Sasha exhibition for a local literary festival

Every year the town where we live holds a 2 week literary festival in late January/early February, with a variety of events, mainly talks about books, literary topics or illustrated visits to places around the world plus some musical events with a literary flavour. 

I have participated before, sometimes giving talks (about our street organ and the church organ), mostly attending talks by others, and also playing in our church band in an interactive concert for children (Shake, Rattle and Sing). 

As the Sasha Festival was held locally last year, we created our two Dress a Sasha displays with their much more solid backdrops than we had been able to do for USA Sasha festivals, and we couldn't quite bare to dismantle them after all the work we put into them, so Laura, Miranda, Nicholas James and Timothy have stayed on display in our house ever since in their costumes. This was partly because I had the germ of an idea for the local literary festival. Petrana's theme of English Garden had prompted me to illustrate a favourite story book and my daughter to recreate a pre-Raphaelite painting about an English legend. We also had our 2012 English Sasha Festival Dress a Sasha entries to use, especially as one of them depicts a local nursery rhyme.

At one point I contemplated a talk to explain our displays and the versatility of Sasha Morgenthaler's doll creation for telling stories but a talk was likely to only be attended by adults. What I really wanted was to put on a mini exhibition which would encourage engagement with the themes and stories illustrated by our Sasha dolls and perhaps encourage people to try their hand at creating stories with dolls, props and toys. So I devised what I called a story time and literary treasure trail to complement the exhibition.

I negotiated to use a museum display cabinet already in the local library, it usually displays certificates and trophies won by our local Gardening group who beautify the town. The group very kindly removed all their items from the cabinet for what we thought would be 2 weeks. I think they were happy to do it when I explained two of the displays featured gardens, also they're a lovely group of people.

The day before the festival began, I took a couple of hours off work to set up the exhibition display. First the library manager and I had to adjust the level of the suspended glass shelves in the cabinet, which meant removing both glass shelves (thick heavy toughened glass but we didn't want to drop them!) then adjusting the support rods then placing one shelf back and safely storing the other shelf. This is because I needed height for the displays. I had spent the previous weekend gathering everything needed for the 2012 displays and substituting a couple of items which we no longer owned (a soft toy cow and toy dog for Hey diddle diddle), plus doing some boot swapping because I had reused the 2012 long black boots in 2024 and they were definitely needed with the 2012 outfit.

Setting up the 4 displays was a lot of fun and very satisfying. It was also gratifying to have the positive reactions of the library staff when they came to see how it was going. Then the library manager helped me put up the trail clues around the library walls, her enthusiasm and excitement was infectious. I had an answer sheet for people to use and place into a box for a prize draw once the trail is taken down.

The library manager has promoted the trail and exhibition locally, with the result that one of the local junior schools decided to bring a class of children to use the exhibition to support a creative project they are working on, apparently they brought another class the following week, after the literary festival was over. It turned out parents asked the library to keep the trail and exhibition up for a few weeks longer so they could use it for a half term activity. We checked with the literary festival organisers plus the gardening group and town council who all agreed it could stay up for longer. I had a lovely email from one of the gardening group who did the trail with her 12 year old grandson, they both enjoyed it. The lights in the display cabinet were repaired shortly after we set up the display by one of the gardening group, then PAT tested to ensure they were safe to use.

As two of the displays feature nursery rhymes, the library manager and I brain-stormed ideas of how to use those with the youngest children who visit the library for story time. I happened to mention that we have some old nursery rhymes arranged for our street organ and showed her pictures of the organ. The result was the fun we had at the weekly story time session during the literary festival - we brought the street organ into the library for the children, their parents and grandparents to enjoy singing along to the nursery rhymes we had, plus singing others we don't yet have on the street organ. My husband now has a list of another 9 nursery rhymes to arrange and add to the 6 we already play! This session was also part of the literary festival (though the library does story time every week, the two in the literary festival had special literary themes).

So for your enjoyment, in this post are photos of the Sasha dolls on display, plus some photos of the trail sheets around the inside of the library.

We're already discussing a display and trail for next year, possibly featuring our 2017 and 2022 Sasha festival Dress a Sasha entries.

Hey diddle diddle - updated from the 2012 Dress a Sasha assembled by my then 8 year old daughter

Fair Rosamund - 2024 Dress a Sasha by my daughter 

Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle on the upper shelf

Ride a Cock Horse - my updated 2012 Dress a Sasha display

Ride a Cock Horse

Reuben as the ostler

A Secret Garden - my 2024 Dress a Sasha

Mary, Dickon and Colin in the Secret Garden

The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse in the display cabinet

Library books of nursery rhymes, dolls houses and The Secret Garden

The literary trail sheets were on walls and windows around the library.

Start of the literary trail Sheets 1, 2 and 3

Sheets 4 and 5

Sheets 6 and 7

Sheets 8 and 9

Sheet 10

Sheets 11 and 12

Sheet 13

Sheets 14, 15 and 16 then instructions to go upstairs for the next sheets

Sheet 17

Sheet 18

Sheets 19 and 20

Sheets 21, 22, 23 and 24 on the wall beside the display cabinet

The display cabinet from the side

Today, as half term is over, my daughter and I removed the displays from the cabinet and adjusted the shelves back to their former positions in readiness for the gardening group certificates and trophies.

I took these photos just before we removed the doll displays earlier today after 5 weeks on display in the library.

Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle with the lights on in the cabinet

The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse just before we removed them from the cabinet

The display cabinet open and lit up just before we removed the displays

Me with the doll display just before we removed it today

Sasha Festival 2024 Day 2 - Dress a Sasha set up plus dinner guest speaker and souvenirs

After the Children's Fund Auction had finished and the tables which had displayed those items were cleared, the Dress a Sasha entrants were able to set up our displays. We brought our display items (rather large) down to the room using the trolley I normally use for our boxes of street organ music (it is a fabulous multi-purpose trolley which can also be a sack barrow).

There were five categories in action for the 2 themes. Sadly there were no children at this year's festival, and only one teenager, who entered the English Garden assembled by Teenager category on her own. 

The two themes were English Garden and Afternoon tea, with Assembled by or Crafted being the additional elements to split into categories as follows:

English Garden - Assembled by Adult

English Garden - Crafted by Adult

Afternoon Tea - Assembled by Adult

Afternoon Tea - Crafted by Adult

Crafted means all the clothing apart from shoes/socks have to be made by the entrant. 

Assembled by means all the clothing is made by others and the ensemble is assembled by the entrant.

Now that my younger daughter is no longer a teenager, we both entered the English Garden Crafted by Adult. This meant we were competing with each other, however in the months leading up to the festival, we bounced ideas and encouraged each other, it never felt like a competition in our home and I was extremely proud of what my daughter created, especially as she learned so much sewing technique along the way.

I have blogged about what we created in two separate posts: Dress a Sasha created by DollMum's daughter and Dress a Sasha created by DollMum.

Because some people turned up a bit later than others to set up and I wasn't aware of a list of entrants (apparently 18 but only 15 arrived), not all the entries were grouped together in their categories and there was some confusion when a couple of descriptions were hand written on the wrong colour card for the category being entered (we had prepared and printed our descriptions in advance, so did not have that problem). Also there were some entries where the two themes were blended by the entrant and were labelled for one theme, though people might have interpreted them as being in the other theme. For future festivals, to avoid this confusion, I suggest having a printed list of entries in advance so the organiser knows exactly how much table space to allow for each category and each entrant knows in advance what their entrant number will be. If there is ever a Sasha Festival in the UK again and I can attend, please may I organise the Dress a Sasha competition before the festival commences.

Our photos in this post are our Dress a Sasha entries once set up. Photos of the other Dress a Sasha entries will be in a day 3 post, as we were not able to take photos of them until the following morning.

Fair Rosamund and The Secret Garden in the 'English Garden created by Adult' category

DollMum's daughter: Fair Rosamund and DollMum: The Secret Garden 

Fair Rosamund in her garden

Fair Rosamund from the side

Close up of Fair Rosamund's bodice lacing and embroidered waistband

Fair Rosamund in her garden, side view

The Secret Garden

Mary in The Secret Garden

Dickon and Colin in The Secret Garden

Colin tends his tulips in The Secret Garden

Robin, spade, roses, fox and tulips

Fox in the garden

Robin on the spade

Friday evening was dinner together in the conference room, some of us dressed up a bit for the evening. This was the first of the two occasions when we had table hostesses for each table. My daughter and I ended up on a table of 'spares' with no hostess because some people have guests so there is spillage of festival attendees on an additional table, but plenty of hostess gifts, so each of us received a different gift from different table hostesses, which was fun. I was thrilled to receive a gift from JoAnn (a gorgeous little tote bag containing a Peanuts book, a pair of Minnesota shorts with canoes on it and a lovely little white hat) and my daughter received a lovely Sasha logo dress made by Laura O.

Trendon Elliott and Melanie came to dinner on Friday evening

After dinner, we had a guest speaker, none other than John Doggart (son of Sara and John Doggart who owned the Trendon doll factory), who presented a fascinating talk with slides about the innovations which had lead to the factory production of the English Sasha doll. The Doggart family and its ancestral branches had clearly been a family of innovators/inventors/engineers and creatives, no wonder the Trendon dolls are so wonderfully crafted. He was also able to show how there was a Milton Keynes connection in the Doggart family story (John is a retired architect and had worked on some of the innovative buildings in the new town of Milton Keynes, he mentioned that Sasha Morgenthaler had visited Milton Keynes). He also explained that John and Sara had first become aware of Sasha dolls via the Graphis magazine, then the Lindt chocolate wrappers.

Friday evening dinner our table

Friday evening dinner

Friday evening dinner

Friday evening dinner

Smiles for the camera at the Friday evening dinner

John Doggart's talk about Sasha and the Innovators

John Doggart introduces Sasha and the Innovators

John Doggart mentions Bletchley Park

John references Milton Keynes innovations

Innovative architecture in Milton Keynes

John and Sara Doggart

Close knit and supportive family of innovators

Friedland contribution to an essential part in the Spitfire

Graphis magazine

Graphis article about Sasha

Graphis note about good toy manufacture

Technical diagram of innovative head mould for vinyl dolls

Sara Doggart and 
Brenda Walton with a Sasha doll

Geoff Lawton, one of the Trendon innovators

Sasha Morgenthaler gave young Jason Lawton a teddy bear called Pad when she visited the Trendon factory and worked with Jason's father Geoff.

Graphis description of the humanity of Sasha dolls

After John Doggart's fascinating talk, Petrana told us we could open our Festival souvenir boxes. There were lots of gasps of delight when we did because Petrana had made beautiful smocked dresses for each of us, with different fabric, so no two dresses were the same, with matching shoes and underwear. Thank you Petrana, we are delighted with our souvenir outfits. My daughter was very pleased to get a dress which goes well with black shoes, and I'm very happy with the gorgeous pale blue and white pattern and white shoes for my outfit.

My festival souvenir outfit box

My festival souvenir outfit by Petrana - wow!

My daughter's festival souvenir outfit by Petrana - just what she likes

Trudi my C1 Studio doll sits on our table after we had wrapped up our festival souvenirs again

It had been a very long, busy and interesting day at the 2024 Sasha Doll festival.