DR-Sissy™

DR-Sissy™ was the first ‘modern culture’ doll made in Japan by an accredited Hakata craftsman. The dolls are made from clay found near Fukuoka City in a practice first established in the early 17th-century. The clay is carved and sculpted to make an original figure that is then used to create a cast (from which up to 300 dolls can be
made). The dolls are then dried, fired unglazed and hand-painted for final finishing.

Since a single artisan carries out the whole process from carving and sculpting to finishing, the dolls reflect the creativity of their maker in a way that mass production can’t match. That’s why we chose to work with Yoshimasa Matsuo to create an antidote to the then contemporary mass-produced, injection-moulded plastic designer toy culture.

DR-Sissy™ first appeared as a character (‘she is cute, she will kill you’) designed for the cover of Emigre Magazine’s TDR issue in 1994 (designed in 1993). A 3D version was created by Nicky Westcott (Place) who worked as a 3D modeller at Psygnosis and who’d been instrumental in getting TDR involved in Wipeout. We first used her as an image to pair with a magazine interview where we spoke at length about not being into 3D graphics!

The DR-Sissy Doll was made in Hakata in 2004 as a limited edition of 300. We thought they’d all found new homes but found a handful of them hiding out under some Age of Chance artwork in the darkest recess of our past in the TDR-kive.

(Measures approx 180x180mm)