My doll cabinet - top shelf part 3

The final two residents of my doll cabinet are two little fay dolls from Cape Town.  They are very small, being only about an inch tall.  Their heads are made of wooden beads, their hair looks like bright mohair and they are beautifully painted.  They match the little jug and bowl sets in my Triang Dollshouse.

The distinctive fay marking - fay is still trading
and sells miniature items in the
Craft Market at The Waterfront, Cape Town

I hope you have enjoyed exploring my Doll Cabinet shelves and meeting the residents.  Now I shall have to blog about my daughter's dollshouse, as mine is still in storage.  I'm hoping to get it out before Christmas, as we've temporarily taken our house off the market, so have no need to be living in a show home!

My doll cabinet - top shelf part 2

The second set of dolls on the top shelf are a little smaller than the 5 Hong Kong dolls from my previous post about my doll cabinet.

These three little treasures are identical.  They were made in Italy.  The two in homemade costumes were part of the chorus line for the doll theatre, and I made their little outfits out of scraps of slightly stretchy material, their boots and bonnets are felt.  Their elastic bands are perished, so their arms fall off, but they really are very cute all the same, with wonderfully natural moulded bodies for dolls so small.  I have some even smaller baby doll versions with bent legs, but those are in storage at present.  The doll in the centre is partly clothed in some national costume which had been glued onto the doll.

The arms on these three identical dolls are so detailed

On their backs is 'Made in Italy' with a logo showing a stork holding a baby.  I don't know which Italian factory made them, and would like to find out.

The next two dolls are unidentical plastic dolls, both Made in Italy, but by different companies.  The taller one has CS very clearly on its back and the other has a symbol/logo of some kind which looks like it could say FOLO, but I'm really not sure, as it could say FDLO.  I would like to know which Italian doll factories made these dolls.  They were picked up in my 20s from a table top sale somewhere.

The two Italian dolls of different makes

Markings on the shorter doll

Markings on the taller doll

My doll cabinet - top shelf part 1

The top shelf of my doll cabinet is the home for a collection of small plastic dolls, plus the two handmade jointed wooden dolls that I created myself.  There are several of particular types on the shelf.  Because of the way I've arranged the dolls, I don't want to work from left to right this time, but will talk about the dolls in categories, starting with the biggest.

The top shelf of My doll cabinet

Hong Kong dolls

These five plastic dolls have Made in Hong Kong on their backs, and came with outfits glued on.  However as you will see from the photo, I made dresses for some of them and embroidered initials on the dresses, as each doll had a name.  Some still have their names sellotaped on the top of their heads.  I bought them all as a teen from one of those shops that was small but seemed to sell everything, including a nice selection of pocket money dolls.  I had so many because I needed them for the chorus in theatrical productions!  During our early teens my sister and I built a miniature theatre out of wood, wire rods, fabric and paint.  It was rudimentary, but had rows of real side curtains like a proper stage and the main front curtains opened and shut when we pulled a cord.  We spent hours devising a show to all the music of the famous Musicals, so the dolls had changes of costumes and were positioned differently for each scene.  Sadly I never thought to take any photographs and after one season the theatre was abandoned and eventually broken up.  But these dolls are survivors from that time.  Their elastic bands holding their limbs to their torsos are perishing, so they are very wobbly now.  Some of them have their original plastic shoes, two have knitted boots that I made for them.  One of them had her eyes fall into her head, so I had to glue them in place, which means they no longer open and close.  If you know which factory made these dolls, please let me know.

Two of the girls, one with a dress over
her original outfit, the other with the original dress

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 2

Beside Matilda and Judith on the middle shelf is my comic Germanic band set. These little characters were given to me by an elderly German woman who was slowly dying of cancer in her spine, and we used to visit her after Church on Sundays as she was bedridden and could no longer get to the service. She had all kinds of curiosities on display in a cabinet in her bedroom and they were a good distraction for two little girls while our parents were talking with her. She always took an interest in which dolls or toys we had brought with us (more about that in a future blog, as she named some dolls for me) and was unfailingly kind, despite the pain she was in. We loved this little band, and she must have remembered that because after she died this little set was presented to us and eventually became mine.

Unfortunately the paint is flaking off in places in the 30 years or so that I have had these little figures and the guitar player's arm has broken so is held on badly with glue. The labels on the underside of their bases are in English, but they are in German style costumes, so I can only assume they were made for English tourists visiting Germany, Austria or Switzerland perhaps. They are wooden, but with springs for their necks which means their heads can wobble (I don't attempt this now, but we did when we were children) and their expressions are so entertaining. I think this little band is quite a hilarious combination - on the one hand there is the smart conductor and cellist, but the remaining players are playing folk type instruments and are wearing national costume not concert dress.

Accordian player

Guitar player

Guitar player from above

Cellist

Conductor

Trumpet player
(we used to bend his head down to play the trumpet)

Violin player

Violin player from above

If you can put a name to these figures, or tell me where they came from, I'd be really pleased.

The label on their bases says 'fine quality woodcraft handmade'.

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.

My doll cabinet - bottom shelf part 2

This little girl is a costume doll, though I'm not entirely sure which country she represents. Her costume looks sort of Bavarian to me, but I may be wrong. I bought her probably in a table top sale or charity type shop quite some time ago. I think she has a rather fetching green hat with a feather sticking out the top.

Next to her is a much newer doll, though dressed in clothes of 100 years ago. She came from a small gift shop and there must be thousands like her: a fairly cheap, porcelain doll for a dolls house. I think I bought her because I liked the fabric of her dress and her little yellow plaits!


Beside the porcelain girl is a little Spanish girl. Well either Spanish, or a gypsy girl on account of her large earrings. She was also a table top sale acquisition. She has little wooden clogs glued to the bottom of her feet (well they aren't really clogs because they don't slip on to her feet). Her clothes are very creased and really need washing and ironing, but this would be difficult to do as the dress appears to be nylon like fabric and glued on.

A view of her glued on clogs - maybe
to make her taller, as her dress is really too long for her

The last one for today is my adorable baby in her cradle. I bought this little treasure of a doll in a large Antique shop in Bath in 1985, along with a little wardrobe and bedside table that live in the Triang House. All three items came to £6.00, which was a lot to me at the time, but they were worth every penny. The cradle was given to me soon after, and is a perfect fit for her. I've never made it a coverlet, as I rather like to see her than have her all covered up. Her little check outfit is glued on. She is made of plastic with moveable arms and legs, and is the right sort of scale for a 1/12 th scale dolls house. She doesn't have any markings on her body that I can see, I'm not sure how old she is and would love to know.

My doll cabinet - bottom shelf part 1

Here are the bottom shelf residents in my doll display cabinet. Quite a mixed collection.

On the left is my Canadian Indian boy. My father's sister lived in Canada for the latter half of her life, and when I was three or four she sent my sister and I Canadian Dolls for Christmas. It was my first introduction to indigenous peoples of another country (apart from my own), and especially confusing in that the dolls were introduced to us as 'Indian' when India was in a different continent from the Americas. However this in fact was a great way of introducing world exploration history and terminology to two curious little girls. My sister got a squaw doll all dressed up in a lovely fur coat and I seem to remember with a papoose, I got the boy with plaits (braids in the USA). When later we started reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder 'Little house' books, those dolls certainly helped us to visualise the peoples she met on her journeys.

We weren't allowed to use the dolls in everyday play, nor did we ever take their clothes off as little children normally do, as it was explained that they were dolls for display rather than play. But we did hold them quite a lot over the years. Despite this, he is in remarkably good condition, not spoiled at all, though his leather clothes are a little faded, as I discovered when I lifted the flap of his top.

Front view of my Canadian/American Indian boy

Back view, showing the quiver for his arrows
(no arrows though - he came without them)

I cannot find any markings on his visible skin to tell me what make of doll he is, however on Janiesdolls.com I've found this article about a very similar doll (different outfit and hands) which is called a Ginny doll from the Far Away Land series. Sadly mine does not have a box or an identification tag and I wouldn't part with him anyway, but it would be nice to confirm when dolls dressed like him were made, if he is indeed a Ginny. He has jointed arms and head, but his legs don't move, so he stands firmly upright.

In front of my Canadian/American Indian boy is a little bead and pipe cleaner doll dressed in blue. She came from a festival stall and I'm pretty sure is based on the Jean Greenhowe doll on the see-saw in Making Miniature Toys & Dolls, a book I was given when I was seventeen. I didn't make her, but did make similar dolls at one stage, though actually before I got that book, so must have borrowed library books for instructions to make my first pipe cleaner dolls. Such dolls are quite satisfying to make, as they are posable, and it was in making them that I developed skills some of which I later used when making my jointed hand carved dolls, around the time I was given that book.

Little Bead and Pipecleaner girl

My doll display cabinet

With my Westville Greenleaf half-complete dollshouse currently in storage because we are trying to sell our house, I'm in the category of frustrated miniaturist - I can't do much in the way of miniature projects because most of my tools and materials are with the house, and we're trying to keep the human size house tidy for viewings. There are a few things we can do to complete the accessories in my daughter's toy and cake shop, but I can't do anything major.

So I'm showing you my collection of mini dolls and curiosities instead.

Some years ago I realised I needed the equivalent of a printers tray in order to display some of my mini treasures, but a printers tray would not hold many of the dolls because mostly the compartments for the old type letters are too small for miniature dolls. So I kept my eyes peeled around antique and charity shops, and managed to find a little cabinet (probably an old medicine cupboard). It had already been painted to look 'distressed' and has a stencil on the glass in the door. I'm not that keen on the paintwork, I was tempted to strip it down and either repaint or varnish it, but in the interests at the time of needing to give the dolls a home because they were packed in boxes, I decided that project would have to wait. The cabinet was mounted on the bedroom wall, and there it has hung ever since (apart from when we redecorated the room a couple of years ago).

It has three shelves and the dolls are arranged on these shelves. I'm going to concentrate on the residents of one shelf at a time over the next few postings. For the time being all you can see is the outside of the cabinet with a glimpse of the dolls as I realised on taking photos this evening that it will be better to do the photography during the day without needing the flash or having to worry about lamp shadows. My hand carved wooden dolls which featured in the previous post sit on the top shelf surrounded by various friends, but I think I shall start with the bottom shelf.