Ryūjo Hori

Hori started her career as a painter, but switched to doll making after an epiphany with a piece of gum; seeing the half-chewed gum she was fiddling looked something like a human face caused her to become interested in three-dimensional representations of the human form. She began to construct dolls from flour and newspaper paste, using chopsticks as a structural base.[1][2] In 1930 she joined Yumeji Takehisa's Dontakusha group of artists and subsequently focussed her entire output on doll-making; that same year she had her first exhibition at the Hina Matsuri Festival.[3][4][5] Early on in her career, she studied under the famous doll-makers Goyo Hirata and Juzo Kagoshima, both Living National Treasure of Japan.[2]

Her creation of a new style of kimekomi-ningyō doll resulted in her own appointment as a Living National Treasure of Japan in 1955; she was both the first woman to be awarded this accolade and the first artist to be largely self-taught.[3][6] She commonly sculpted dolls in the likeness of aristocratic women of the Heian period, in paulownia wood or (later in her career) shiso (terracotta overlaid with paper).[7] Her dolls can take up to ten years to complete.[8] In 1983 she was presented to Nancy Reagan during a presidential visit to Japan, who claimed to "admire [Hori's] patience as much as [her] art".[5] (Hori was forbidden from bringing her tools - primarily knives - to the meeting.)[9]