Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Old Moss has been living in the forest long enough for things to start growing on him.
That's the joke and the whole design. His coat is moss — a shaggy hanging mass of dark fiber, grey going to green-black, with long strands of colored yarn tied down through it in magenta, gold, copper, violet and green. It hangs off his shoulders and trails past his knees, front and back, exactly the way old man's beard lichen hangs off a spruce branch. Stand him under a lamp and the colored strands catch light the way wet moss does.
Nobody else in the elf woods dresses like this. Every other elf gets cloth — felt, suede, knitted wool, cut and sewn into clothes. Old Moss doesn't get clothes. He gets growth.
But look at the face. It's the most heavily worked sculpting in the group and it isn't close. The whole head is built from folds: ridges wrapping around the eye sockets, deep nested creases across the cheeks, a great lumpy nose, jowls stacked in soft rolls, and a long wedge of beard furrowed top to bottom like bark. His eyes have disappeared entirely into the folds — squeezed shut in a grin so committed it has closed his whole face. The wrinkles aren't a texture applied to a face. They are the face.
He leans on a real stick: a natural branch with the bark off, the bend left in, a knuckle of knot at the top where his mitten closes over it. The shop didn't turn a dowel. They found a stick the right shape and used it.
Under the moss he's plain rose suede with soft mitten hands and simple sculpted clay-brown shoes. His hat is black felt, slouched down low and cut in soft points. He needs nothing else. Everything the eye wants is in the face and the coat.
His sole still carries the gold foil label: Simpich Elf · Old Moss · Handmade.
Cast from the original design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Old Moss has been living in the forest long enough for things to start growing on him.
That's the joke and the whole design. His coat is moss — a shaggy hanging mass of dark fiber, grey going to green-black, with long strands of colored yarn tied down through it in magenta, gold, copper, violet and green. It hangs off his shoulders and trails past his knees, front and back, exactly the way old man's beard lichen hangs off a spruce branch. Stand him under a lamp and the colored strands catch light the way wet moss does.
Nobody else in the elf woods dresses like this. Every other elf gets cloth — felt, suede, knitted wool, cut and sewn into clothes. Old Moss doesn't get clothes. He gets growth.
But look at the face. It's the most heavily worked sculpting in the group and it isn't close. The whole head is built from folds: ridges wrapping around the eye sockets, deep nested creases across the cheeks, a great lumpy nose, jowls stacked in soft rolls, and a long wedge of beard furrowed top to bottom like bark. His eyes have disappeared entirely into the folds — squeezed shut in a grin so committed it has closed his whole face. The wrinkles aren't a texture applied to a face. They are the face.
He leans on a real stick: a natural branch with the bark off, the bend left in, a knuckle of knot at the top where his mitten closes over it. The shop didn't turn a dowel. They found a stick the right shape and used it.
Under the moss he's plain rose suede with soft mitten hands and simple sculpted clay-brown shoes. His hat is black felt, slouched down low and cut in soft points. He needs nothing else. Everything the eye wants is in the face and the coat.
His sole still carries the gold foil label: Simpich Elf · Old Moss · Handmade.
Cast from the original design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
