Adventures in Dolling

We are past July 4th, and Halloween, Fall, and The Holidays Loom!  Thanks to the nearly 200,000 readers on this and American Doll and Toy Museum Blog.  Thanks for the thousands and thousands of readers on our other blogs, here and on GoodReads.  I also publish on Facebook, LinkedIn, Kickstarter, and Referral Key, and on Antique Trader,the doll column.

Another awesomely wild season of Virtual Doll Convention, Auctions, National Doll Festival and UFDC are coming to a rapid close, but with more to come in future months.  Locally, doll shows and estate sales are in full swing.  My article in Bru will soon be out in Antique Trader, which is rising like the Phoenix and better than ever.  New dolls for young and old will soon be hitting the shelves in anticipation of the holidays, and seasonal decorative dolls like Annalee and Spirit of Halloween zombie babies and animatronics will soon be haunting stores.  It’s a great day to be a collector of any kind of dolls!

I’d like to share a story with you from last week.  I went to a couple estate sales, a big venture for me since I’ve been fighting asthma related respiratory and other infections.  No energy, but my friend who does sales  and dolls got me out.   I had my arms full of nice artist dolls, yes, at bargain prices, and a couple of antiques.  A gentleman who turned out to be a sale helper said to me,” Do you have a lot of little girls, or is that all for you?”  Something like that.  His tone was less than admiring, more than a bit snotty.  “They’re all for me,” I said.  “Would you like to come over later and play?”  That did it; he helped me out with the dolls and a huge cache of their boxes.  Hmph!!

So, collect proudly.  Bespeak it to the world, have fun, don’t blow your budget, or blow it if you can, don’t be a doll diva, and enjoy the friends, fun, and hobby that is dolls.

One Small Step for Man . . . Miniaturization and the Space Program

Last night, I watched a TV show about the moon landing's 50th anniversary.  Much of the preparation dealt with the use of intricate models and miniature, the kind of thing discussed in Simon Garflield's In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World.  One commentator made the point that the miniaturization involved in promoting the space program led to miniaturization in things we use all the time, e.g., TV's, cell phones, radios, etc.  Even computers became more and more effective as they became smaller.

Robotics also played a role; think early automatons and androids; even Lindbergh had a collection of them.  These, too, were early computers and robots.

So, two things related to dolls, miniatures, and robotic technology which emerged with automatons and mechanical dolls, aided the space program.

Antiques Road Show recently showed miniature space suits, prototypes put on companion dolls of the sixties.  They were special gifts to those in NASA involved in their construction.

Don't forget all the space and sci fi toys, and the post I did a couple years ago on how toys and moon models inspired NASA scientists and astronauts based on a collection at The University of Iowa.

Go, dolls!

We at the Museum are not single minded; we love astronomy, comets, and literature,as well as the work of our monthly guest blogger, Dr. David H. Levy.

Skyward                     

By

David H. Levy

A Nightwatchman’s Journey: The Road not Taken

On Friday, June 14, my latest book, my autobiography entitled A Nightwatchman’s Journey: The Road not Taken was launched at the Royal Astronomical Society’s General Assembly in Toronto.    It is a book I have been working on for almost a decade, and it is the story of my life.    The book begins in medias res, in the midst of a suicide attempt that happened shortly after I graduated from Acadia.  I have suffered from depression throughout my life, but this book describes my efforts to conquer it.  It tells of how I made many poor decisions in my life, but how two of them were good.  The best decision was marrying Wendee, which I did in 1997 and with whom I have had 22 happy years.   The other one was to begin, on December 17, 1965, a search for comets. 

It took me nineteen years, searching with telescopes for 917 hours 28 minutes, before I finally found my first comet in 1984.  Since then I have found 22 more.  One was an electronic find shared with Tom Glinos in 2010.  Thirteen were photographic film discoveries shared with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker (including Shoemaker-Levy 9 which collided with Jupiter in 1994) and there were nine visual comet finds.  If the first seventy-one years of my life had been just staring through the eyepiece of a telescope, however, there would not have been much to write about.  What happened on the road less travelled by, like Robert Frost, has made all the difference. 

Comets, I learned, are not just for viewing.  They are for reading and for studying. At first, I did some high school reading about the discovery of Comet Ikeya-Seki, the brightest comet of the twentieth century.  Years later in graduate school at Canada’s Queen’s University, I prepared a master’s thesis based on the 19^th century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who observed Comet Tempel in 1864 and subsequently wrote a beautiful poem about it.  But the writer who seemed to be most into astronomy, and whose love of the sky I turned into my Ph.D., was none other than the great William Shakespeare, whose collected works contain more than two hundred references to the sky, including the opening lines to I Henry VI, one of his earliest plays:

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky.

 Even now, when I spend an evening or all night under the stars, I am amazed to be able to share my experiences with so many people, in all walks of life, who have come before me.    Taking a road “that was grassy and wanted wear” might have been risky, but it did point me toward many adventures I’ll never forget.

Photo Provided by Dr. David  H. Levy

Ruth Gibbs and Royal Copenhagen

What do butcher shops and dolls have in common?  Well, some dolls are made of various types of bone, especially ancient Coptic and Roman dolls, and the witch dolls Anne Rice made famous in the witching hour!  Don't forget the famous Beatles album deemed "The Baby Doll Album" where baby doll parts are hung with cuts of meat.  It is now worth thousands of dollars, but caused an uproar in its day.  I saw it at Sears when I was around 9; wish I'd lobbied to buy it!  

Also, G. Stanley Hall in A Study of Dolls (1897) writes that some children made dolls from meat!

My connection is that the local UPS access point is at Cattleman's Meat Market!  I picked up these wonderful dolls that I won at Theriault's Rendezvous auctions there. As my friend Mary Hillier used to say, dolls are where you find them!!

Ruth Gibbs Godey's Ladies were generally marked R.G./Ruth Gibbs on the back.  They came dressed in civil war or historic gowns and were china heads with china limbs.  Most were six inches or so, but larger 11 inch dolls were made;  the bigger dolls sometimes had luster necklaces and shoes.  Smaller dolls had shoes that matched their varied hair color, blonde, brunette or redhead, or luster shoes. The dolls I won are shown below; the large doll wears her original net underwear.  One doll is dressed as a bride.

My first two of these dolls were gifts to me when I was 9; they came in their original boxes, which I'd wished many times I had kept.

Gibbs dolls were made in Flemington, NJ.  Some had a pink tint to the China, once known as "pink luster", other rare dolls had brown glazed skin.  The Birmingham Doll Club of Alabama has an interesting post about them. Arlene M. Coleman has published a book on their history, available from Amazon. (Ruth Gibbs' Godeys' Little Ladies Dolls).  Their costumes are meant to remind one of the plates from Godey's Ladies Book, ed. Sara Josepha Hale, who helped give us Thanksgiving as we know it.

The doll below with the cool boots is a Danish china head; there are great articles and photos of these in John Noble's Dolls, and in Coleman's Encyclopedia, Vol. I.  This doll in its great clothes is a reissue by the Royal Copenhagen porcelain factories.  She was a doll on my bucket list.  If I can find the china head with teeth, once in the Laura Treskow collection, also featured in Coleman's under "teeth" and a sleep eye china, well I'll be ecstatic!

My Royal Copenhagen doll was made in the 1970s from an old mold.  Original dolls were often made during the 1840s and 50s, with some said to resemble Jenny Lind, while others were said to be more like Queen Victoria.  Their hair is brownish, not really black.

Royal Copenhagen has been made and collected since the firm was founded in 1775 by Queen Juliane Marie.  For more history, see Royal Copenhagen.com.  They are long loved for their blue and white china, especially their Christmas plates.  They made a doll based on one of their figurines, done in the blue and white palette, during the 80s.  I was able to find one of these, too.  I love having the plates and figurines as well.

I stand corrected!

Just when  thought there were no more Happy Meal Toys and Friends, Wendy's announced a premium toy and I found three boxes full, and several tubs individually priced at a yard sale!  I bought the three boxes and several other dolls including Patti Playpal in original dress from my friend, Jane F.  At the yard sale, I got the complete set of 101 Dalmations for $5.  Wow!  Toys at that sale were priced between $1 and $2.50 per quart sized bag, with sets of CPKS, and other characters from the 70s-90s. I'm glad to be wrong, and have had a wonderful time going through these; the Toy Story characters were just amazing, and there were many Alexanders and Ronald McDonald characters, too.  

Just one box full of Fastfood Toy Premiums

These were in two other boxes, including the Fisher Price plane

Doll Artisan Guild® Who We Are 2019 Virtual Doll Convention

Attend the Ohio National Doll Show, October 2019