Gibraltar dollmaker Christine Mandleberg walked away with first prize and best in theme award for her doll of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter at this year’s UK Doll Convention.

The Alice in Wonderland-themed event was hosted by the International Dollmakers Society and held at the Marriott Hotel in Waltham Abbey in Essex.

In the original sculpting section she attained 3^rd Prize and the Popular Vote for a doll which depicted Mario Rovegno in the 1980’s when he played in the group Moonlight Sun.

Her third doll “Legally Blonde” won a Highly Commended ribbon.

Christine has been making porcelain dolls since 1998 and received the title of Grandmaster of Dollmaking in 2005 and the title of Triple Crown of Dollmaking in 2007 both from the DAG (Doll Artisan Guild). To date she has won numerous top doll-making awards worldwide including UK, Australia, America and Germany.

Christine said: “These dolls also had a wonderful trip. As they were large dolls (24” to 32”) my husband Eddie and I decided to drive to UK and back where the dolls travelled in style strapped to the back seat and got many admiring glances and started many interesting conversations all round UK, France and Spain.”

Apart from making dolls from scratch, i.e. sculpting a likeness from a photo and transferring the likeness into a porcelain figurine, Christine can also restore antique porcelain dolls and repair and restore items like Lladro figures etc to museum standards.

Christine has been creating more original sculptures during the last year to complete the set of all the Chief Ministers in Gibraltar since the 1969 constitution reforms. Some of you may remember the ones made of Sir Peter Caruana and Joe Bossano. She is working on the remaining four and these will probably take about another year or two to complete. But the priority at the moment are the entries for the next convention which is being held by the Doll Artisan Guild in the US in October.

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