Jointed Wooden Doll

Take lime, boxwood or another fine, even-grained hardwood. Open-grained wood splits at the pin holes, which are exactly where the doll takes its loads.

Carve head, neck and torso from a single blank about 150 mm tall, leaving the shoulders and hips as square flats for now. Flats are far easier to drill accurately than curves.

Carve two arms and two legs, each a little fatter than finished size. The last shaping happens after the joints work, because fitting always removes material.

Shape the top of each limb into a rounded tab that fits into a corresponding slot in the body. Round the end fully — a square-ended tab binds as soon as the limb turns.

Saw and pare a slot at each shoulder and hip, a fraction wider than the limb tab. Check each limb enters and leaves freely before drilling anything.

Drill the pin hole through the body slot, then hold the limb in the slot and drill through the existing hole to carry it into the limb. Drilling the two separately guarantees they will not line up.

Put the hole close to the rounded top of the limb, not central. A pivot too low leaves the limb sticking out from the body when it swings.

Whittle hardwood pins to a light interference fit in the body but a free fit in the limb — or fit them the other way round. One side must grip and the other must turn; if both grip, nothing moves.

Assemble and test: the limb should stay where you put it but move under a gentle push. Too stiff, ease the slot; too floppy, shim it with a sliver of leather or paper. This is the step the whole doll is judged on.

Make one limb hung on a knotted cord through the body instead of a pin. Cord joints allow more movement and were widely used; they also loosen with wear in a way pins do not. Compare the two.

Set the doll seated and leave it for an hour. If the limbs have crept, the friction is too low — and a doll that cannot hold a pose is a jointed figure that behaves like an unjointed one.

Now take the limbs down to final shape with the joints working, then sand. Doing this before the joints work means recutting them afterward.

Paint the features if you want, keeping the paint out of the joints. Paint in a joint dries to a glue and locks the limb solid.

Widespread and very old. Dolls with movable limbs are known from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, made in wood, bone, ivory and fired clay. Terracotta ones survive in the greatest numbers simply because fired clay lasts in the ground and wood does not — which almost certainly distorts the picture. Wooden dolls were probably far more common than the surviving evidence suggests, and the material bias is worth stating rather than reading the finds as a fair sample.

The joint barely changed. A hole, a hole, and a pin or a cord. What varies is which joints are articulated — some figures move only at the shoulders, others at shoulders, hips, elbows and knees — and that choice tracks what the figure was for rather than the maker's skill.

Toy, or not. Jointed figures are found in children's graves, which supports the toy reading, and also in temple deposits, where they appear to have been dedicated — girls are recorded as dedicating dolls on reaching adulthood. The same object can be a toy, a votive offering and a grave good, and the archaeological context decides which, not the object. Calling every small jointed figure a doll is a habit worth resisting.

Where it leads. The line runs from these to the wooden lay figure used by painters to pose drapery, to the artist's mannequin still sold today, and to the ball-jointed doll. The mechanism is the same one you have just fitted — a pivot with enough friction to hold a position.