gentle keening over these doll bones. A bringing to life song, a holy holding.

She is still within her bundle, slowly forming. Her should, or becoming cloth, and vintage Irish tweed with Hebridean sea hues.

And yes, this is Scotland, 22oc and azure blue skies. For as much as our Pilgrimage was about grief, it’s also about a day on a beach and swimming in the sea.

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