Lifelike doll of Princess Amalia to be shown at Amsterdam doll expo

A lifelike doll of Amalia, crown princess of the Netherlands, will be on display at the Art Dolls Expo in Amsterdam this weekend. After that the doll will be auctioned off on Catawiki. This is the first time a doll is made to look like a Dutch princess, RTL Nieuws reports.

The doll was made by Russian doll maker Elena Timkaeva and stands 69 centimeters tall.

"Two months of hard work went into this. The dress is hand painted, the shoes are made of leather and lama hair was used for the hair", Lalita van Lamsweerde, co-organizer of the expo, said, according to the broadcaster. The crown princess did not model for the work. Timkaeva worked from photographs.

Art dolls are much less well known in the Netherlands than in other countries like the Untied States, Japan and in Eastern Europe, where some dolls sell for tens of thousands of euros. "They are certainly not toy dolls. Everything is made by hand and many different materials are used", Van Lamsweerde said. Not all art dolls are meant to look lifelike. "It is often an imagination of the artist himself. One makes very realistic dolls, the other produces more fantasy-like figures."

The organizers of the expo hope that the Amalia doll will create more art-doll fans in the Netherlands. "We hope that the Amalia doll will also be auctioned for a lot of money. We can not sell it for less than 1,500 euros", Van Lamsweerde said. The proceeds of the doll will go to Make-a-Wish Nederland, a charity that fulfills the wishes of terminally ill children.