Here’s what I’ve been doing in my spare time lately: getting the small but well loved doll collection into shape.
Some examples follow, for those of you interested.
First, the oldest (and most magical) of the dolls, Emily, a china head doll from 1860, needed new clothes (none of her original clothes exist):
And a real find — a boy Mary Hoyer — came without clothes. A nice, rare find anyway; few collectors know that Mary Hoyer made boy dolls, so sometimes they come up on ebay at a low price, because everybody assumes they’re regular dolls with the hair cut off. Nope. They aren’t. (I like to think of mine as “Butch Mary Hoyer.”)
And some I made. Here’s the Baba Yaga side of the topsy-turvy Baba Yaga and Vasilissa doll:
And her counterpart:
and last, a French fashion reproduction that I made in 1984 — as I can tell from the date I incised on the back of her head — finally got some clothes:
I haven’t messed around with the dolls for decades. But I’m glad to be putting the little collection in order.