I wish you could see more about the settle the doll is resting on in the photograph. My mother made a doll settle for me from a 1950's magazine rack, it had four legs under a wooden base, and then two slightly slanted sides with spindles. By removing one side and making a cushion for the resulting seat she achieved a great piece of make-do doll furniture.
It was years and years before I owned a covered wagon china or a Greiner doll or the many variations of this hair style in both China and Mache. Even an Izannah Walker with her classic two curls in front of the ears and curls across the back of her head is variation of this hair style.
I have loved and studied and repaired and collected and bought and sold antique dolls now for sixty years. What a lovely interest this has been all the way! Dolls are just one part of a collection that includes pewter, redware, early ironware, stoneware, textiles, furniture and on and on. The first antiques I purchased on my own, (my mother collected before me) were old dolls and then Texas crocks and quilts and white ironstone and I was off and running.
The broader study of antiques is a study of people and their art and lives. To get any kind of a bracket on the subject it is necessary to set parameters and focus. Molded hair dolls of the 19th century, mostly of the second and third quarters will describe my dolls. I wish now I had made it more narrowly American molded hair dolls of the 19th century. I would have missed the lovely German mache dolls and all of the chinas but had more depth in others such as Greiner and goodyear rubber and the Walkers and linen head dolls..
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Annie who will go home to Dan one day.
A painting of Lucy in 2007. She belongs to Trisha now. e
