Rosemarie Muller

Born in 1949 and happily married to Willi, Rosemarie has 6 children and lives in the beautiful Westerwald, in the Limburg-Weilburg district, Germany.

In the late 1980's, she watched a TV show about the reproduction of antique porcelain dolls and because she was so enthusiastic about it, her husband signed her up for a seminar. She received the Teacher's Certificate in Reproducing Antique Dolls from the Global Doll Society. However, Rosemarie didn't want to imitate dolls, she wanted to learn how to make her own.

In 1989, she heard that Renate Höckh, a well-known doll artist who later became her friend, was giving modelling seminars. It was through these seminars that Rosemarie gained the knowledge of children's anatomy and about the structure of a doll's head, hands and feet, as well as mould making.

Since then, she has refined her technical skills as well as her range of expressive possibilities. Rosemarie sculpts her models in clay, paying very close attention to age-appropriate proportions. Then the plaster molds are built, a very laborious job which husband Willi assists with, he also takes care of pouring the liquid porcelain into the molds for her.

Grinding and working out the details of the dry blank, which is still very fragile, requires a lot of time and experience. If something breaks, Rosemarie has to begin again. When the parts have all been sanded clean and finished, the sharp firing follows at 1230° C. This is followed by several colour firings at 760° C. The individual colours are applied in several layers so that they become beautifully brilliant.

The sizes of Rosemarie's dolls are just as diverse as the subjects. The largest she has made is a portrait of her daughter measuring 110 cm, the smallest is a 1:12 scale dollhouse doll and is just 10 cm.

Her sources of inspiration are children from all over the world. Rosemarie loves children whether they are white, brown or black and aims to capture their different moods in her dolls. Her awards confirm she is succeeding, as she has been awarded the Max Oscar Arnold Art Prize by the city of Neustadt seven times.

Since her original porcelain dolls are not affordable for everyone, Rosemarie decided in 2003 to design dolls which were sold on HSE 24 television, beginning with small, naturalistic dolls up to 30 cm. They were made by Masterpiece America in China and were all vinyl. Then character representations of small children were created under the title: Müller-Wichtel, Balm for the Soul®.

However, it became apparent that the shopping station wanted to stop offering dolls. So Rosemarie and Willi decided to take over the manufacture and sale of the Müller-Wichtel® themselves. In July 2022, their son took over the business and runs it together with their daughter Anna, and of course Rosemarie and Willi continue to support them.

A small selection of Rosemarie's dolls are also manufactured by Schildkrot-Puppen in Germany.