Dolly Jolly 2022 part 1

The long awaited Dolly Jolly had arrived and we started driving north as soon as my daughter got out of school early. Despite the heavy traffic we made it to Darlington by 6:30pm so were in time for dinner at 7:00pm with the others who were attending - private dining in a large room with the windows open.

The first evening dinner included the raffle. I brought in the picnic prize I had made which Janet decided would be the final raffle ticket of the evening.

Raffle prizes including the picnic hamper, picnic rug and Easter bonnet outfit I had contributed

Raffle prizes galore!

We all admired the other prize table, displaying the prizes for the Dolly Bingo for the second evening, a tantalising array of top prizes.

The Dolly Bingo prizes table

Most people had brought one or more doll to dinner and after we had eaten I went round the table taking photos of the dolls. We brought Laura and Florence to dinner with us.

Florence in her Windmill 'Ted Menton' pinafore dress
and Laura in an outfit by Lorraine Tyler and a Dollydoodles hoodie

Dolls at dinner

Harry Potter with Hedwig and Dobby

A little sweetie with her toy dog and bear

Two little Helen Kish dolls

Three doll friends

A Gotz Sasha with a Dionne Quintuplet

A glorious rag doll, very huggable

Two beautiful Sasha girls

A Zwergnase girl having a glass of wine!

We bought several strips of raffle tickets and were amazed to win 12 lovely prizes (I haven't taken photos of them yet). Thank you to all those who donated prizes, everyone attending won more than one prize. It was such a fun evening and so good to catch up with previous doll friends plus meet some new doll friends.

The following morning Teddy, Alice and I went shopping for our contributions to the picnic which I had organised for that day. It was a glorious spring morning, so we were hopeful the picnic would not be rained on. 

Tricia had coordinated the room hopping - this involved those who had dolls they wanted to display putting them on show in their hotel rooms, each of us being given the list of room numbers plus the times they were open. There were 5 rooms in the morning session and 5 in the afternoon session. My daughter and I did not have a room display because she was revising for her examinations in our room, so I visited the morning rooms after returning from picnic grocery shopping. My photos only indicate the order I visited the rooms, I am not labelling these to indicate ownership of any of the dolls and scenes depicted.

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Lenci doll in Room 1

Sasha dolls and friends in Room 1

A mixed collection of dolls (including Sasha, Maggie Iacono, Lati Yellow, Topper Dawn, Schoenhut, Pongratz, Ruby Red and Ten Ping) in Room 2

Some Sasha and Gregor dolls in Room 3

A Roddy doll with Roddy and Rosebud friends in Room 3

Some Sasha dolls in Room 4

Trendon Sasha sisters joined by their Gotz Sasha sister in Room 4

Close up of a Sasha in Room 4

Sasha, Lenci, Frozen Charlotte and the Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

The Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

A mixed collection of dolls (including Pippa, Jakks Pacific, Helen Kish, Ball jointed dolls, Xenis, Rainbow High) in Room 5

Some of the dolls in Room 5

Rag dolls, Rainbow High, Chrissie and others in Room 5

Ball jointed doll in Room 5

Two restored dolls in Room 5

Then it was picnic time! 

Unexpected identification of doll cabinet residents

I invested in a couple of doll identification books in the hope of finding the maker of my playdoll Susie, but still no luck. However I was able to identify the maker of the sadly worse for wear occupant of the bottom shelf - Joy the disco diva. She is in fact a Rock Flowers Heather doll, though of course is in anything but mint condition! 'The Collectors Guide to Dolls of the 1960s and 1970s volume II' on page 165 shows two super examples of this doll, and also shows outfit #4052 Jeans in Fringe which I remember my sister had for Joy as well. The mint version dolls are wearing the orange sunglasses which I do remember (long since lost).

I was very gratified to find my Jasmine Pippa doll featured in the other book I bought - 'British Teenage dolls 1956 - 1984' by Francis Baird. There is a nice section on the Pippa family in this book, with some wonderful colour photos, and I was able to work out which Pippa my sister was given for her birthday - it was the Bridesmaid Pippa Gail with shoulder length brown curled in hair, but my sister named her Laura, probably after Laura Ingalls Wilder, as we were reading the 'Little House on the Praire' books at the time. I have a yet to fulfil dream of visiting all the Laura houses but have not managed to visit the USA so far.

The British Teenage dolls book also has a sizable section on Sindy dolls which I have yet to pour over properly. Unfortunately the only Roddy dolls in the book are the teenage ones, which are nothing like my Susie. So I have ordered more books ('The Collector's Guide to British Dolls Since 1920' and 'British Dolls of the 1960s') which hopefully will have what I'm looking for, and may perhaps help me identify other dolls in my collection.

My doll cabinet - middle shelf part 3

Back to a posting about my doll cabinet after a spate of nostalgia regarding my first play doll.

Beside the German band set sits a pippa type doll with no name. She is wearing an overall suit that belonged to my sister's Pippa doll Laura. I came across this doll in a junk basket of dolls on a stall a few years ago, the lower part of her torso is missing, so she has to wear overalls to cover her exposed ball jointed legs, a skirt and blouse just wouldn't work.

My Pippa doll Jasmine sits alongside the nameless non pippa. I got Jasmine almost by accident. We had come to the UK to spend Christmas with my grandparents in 1978, and I had brought my Sindy doll with me as we couldn't bring bigger dolls due to weight and space in our luggage. So Susie did not make that journey. For Christmas my sister was given the Ballerina Sindy whom she named Sue (I had a plain one that I had bought with birthday money) and we were each given Sindy related furniture, I remember receiving the Sindy orange tent and a plastic sleeping bag for Sally (the name of my Sindy) whilst my sister was given a Sindy sideboard and crockery. However I was also given the Sindy dressing table but when it was removed from the box we found it was broken. My Granny was very upset as this my Grandparents gift to me, so she promised that we would return it to the shop and I could choose something else.

Taking me to a toyshop (Tunbridge Wells) just after Christmas was perhaps risky, and for me was a very exciting experience, I couldn't believe my luck in being allowed to select something. I think Granny thought I would choose an alternative item for my Sindy (the dressing table was out of stock), but as soon as I saw Jasmine I just knew I had to have her, despite this being 'yet another doll'!

Jasmine is a Japanese Pippa - she came dressed in a duck blue kimono (which I still have) and I think I fell for her because she looked so exotic and different from anything familiar (well who was going to be tempted by domestic equipment for a Sindy when you could have a far eastern doll who could add a whole different flavour to play story lines). I was soon making additional outfits for her, and did buy one outfit in that shop (of the few that remained after the Christmas rush - yellow and purple football kit of all things when I'm not into the game!). My sister was given her Pippa doll Laura at her next birthday. I made a brown felt trouser suit for that doll that my sister didn't appreciate! (Laura was a sophisticated doll, in my sister's view the suit made her look frumpish).

Jasmine is displayed in her straw hat that I got from somewhere and a dress I made out of scraps of stretch jersey fabric. I've still got a few of her original bought and home made outfits.

Jasmine wearing a home made dress, black shoes and a straw hat

Jasmine has thick (now rather wiry) jet black hair
which means the hat perches rather than sits.

My doll cabinet - middle shelf part 1

In the left corner of the middle shelf sits Matilda with Judith on her lap. Matilda is a Pippa type doll with long blond (rather frizzled) hair. She originally belonged to one of my school friends but we did a swap. She got her name from the book 'The Ship that flew' by Hilda Lewis, which was a favourite of mine at the time (and years later I bought a copy as the version I read when a child was a school library book). The Matilda character in the book was a girl from the middle ages whom the four children with the magical ship visited when they went back in time, and she had long hair. I think it was this and the shape of her face that prompted me to give her that name.


She is wearing a dress I made from material that was left over from a dress made for me when my father remarried. I've still got the full size dress!

Judith is very small, just under 2 inches tall (about 48mm). When I was about 7 or 8 I had private Art lessons from the mother of a pupil at school, who ran the group lessons in her garage which she had turned into a wonderful studio. We did some great projects in those lessons, including making puppets for a show which was put on in her living room for all the parents at the end of term. I can remember two of those shows, the first was done with glove puppets, and was Jonah Man Jazz, and the second was a made up story about two children going in a rocket to the Moon with their mouse that got enlarged by a ray gun. They had a grandmother who got left behind. I was given the task of making the two children, the grandmother and the giant mouse. These were all marionnettes, and I think I've still got some of them. One day my Art teacher sent me from the studio to fetch something from her living room (probably some material or a source book, I can't recall) and I spotted little Judith lying on the dining room table. She had no clothes on and was the dearest little doll I had ever seen at that point, though not in great condition even then. I took her back to the studio along with whatever it was I had to fetch, and showed her to my Art teacher who told me I could keep her as I had been doing such a good job with my puppets.



I made the little felt dungarees for Judith. She has been through the wars though, as at one stage her leg was broken, so I glued it back with epoxy. She also has a rather unsightly piece of wire sticking out of the back of her head, which I left alone rather than try to saw it off. Earlier this week my elder daughter expressed an interest in looking at her, and while I was removing the dungarees, both her arms fell off as the elastic band had turned black and disintegrated. I did a careful repair by using twisted doubled over cotton thread from the hooks on her arms. Fortunately they are not too loose. Her legs are not jointed. I used to take her to school in a little box in my blazer pocket and was teased mercilessly by some of the other children for doing so. To me she was a little mascott, something to help get me through the school day.

My doll cabinet - bottom shelf part 3

The next character on the bottom shelf of my display cabinet is a little plastic boy costume doll in his green lederhosen, red tie, leg warmers and rucksack. He also has a cheerful green hat with a feather, so is probably meant to represent the same region as the bigger girl with a green hat.

Hiking boy

Beside him is a rather sinister looking little girl. Her eyes are sunken into her severely painted face, and her clothes are also quite dark, so she is rather spooky. I can't recall where I picked her up from, probably another market stall. Her mohair wig is glued on rather badly.

Spooky girl

The bigger costume girl beside her was bought for me from an antique shop by the same aunt who had sent me the American/Canadian Indian boy several years before. This was because while we were browsing, I couldn't put the doll down, so she decided to buy her for me. I named the doll Anastasia because she looked sort of Russian to me, and at the time I was reading about Anna Anderson by Peter Kurth.

Anastasia

Joy stands quietly in the corner. She is the same size as a Pippa doll, but is earlier and has rubbery bendy legs. She came with a single record and a special stand that fixed on the centre of the record when revolving on the record player, so making her appear to dance to the music. She is actually my sister's doll. The stand and record are long since lost, but amazingly Joy still has her original clothes, although has worn various Pippa doll clothes. The back of her head has been glued where the vinyl eventually split, her long sweeping beautiful blonde hair has been cut very badly and the rest of her body has been quite punished by small girl rough play. Poor Joy was one of our earliest dolls, and the scars she bore served to remind us to treat our subsequent dolls with more care. I could never bring myself to throw her away, I think she deserves a gentle peaceful retirement and I always liked her face.

Joy the disco diva

Beside Joy is a doll I picked up on a market stall for a pound. She is a Dear Judy doll and is still in her original packaging. I decided to keep her this way, so she has never been played with and is rather scantily dressed in a bikini.

Dear Judy

In front of all the dolls on the bottom shelf is:

my collection of frogs (a family of six) and two dragons,

my mother's three brass monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil)

and my miniture snow globe 36 mm (1.5 inches) high in total

Snowing

This little snowy scene belonged to the person who tested my for my Brownie Flower Arranger badge. I had to telephone to make the appointment (terrifying - I still dislike making phone calls to strangers), cycle to her house with all my flowers, do the arrangements in vases on her table, have my test card signed and then take everything back home again! While I was there I spotted the little snow globe in her display cabinet. I thought it was wonderful and said so. I was amazed when she gave it to me (didn't know the flower arrangements were that good!). I still find this whole experience surprising as nowadays for child protection reasons Brownie badges would never be judged by a Brownie visiting a private house (even if the judge was CRB checked, in those days the testers were approved), and the fact that it also resulted in me receiving an unexpected gift from the tester would also not be considered advisable or ethical in these Politically Correct times. But that was a different era in so many ways. The little snow globe reminds me that being brave enough to speak out in admiration for something can sometimes result in unexpected rewards. For a shy child this was a particularly nice way to learn to be a little bolder.