Dolls often captivate children. Several decades ago, dolls had Caucasian features like blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin tone. But now, things have changed tremendously.

These days, it is important to bring racial diversity to dolls. Diverse dolls represent diverse races, and encourage children to learn to appreciate various ethnicities.

In Malaysia, craft artists have been creating dolls that represent Asian features, while some makers focus on bringing uniqueness, quirkiness and creativity to dolls that are adored both by children and adults.

Apart from children, Malaysian-made dolls have impressed people around the world, including collectors. As such, doll makers have ventured beyond conventional limitations, stitching or sculpting original creations.

Diversity is key when it comes to dolls made by Evangelione (Instagram @evangelione).

Artist Yeo Mei Ying has been handcrafting dolls with Asian features since the beginning of her journey into the art. In fact, some of her creations resemble herself.

Stitched by hand, Yeo’s wide-eyed cute dolls have expressive faces and different characters. Made with fabric, felt and clay, they are finished with an attractive hairdo.

The creatively designed and quirky looking dolls reflect various personalities, cultures and countries – dressed in vibrant colors, different fashion styles or fashionable attire from various era.

For Yeo, dolls are a medium to tell stories and express emotions, and she has managed to create a niche market for her creations.

Fashion designer and doll artist Nigel Chia hand crafts “The DeMuse Dolls”, realistic lifelike figures resembling fashion models.

Chia, who runs Nigel Chia Atelier, sculpts Caucasian, African and Asian dolls in different model poses.

His glamour themed creations, which he describes as “high fashion resin muses”, have beautiful features and different skin tones. The dolls are dressed in bespoke high fashion designer wear created by Chia, who also design and create handbags and shoes.

The DeMuse Dolls are stunning and the gorgeous dresses, from the ruffled ball gowns to the bridal collection designed with sophisticated fabric, is highly detailed with embellishments.

And Chia even shares the process of making the dresses on Instagram, @nigelchiaofficial.

Creativity is at the heart of Kho Tain Ching’s handmade doll creations. Kho, who is the owner of EEching’s Handmade (Instagram @eechinghandmade), creates fantasy or imaginary and quirky dolls.

Her lifelike dolls express a range of emotions, from grumpy to smiling, and look striking with bright make up – rosy pink blush on the cheeks, curled bright hair colours and unique hats.

The little dolls also wear fun or sometimes dark clothes, depending on the mood of the characters. Some dolls have wings like Batwoman or Amanita Muscaria mushroom heads.

Dolls are more diverse now than before, and one artist has taken its design a step further and created dolls that cater to a niche market – dolls wearing hijab, under the brand name DollsbyMawar.

Since 2013, cloth doll artist Mawar Aris has been designing and handcrafting hijab dolls to add diversity to a little child’s life, and she has never looked back.

The dolls are fully covered from head to toe in a “jubah” long dress, with pretty floral designs matched with a plain coloured hijab.

She even makes a pair of mother and daughter dolls, a set of family dolls, a hijab crochet collection and dollhouses. The body suit and skirts are made from Liberty London cotton.

Amigurumi is a complex Japanese art form, in which the crocheter knits intricate details, from the eyes to accessories like handbags. Such hand knitted dolls come in striking colours.

Crocheter Lydia Wong creates mostly female fairy tale and fantasy dolls with vibrantly coloured fashionable clothes and traditional wear such as kimono and Dutch attire.

She also shares her creations on Instagram, @lydiawlc.

Her crochet dolls have a soft texture as they are made with yarn, and the thinner the yarn, the smaller the size of the dolls. Sometimes, thicker yarn is used for bigger dolls.

Apart from human figures, animal amigurumi dolls crafted by another doll maker, Elynn Hah, are irresistible even to grown-ups (Instagram @leftypixie).

Her collection of charming animal dolls includes frogs, rabbits, foxes, pandas, elephants and turtles that look just like stuffed soft toys, while some of the knitted creations appear like cartoon characters that came to life.

Her toys are made with milk cotton yarn, which is soft to touch and the material is suitable for toddlers and children.

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