Section: LIFE & LEISURE
Page: C1

Tuesday, December 19, 1995

TULA DOLLMAKER AIMS TO SEW UP CAPITAL REGION

KATHLEEN DOOLEY Staff writer

Like Santa's storied workshop at the North Pole, the Creative Workshop in Tula, Russia, a fledgling doll-making business, is humming these days.

Irena Baranova of Tula, called Albany's ``sister city,'' has four helpers churning out one-of-a-kind embroidered-face dolls, meant to be pleasing to the eye, not really to be played with by children. It is hard to imagine that this type of brightly colored folk doll was the delight of Russian children at the turn of the century.

In the United States, they are slowly becoming sought after by doll collectors. Soon they will be familiar additions to the Capital Region's retail scene.

Baranova, who is workshop manager and has been the recipient of a three-month internship in the U.S. Department of Commerce program, has been visiting Albany and will remain until Friday. For her, the internship was ``a fairy tale, a dream that I cannot believe.''

Her goal has been to find markets for the handmade cloth ``Tuladolls,'' and at the same time buy American dolls for her Creative Workshop.

The internship program, she explained, using the interpreter she needs when conversation goes quickly, provides training for business managers and scientists from the former Soviet Union.

Baranova has been in the Capital Region through the Albany-Tula Alliance Cultural Exchanges Program, staying at the homes of members of the all-volunteer alliance. Laura Chodos, alliance member and former member of the state Board of Regents, along with Sally White, also an alliance member, both visited Tula in 1992 and have been helping to get the doll project started. The ultimate aim, said Chodos, is to help the people of Tula gain economic independence.

For Baranova, sewing has always been a major part of life, but not dolls. ``I've made my own clothes since I was a little girl,'' she says in near-perfect English, visiting the Times Union laden with several large exquisitely dressed dolls resembling Russian peasant women dressed in their festival finery. Growing up in a village in the southern Ukraine she played with her share of dolls like other children, never imagining she would be making them someday, least of all managing her own doll business. She studied engineering at Tula Polytechnic University for five years and sewing was strictly a hobby. Mostly, she took old clothes and redesigned them.

It wasn't until 1986 that she decided to change professions. That was around the time of perestroika in Russia, she says. Wanting to depart from the field of engineering, she was hired as assistant director at the Tula Puppet Theatre. She learned every aspect of the puppet workshop, including puppet making and designing, ordering fabrics and other materials.

During this period, she also decided to re-educate herself and enrolled in Moscow Business School, 25 minutes from her home. In 1993, she opened her own business, the Creative Workshop at the Tula Puppet Theatre.

The workshop sells more than 12,000 small children's items each year. All the toys and dolls are made by Tula residents in their homes. Baranova supervises four employees who not only create folk dolls, but also carve wooden toys and decorative pieces, do needlework, and make small souvenirs for various puppet productions.

``My office is my home in Tula,'' she says. She explained that because of the intricacies involved, each doll is the product of four people. One designs the doll, another does the sewing, a third creates the traditional costumes and still another puts the stuffing in place and creates the body.

``It's a team effort,'' she says of her helpers, all skillful embroiderers and sewers, holding down professional positions by day and working on the dolls in the evenings at their homes.

The dolls' costumes were the subject of intensive research, Baranova said. The fabrics of the dresses are cotton, crepe de chine and velvet. Some outfits may be fur-trimmed and fully lined and contain satin edgings and triple layers of lace. There is even trim around the underwear and fur on the tiny boots. They are made of fire-resistant materials, are mildew-resistant and allergy-resistant, and are made according to U.S. regulations, she said.

So far, her staff has made about 70 dolls, but since coming to America she is returning with hundreds of orders, including a large order to fill a window at Wit's End in Clifton Park, she said.

The costumes worn by the 14- and 22-inch dolls are celebration costumes, worn by the women of Russia at folk festivals some 100 years ago. They are bright with variegated colors, strewn with an assortment of flowers.

The collection has several models, including the 22-inch cloth dolls with hand-embroidered faces and removable costumes; painted face dolls that resemble Chagall paintings, whimsy dolls that capture moods with pancake faces and floppy limbs, and pairs of colorful straw dolls that were popular at the folk festivals celebrating the end of the long Russian winter.

She also has designed story dolls patterned after the extensive repertoire of the 60-year-old Tula Puppet Theatre. All of the dolls are individually signed and dated by Baranova.

Prices range from $15 to $20 for the painted-face dolls. Her whimsy dolls are $20 to $30. The embroidered 16-inch folk dolls are $50; 22-inch dolls are $90 to $150.

Chodos said the project began when a young woman from Tula made a modest request to Albany for fabrics, trims and sewing items to make more dolls to send over to the Albany-Tula Alliance. In a few weeks' time, more than 800 pounds of fabrics, stuffings, trims and 200 spools of yarns and embroidery threads were collected in the garage of area weaver Janet Nyquist, who engaged the help of members of local needlework guilds. Then, they shipped everything to Tula.

While visiting Albany, Baranova was guest at a Russian tea party where she displayed and took orders for her dolls. She also met with Julia Nicholas Weeker, a dollmaker from Clifton Park, who is now based in Chicago who is the creator and designer of Dollsmith Inc. cloth dolls, and Ann Farrell of Troy, a local dollmaker. They shared techniques and stories. Recently, she held a weeklong artist-in-residence workshop with students at Harriet Gibbons High School in Albany and has also met with local women's embroidery guilds.

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