Many favorite pictures were lost in a computer crash in 2012 for me. So in looking back through my friend Dixie's Maida FB page (private club) for a picture of one of the big cloth Santas I made years ago, I came across it and also a story of how my doll collecting started in 1953. So thank you Dixie.
There he is top left without his coat, among a group of bears and dolls I made in the 1980's
I made 36 of the Santas, all dressed a bit differently, and with quilted beards, in three variations.
This one is still in our family and lives at my Daughter's house.
Collecting Antique Dolls
in the 1950’s
Things have really
changed! I was a young woman living in West Texas on a ranch in
Comanche county then. Living nine miles from pavement I was
relatively isolated. My parents lived in the large city of Dallas 120
miles away, and I would load my two little girls in the car and make that drive
on slower old roads over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house
every few months. What an interesting grandmother she was for them!
My mother loved old toys and old dolls and miniature rooms and doll houses
which she made with assistance from my father. A trip home for a visit
always included involvement in her latest project. Once I returned
to the ranch with a fine old Teddy bear to mend, a find from the Goodwill store
where mama loved to dig and search. On another of these trips
Mama offered me a doll she had found, needing a wig and restringing and
clothing. By taking her home, I was hooked!
To buy doll elastic I sent for a Mark Farmer’s catalog as
advertised in Hobbies magazine. Soon I was reading the doll pages of Hobbies
mag each month and sending the required SASE for mimeographed listings of dolls
and parts for sale. Buying from these lists sight unseen with very few of
the items pictured was almost a shot in the dark. In order to describe
the item offered, the seller would cite page and book for illustrations from
the few doll books available. Claire Fawcett’s Guide was a popular
reference. Collectors gave names to different china heads such as Mrs
Bumblebottom or Mary Lincoln or other titles from these early books. In this
way you could know about what you were ordering if you sent for a doll with a
head called Dagmar. Some of these names persist until today. Very
early on, I desired most an Izannah Walker doll as pictured in Mrs. Johl’s
books and an American Greiner doll which I did not own until the 1970’s.
I had almost no money at all for dolls. I could
manage a bit from the grocery money to buy a china doll head for $2.35 or
such. But I was excited over my new hobby and set out to see
what could be discovered locally. The town of Comanche about 15
miles from me, had as all small towns did, a junk shop or two. In these I asked
after china dolls. One shop keeper said he had seen a doll head at the iron
man’s place. It was common in a small town for someone to put old pieces of
iron in their front yard hoping to sell or swap them. These pieces of old farm
equipment or hoes without handles and other iron pieces were often found as the
iron man would check the city dump grounds on a more or less regular
basis. When I found the iron man he told me yes he had had a
little chine doll head from the dump grounds and sold it to Mrs. Dofloppy
down the street for 50 cents. The iron man’s grandchild had
been playing with the little head in a coffee can in the dirt of the
yard. Coffee cans of that time were wide and squat.
I knocked on the door there and was admitted to the living room
to visit this woman, and I soon spied the little doll head sitting on top of a
bud vase on a shelf. This perch on top of the flared vase gave a
“body” to the little head, which was without it’s shoulders. I was
able to purchase the doll head for 75 cents. I clasped my first real
antique doll find and was thrilled with her! She was a little common
blond head, needing everything. Hands and feet were ordered from Mark
Farmer, and I made the doll a body and a dress, and named her
Resurrection! I was not to have her long. My mama came from
Dallas on a visit and grabbed Resurrection and announced that She must have the
doll. My protests counted for nothing. Mama was building a salt box doll house
and intended to show it in the State fair that October and 6 inch tall
Resurrection was the very doll she needed. So in less than a
year, Resurrection went from the Comanche city dump to the state fair of Texas
in my mama’s winning blue ribbon exhibit. Believe!
Our family has not kept many of mama’s miniature rooms, and that
was not the only blue ribbon she won. But we do have Resurrection in that doll
house still. My mama’s little great great grandchildren ooh and ahh
at it through a pane of plexiglass. And the hobby that began for me in my 20’s has kept a firm
grip until this time in my 80’s. Macy and Ramsey, 4 and 8, love dolls passionately. The apples do not fall far from the tree.
Helen
wrote this as a comment :
"I
own a "cousin" to Resurrection, the little blonde china of this
story. In the 1960s, my sister's family lived in Comanche, and on a visit to a
junk shop there locally called M & S (though the faded sign said Mc's), I
found a small brown metal object which proved to be a rusted tin doll head, a
German Minerva for a 12" doll. I bought it for a few dollars (inflation
had come to the doll market there), took it home with me to Fort Worth to a
doll repair shop for repainting, ordered china arms and legs and a body pattern
from my Mark Farmer catalog, made a body from a pale pink linen guest towel,
and muslin pantalettes, petticoat and a dimity dress. The "professional"
paint job proved to be amateurish and unsatisfactory, and since I didn't yet
know Edyth O'Neill, I couldn't take it to her to fix. So I repainted it myself,
not good, but better, and at least my own mess. My dear sister is gone now, but
I still have that doll, packed away in storage waiting to see the light of day
again. Edyth perfectly named her reclaimed treasure, but mine is still
Nameless. Helen Pringle"
Helen and I still play dolls together till this day. e
