Doll Snobs Stay Home!

We’re no Doll Snobs

As we all continue to face Covid19 challenges and life challenges in general, we find ways to move on.  For us at American Doll & Toy Museum, it means literally moving to our new building, the former 30/31 Branch Library.

I admit I have my hands full; nothing moves as quickly as we’d like.  I’m paying more rent for the current building than I thought, but I don’t mind because I have great landlords and a good location.  The challenge is packing, and not having anywhere to stack boxes that are packed up.  I try to work them into the doll landscape, so to speak, but I’m open only by appointment now, till late summer or early fall when we’ll open our new larger location.

Dolls and toys seem to crawl out of the woodwork at home, but it’s a nice problem to have.  All this gives me time to look at the dolls and toys, and to ponder.  

It occurs to me that we do represent playthings from prehistory to now.  We have everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, and while we are probably not the largest doll collection in the world, we come close.  Dolls are humanities historians, as are the toys that reside with them.  We have examples representing Neanderthal goddess figures, to the current dolls on the market.  Many of our residents are museum pieces, but others are beloved examples from my childhood and my friends’ childhood.

We’ve had wonderful people donate their treasures to us for safekeeping; we don’t sell our donations, by the way.  What I sell in my Etsy store and in our modest gift shop are items I have made, or bought especially for the museum.  Their sale helps to keep us going.

We have kept the faith and a light on in our doll house windows, though we were forced to close nearly four months after we opened.  We will keep going.  This has been my dream and passion since age 4, can’t give up now.

I enjoy all kinds of dolls and toys.  I have always been eclectic in my taste, and the same is true of my collecting.   Every toy tells a story; a museum should represent all those stories, not just one.  We enjoy our French bisques and German characters, our 1860 rubber doll, our  Liberty of London Henry VIII and his wives, but we also love our Barbies, vintage to current, our Frozen Charlottes, our dime

store plastic babies from the sixties, homemade wrecks, well loved plush, and even Living Dead Dolls and My Little Pony friends.

Too many doll diva arias spoil the hobby.  It’s bad enough we have this creepy doll garbage floating around. We don’t have to do it to ourselves. I get turned off by hearing once too often that someone who collects dolls isn’t interested in other’s collections because they don’t collect that type of doll. You don’t have to own it to educate yourself in the hobby, or be aware of what others like.  

You don’t have to disrespect what someone else enjoys.  That’s just cruel.  If someone likes midcentury mass produced bisque dolls in frilly outfits, that’s his/her call.  If another collector likes Gene, or bean bag plush, or played with Barbies dressed in home made outfits, that also his/her call.   Were I forced to specialize, I would center on antiques, especially French fashion, metal heads, and international costume dolls, but it would be a hard choice.  

If I had too much of one type of doll or toy, I’d be bored.  I’d have what Helen Young, noted doll author and artist would call, an accumulation.  My dolls don’t bore me.  My toys and the books connected with them intrigue me.  

So, as we move forward, we hope to have stir happy childhood memories, and to share our collection with kids “from one to ninety two.”  We hope to teach about the cultures in our community, and about the cultures of all the people of the world.  We hope to inspire others to study and to collect, and we invite everyone to use our many books for their research, too.

Our admission will be modest, and will be waived for certain holidays.  We will also host programs, and classes on dolls and toys open to the public.  We will partner with other businesses and nonprofits, too.  So stay tuned, we’re just about to wind our music box up, and we plan to play a very long tune!!

American Doll and Toy Museum: The Dolls are Moving soon to their Forever Home!

American Doll and Toy Museum: The Dolls are Moving soon to their Forever Home!: The Dolls are Moving soon to their Forever Home! It’s happening; the citizens of American Doll & Toy Museum are moving to thei...

World Doll Day!

Once again we celebrate this notable day in doll collecting.  How did you spend your day?  I checked on American Doll & Toy Museum; we are nearly ready to move into our new facility, much larger with more room for our displays and gift shop.

I attended to great estate sales with more finds for the collection.  I have been rearranging dolls, washing clothes, and repairing those that need help.

We've had a rough year as a nonprofit; we opened on Small Business Saturday, and had to close almost three months later, right after our building was blessed.

I opened an Etsy store, Dr. E's Toy Museum, to help with rent and costs.  I am still blogging and writing, and reviewed the first set of proofs for my next book being published, Thinking outside the Doll House; A  Memoir.

We weathered some violent protests, COVID 19, and a serious family medical crisis, but it's all behind us now.  I'm exhausted, and bloodied but unbowed.  We will open ; we will survive!

Check us out on our other blogs, some in Japanese, Greek, German, and the International Doll Museum Blog, published in different languages.

I'd love to  hear your stories of doll collecting, and would love to post you pictures.

Happy Collecting!

Great Birthday Gift from a Friend

Ready to Open safely; we are up and Running

Estate Sale Finds

Flag Day Window

New Building

New Building

New Building

Gift Shop Merchandise

Estate Sale Find

Estate Sale Find

Current Museum

American Doll and Toy Museum: Where my Dolls Came From; PS We are Open Again, lo...

American Doll and Toy Museum: Where my Dolls Came From; PS We are Open Again, lo...: When I was a little girl, we took long road trips everywhere, gone from home three weeks at a time or more.  Usually, we headed towards San ...

A Spy in the Wild, Techno BJDs, Hollie Hobbies on Little House

Here is a little doll pourri of things that might interest us during this trying time.  A Spy in the Wild is a PBS show about animal automatons fitted with cameras.  They are sent out to wild habitats to film animals that before, could often not be filmed at all.  Some of the animal robots included a Komodo dragon, a wild big, tiger cub, polar bear cub, salmon, all kinds of flying birds, a sea turtle,crabs, all sort of wild things.    Wouldn't we love one for the museum!  So far, the wild pig was destroyed by a predator, but the others seem to function.  For more, go to PBS.org.


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I've mentioned before that Little House on the Prairie with Melissa Gilbert often features dolls.  In an episode where Mary Ingalls has a crush on a Carnival performer, tiny rag dolls are used as carnival tramps in a game of chance.  The prize?  A Knickerbocker Hollie Hobbie rag doll, contemporary when the show was made!!

Public Domain image

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April 2019 Doll Castle News magazine features The Smart Doll.  This is a doll that "designed and manufactured in Japan-utilizing modern 3D prototyping technologies together with traditional casting techniques called 'slush casting. ' (Nance DCN 26). This vinyl 1/3 scale doll with Manga looks is stylish and collectible, but she also lets you charge your phone, MacBook, and store 2TB data (Nance DCN 26).  The doll called  Mirai has become the official tourism mascot for Malaysia and Japan.  Apparently, she has been around since 2013.   DCN is an excellent magazine for doll collectors.  Please visit their site, and consider subscribing.  For almost fifty years, they have served the needs of doll collectors at all levels, writing about all kinds of dolls. My friend, the late Stephanie Hammonds who was an artist also created paper dolls for them.  Other noted paper doll artists and authors are Diana Vining, currently with The Virtual Doll Convention, and noted artist and author R. Lane Herron.

https://shop.smartdoll.jp/

Smart Doll, Public Domain

The Magic Lyrids, by our guest blogger, Dr. David Levy

Skyward for May 2020.

The magic Lyrids

Plenty of telescopes grace my observatory, but I still enjoy watching shooting stars, or meteors, more than anything else.  This year, after a break of several months, the Earth passed through the Lyrid meteor stream on the night of April 21.  The meteor shower takes place when the Earth encounters dust from Comet Thatcher, a comet that last appeared in 1861. I captured five meteors with my camera, of which one accompanies this article.   As I relaxed outdoors during this time, the memories began to flood back.

My first experience with the Lyrids was on April 22, 1963.  I was at the time a patient at the Jewish National Home for Asthmatic Children in Denver.  I wrote it up this way in my diary:  “I had a regular day today, until tonight.  I went out and saw a fireball (a very bright meteor.)  Then a big, fat, hunk of cloud came over. I saw no more meteors.”    The next night was also cloudy, and I saw no further meteors despite being outside for several hours.  “I officially considered this year’s meteor shower the most disappointing failure I have ever had.”    Not for long, however; I have been blessed with many far more spectacular failures since then. 

My love of the night sky goes back many years, to around 1960, but as I grew older I also developed a strong interest in literature, and that passion stems directly from my Dad.  I honestly feel that if I had not inherited his love of Shakespearen in particular, he might have taken me out of his will.  And I believe he was pleased when I took up English Literature at Acadia University in the 1970s.  But I recall back then, reading about Shakespeare’s references to eclipses in King Lear, and hardly giving them a second thought.

The next Lyrid shower I was part of took place on April 23, 1976.  I was engaged at the time to my “practice wife.”  (That marriage lasted barely two years.)  That Friday evening was clear and I was part of a team organized by the Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.  The sky was clear and we saw several meteors.  As I enjoyed the night, my mind roamed a little.  I wondered about how many other amateur astronomers might have enjoyed this particular meteor shower in earlier times. I also thought of writers who might have written about the sky. I was aware that Shakespeare wrote about eclipses (specifically in King Lear) and about meteors and comets as well.  At that very moment I decided that for my master’s thesis I would write about poets who have loved the night sky.  The poet I concentrated on, at Queen’s University, was Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Decades later, I finally received my Ph. D. from the Hebrew University, for the dissertation on Shakespeare’s many references and allusions to the night sky.  Among the hundreds of allusions I found, here is one from Richard II that looks on meteors and a lunar eclipse:

’Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d

And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;

10The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth. . . (2.4.1337-1340)

Figure 1)  This is the brightest Lyrid I saw, and recordered on the
night of April 21, 2020.

Figure 2) A number of years ago I recorded this Eta Aquarid meteor
while observing Lyrids.  This particular meteor is a large particle of
dust from Halley's comet.

The Lyrid meteor shower brings me back to the hazy dawn of my life, and my passion for astronomy.  May a shooting star brighten your nights as well.

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Review of Great Expectations

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Review of Great Expectations: Great Expectations , 1861 This could be the title or hashtag addressed to all of our lives right now.   We have great expectations of ...