Interview with Grace Szczepaniec’s daughter Layla, and her good friend Kaye Wiggs.
The doll world recently lost Grace, the owner of popular shop Jpop Dolls to cancer. She was a passionate supporter of doll artists, helping them produce and promote their work and fight against illegal doll recasting. Additionally, Grace was heavily involved in animal rescue through the organization Hope for Paws.
Jpop is about to close orders for Kaye Wigg’s doll made in honor of her friend. Gracie may be ordered HERE.
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Q: Layla, was your mother always interested in dolls?
A: My mom was always interested in dolls. Growing up, our house had dolls in every room – porcelain dolls, Barbies, Little Kiddles, and vintage dolls from the ’50s and ’60s. She used to tell me stories about how my grandma used to take her to the Goodwill and let her pick out some dolls to play with. She would take them home and reinvent them with brand new outfits she would make herself. I remember many Saturdays spent with my mom as we would both browse the doll section of Toys r’ Us looking at what was new, or we would comb through the aisles of local doll shows searching for that one doll she missed from her childhood.
Q: How and when did Jpop open? What products did the store offer back then?
A: Jpop first opened in 2003. We had found an advertisement for Volks in a Japanese hobby magazine. This was a brand new concept and so very exciting, she placed an order for a doll for each of us. Once the doll arrived and she had it in her hands, she fell in love with ball joint dolls. My mother loved how customizable the dolls were, and having always been an artist at heart, saw the many possibilities. Just a change of a wig or an outfit and you have a different doll. After ordering different mohair wigs for her own collection, she began selling mohair wigs herself that year as well shoes. Later my mom would move onto synthetic fiber wigs, not only selling them but designing their colors and styles. It was a refreshing break from her job consulting in integrative medicine getting to be around her dolls, trying on wigs, and being able to play with all the different colors and textures. She would begin importing Korean BJDs to sell soon after.
Q: I know the story about Kaye Wiggs and how your mom stepped in when Kaye thought she would have to retire from dolls. How did Grace go from there to working with other artists as a go-between for casting overseas?
A: Well my mom was always looking around to see what was new out there in terms of sculpts and artists. As an avid collector, she knew what it would be like to try to get a cherished doll when an artist would only make a few at a time. So the idea of being able to bring more dolls to people who really wanted them, as she had done with Kaye, was born. She scouted around to see what she loved and made friends with artists, friendships she would cherish. Its always been about making the dolls more accessible to people and helping artists who may want to make more than a few dolls at a time. She was very passionate about her work, and she loved getting to work with artists and promoting new dolls through Jpop.
Q: Wasn’t your mom also involved in doll conventions in your area?
A: Oh yes, my mom was very involved with the shows. She was trying to put together a show for the BJD lovers of the pacific northwest and was one of the first people to sell BJDs at our local doll shows. She spent time talking to people about converting our regular doll shows to BJD shows at a time when doll shows began to fail. She saw it as a way to breathe new life into the doll scene and to help it evolve. My mom spent so much time on the phone with Dorothy Drake making suggestions and helping to plan things for the first Pacific Northwest Ball-Jointed Doll Expo. She even set up local meets in our area for local vendors to sell their goods and meet other people in the BJD community.
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From Australian doll artist Kaye Wiggs, a close friend of Grace:
This is how Grace and myself got together to have my dolls produced by Jpopdolls. I have just written down memories so I will leave it to you to choose what to use and what to leave out.
I used to love the quality and styles of the Jpop wigs so I was buying wigs for my dolls from Grace. After a short time, Grace offered her wigs to me at wholesale price, and sometimes she would send me free wigs, especially of new designs, so that I could give her my opinion of them.
Grace and I because online friends and then Grace was diagnosed with cancer and had surgery to have it removed. At about the same time, I was struggling with my allergy to the resin and needed to find an alternative or just retire from making the dolls.
Grace and myself got chatting and we realized we could help each other, so we started making plans to have my dolls factory-produced and Grace would be my international distributor. Our first doll together was Annabella,. We offered her as human and elf and limited her to 50 of each. At first, I was managing the pre-order on my own website, and Grace was going to do the shipping, but the Annabella sold out within minutes and when Paypal saw the funds coming to my account they determined suspicious behavior in my account and froze the funds (even tho I had phoned them a few days before and told them I was expecting a substantial increase in my sales). Grace worked out a deal with Paypal in the USA so that we could continue to offer pre-orders so she took over the pre-ordering etc for the dolls and we continued offering dolls through Jpopdolls from that time on.
Over the years Grace and myself had a very strong friendship .. we used to talk on Skype almost daily (sometimes 3 or 4 times a day if anything interesting, exciting, or stressful was happening!) I remember when her daughter Layla attended a convention in France, Grace would call me when Layla left and we would talk for hours (sometimes most the night) while Layla was traveling. Grace would keep track of the flights online until she knew Layla was safely in her motel room! We had some fun times talking on Skype. We used to laugh and giggle and tell each other our life stories.
Grace never told anyone except Layla that she had cancer, apparently she battled it alone for 2 or 3 years. She probably thought she would beat it as she did the first time. She was a very strong woman and I am guessing she didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her.
It was a shock to find out she had died. I do miss her badly.
