MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 11
　
　

Someone once told me that, as a child, she hated dolls and when she was given one for her birthday she took it into the garden and smashed its head against the wall. (This was an elderly lady, so the doll wouldn’t have been a cheap plastic version, it would have been one made from bisque china, the type we now refer to as ‘antique’.) I was horrified!

I’ve loved dolls all my life, they were my constant companions as a child and I spent hours tucking them into their pram or carrycot, bathing them, ‘feeding’ them and dressing them. Nowadays, I often see dolls at boot sales, and often despair – the dolls have been so badly mistreated. They are covered in scribble from felt tip pens, they are smeared with make up or nail varnish, their hair has been chopped off or they have had their eyes pushed in. Sometimes, I rescue these waifs and repair them to the best of my ability, but often they are beyond redemption and I suspect that the sellers just dump them into a rubbish skip at the end of the day. What a short life they have had! If they had been loved and looked after, one day they would be ‘antiques’ and might well have a value. Already some plastic dolls are selling for a hundred pounds or more – unbelievable but true.

In fact, amazingly, some plastic dolls now sell for more than antique dolls. Sadly, at the moment there is a slump in the antique doll market, and dolls which once sold for a few hundred pounds struggle to make even a quarter of their value. Many new collectors aim to replace their childhood dolls, which invariably were plastic, rather than buy ‘old-fashioned’ china dolls, and I can well understand that point of view. I love all types, old and new, baby and teen, china, cloth, plastic, celluloid or even paper! Happily, I still have several of my own plastic and plaster childhood dolls and in most cases can still remember where they were bought. My dolls have no monetary value, they are too ‘well-loved’ (in other words, well played with and scuffed!) for that, but they are a constant childhood reminder and I could never part with them. They are not beautiful in the sense of an antique doll, but they are cheerful – and they are mine!

My childhood dolls

Some people think antique dolls are ‘creepy’ and a friend of mine refers to them as ‘devil dolls’! But to me, an ‘antique doll’ (the term is generally applied to bisque china dolls made up to the early 1930s) is a doll steeped in history. ‘Bisque’ china, incidentally, is a matt china which resembles skin, far more than if it were glazed or ‘glossy’. Gaze into the doll’s beautiful eyes (the eyes of these dolls are lustrous, as they are made from glass, often mouth-blown), and imagine the things she has seen, the events she has ‘lived’ through. A doll made in the early years of the twentieth century will have witnessed two major world conflicts, seen more than twenty prime ministers take office and known five Kings and a Queen to ascend the throne. She will have seen the change from tiny biplanes to enormous jumbo jets, the invention of television and the computer, the first space flight, the landing of men on the moon and amazing leaps forward in the fields of medicine, science and technology. She will have also witnessed well over a hundred Christmases, and been privy to the births, deaths, wedding and birthdays of the members of the family in which she was cared for.

An antique bisque doll

 

An antique doll won’t have aged in the physical sense – she may have lost a finger, her hair might have worn thin and she might even have a slight crack on her head. But, unless she has been cruelly mistreated like the doll I mentioned in the first paragraph, she will still be beautiful. Many museums have exhibitions of these dolls, or at the very least will have a couple on display. Next time, don’t just pass them by – think of all that history they have seen. And marvel at how well they have survived even after being played with by a young child. Then imagine giving one of those large china dolls to a child of today!