Chapter 1. Poppets and Babes

As long as there have been little girls in the world, there have been dolls. We know this is so because scientists have found many dolls in strange and forgotten places. By studying these dolls, historians and scientists have learned a great deal about people who lived thousands of years ago.

Some of these dolls are very odd-looking. One doll, made from a flat piece of wood, belonged to a little girl who lived in Thebes, Egypt, four thousand years ago. We call it a "Paddle Doll" because it looks like a short, small paddle. The curved blade is the body and the small handle is the head. Attached to the head are many strings of tiny beads. No, they are not supposed to be hair. In those days fashionable women shaved their heads and wore thick heavy wigs braided into hundreds of stiff little pigtails that fell down to their shoulders. The Paddle Doll's bead wig looks just like tiny pigtails. Designs were painted on the doll to look like the trimming that decorated the slim, flat dresses of that time. Undoubtedly this doll was considered very elegant and lovely, although she looks strange and awkward to us.

Other Egyptian dolls, equally old, look a good deal more like the ones we are used to seeing. They were carved in wood, with movable arms, and had real hair glued to their heads. You can see them today in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and will find them not too different in size and shape from the wooden dolls Grandmother's mother had.

As long ago as twenty-five hundred years, there were shops in which nothing but dolls, toys, and dolls' furniture were sold. There were so many of these shops at one time in Athens, Greece, that the street where they were located was called the Street of the Dolls. All kinds of dolls could be bought there: fat ones and thin ones, pretty ones and plain ones. Some had movable arms. Others had both arms and legs that could be swung back and forth. Many of the dolls had their clothes modeled right on them, while others had to be dressed at home.

Dolls made of all kinds of materials have been found in faraway lands. Bone, ivory, stone, and wood were carved to look like real people. Straw, reeds, leaves, and cloth were wrapped or braided or twisted into doll shapes. Clay was modeled and baked to produce lifelike dolls.

An ancient Egyptian Paddle Doll about 4000 years old. Blue beads make the hair and the dress is painted on the thin wood.

In this country, long before any white men had come to live here, Indian children had dolls made from corn husks, corn cobs, birch bark, leather, pine cones, and wood. They saw their first European doll in 1584, when one was given to a little Indian girl by an Englishman who had sailed to this country with Sir Walter Raleigh. The English had come to explore and to settle in this country. With them was an artist, John White, who came to draw pictures of all the new and wonderful things white men had never seen before. One of his pictures showed an Indian child holding a beautiful English doll in one hand and a baby's rattle strung with bells in the other hand. That picture was taken back to England and preserved among the records of the expedition.

It is only recently that we have used the word "doll". For a long time dolls were called "poppets" or "babes" or "babies". Sometimes in reading old books one comes across other names, such as "mannikin", "idol", "image". Ask Grandmother what she called a doll. She will probably tell you she called it a "doll-baby", but that, naturally, it had its own personal name. During her childhood all dolls had names. Sometimes the dolls came with names given to them by the manufacturer. Usually a particular and special name was selected for each doll by its young owner.

Many of the dolls now in museums are still known by the names given to them long ago. The names of others have been lost and now they just have labels which say "Wooden Doll" or "China Doll" or "Composition Doll".

That is the way museum people and doll collectors identify old dolls. The label tells what they are made of, which sometimes also tells about how old they are. Wooden dolls can be very, very old or just medium old. Composition and china dolls can be anywhere from 125 years old to very young dolls made just this year.

A pair of extremely old dolls found in "Mediterranean countries. The left one is of baked clay and is crudely painted. She wears a bowl on her head. The other doll is an old Roman rag doll made of linen and stuffed with reeds. He is in pretty good shape for being i500 years old.

'Many different materials were used to make dolls: left, bone, middle, clay; right, ivory. These also are very old.

Bisque dolls are another kind of china doll that collectors love to get. Bisque is a fine pink-toned china that has been used for doll heads for the past ninety years. It is quite different from the regular kind of china doll head, which is pure white and has painted hair and features.

Celeste and Louise, shown below, are two French bisque dolls made near Paris, France, about seventy-five years ago. They were made in a large factory where dozens and dozens of people did nothing but make doll bodies and doll heads. After the head, body, arms, and legs were put together, the supervisor examined each doll to see that every curl was perfect, that the heads turned easily, and that the arms and legs moved correctly. Celeste and Louise passed these tests very satisfactorily.

They were then sent to Paris to be dressed as Young Ladies of Fashion. Special dressmakers worked long hours to make beautiful clothes, hats, shoes, gloves, and shawls for the dolls. Skilled craftsmen made tiny eyeglasses, fans, pill boxes, watches, and jewelry. Others made pocketbooks and umbrellas. When finished, everything was packed into miniature trunks that had curved tops, each with one doll's name on it. The small bonnets and hats were packed into their own boxes. Each doll had a special traveling case to carry her shawl, umbrella, handkerchief, bottle of eau de cologne, and book. Thus equipped, Celeste and Louise were ready to begin their travels.

Soon after they were on display in a Paris doll shop, an American gentleman from Boston came in to find presents for his granddaughters. The beauty and charm of Celeste and Louise and their exquisite wardrobes immediately captured his attention. He bought them and had them specially packed for the long sea voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to America.

Celeste and Louise, a pair of French bisque dolls dressed in the height of fashion. Made about 1870, each doll had her own trunk and a wardrobe of a hundred and twenty-five pieces.

When Celeste and Louise were unpacked in the front parlor of the tall brownstone house in Boston, they were greeted with cries of admiration and joy and excitement. They were examined from head to toe. Each dress, each piece of jewelry and pair of shoes was tried on, taken off, and tried on again. Since the dolls were exactly the same size, they could exchange things, so each had twice as many clothes as was originally intended.

The grownups were having just as much fun as the children. Because the lovely clothes came from Paris, the fashion center of the world, they were of great interest to Mother and Grandmother and all the aunts. Pretty soon it began to seem as if Grandfather had brought the dolls for the women instead of for little Mary and Susan. For them, the fun of receiving these beautiful gifts was disappearing because the dolls had to be handled so carefully. In fact, the dolls were put away, to be taken out and played with only on very special occasions.

Mary and Susan really didn't mind not having Celeste and Louise for everyday play. The girls had more fun with the wooden peg dolls their grandmother had given them last year. They could wash their wooden faces, spank them, or carry them around by one leg, without harm. They could dress and undress them as often as they wanted to without worrying about fine lace and exquisite embroidery becoming soiled or damaged. All in all, they agreed, Grandfather was a darling to get them such terribly expensive gifts, but it was much more fun to have common wooden poppets to really play with.

These wooden poppets, or Penny Wood-ens, as they are sometimes called, are among the most fascinating dolls ever made. Their legs and arms could be moved into very lifelike positions. Their heads and bodies, carved in one piece, could survive the roughest treatment. Their painted faces suffered, it is true, from too many washings or from being left out in the rain, but that was not too serious an injury. Someone in the family could always repaint the face when needed. Best of all, they cost so little that almost any child could afford to have a family of them. An uncle or a brother who was clever at whittling could make a Penny Wooden in a very short time. In New England, if the men of the family were not so talented, the poppets could be bought for a penny in any Cent Shop.

Cent Shops were the most delightful of all old-time stores. Most of the things sold in them were just for children; candy and cookies, displayed it} tall glass jars with fancy glass tops, small dolls made of wax or china, inexpensive toys, and, of course, the Penny Woodens, were just some of the things you could get.

It was an adventure to be allowed to go to the Cent Shop all by oneself. When the door opened with a tinkle of its little warning bell, there was a delicious smell of cinnamon sticks, gingerbread men, licorice drops, and hoarhound lozenges. There in a little glass case all by themselves were the penny dolls. On the shelves behind were ranged the more expensive dolls that cost five, ten, fifteen, or twenty-five cents each. It took time to decide just how to spend a penny. You could get five peppermint drops, or one gingerbread man, or a wax baby, or a Penny Wooden. The decision was Very important because it might be a full month or more before you got another penny. The wax babies were small and pretty. So were the china ones. But they were made all in one piece so that their arms and legs could not be moved. That made them hard to dress. The more expensive wax and china babies had movable arms, but even the tiniest wooden one had both legs and arms that moved.

On a special shelf were the doll heads of various sizes. They were made of glossy white china and had shiny black painted hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks, and tiny rosebud mouths. Sometimes, but not often, you could find a china head with brown eyes, and once in a very great while, you might even get a gray-eyed doll head.

These heads were really more than heads, for the neck and shoulders were molded in one piece with the head. Mother or Aunt Mary usually bought them; made the body, arms and legs of cloth; then glued the head onto the body. In larger stores, one could buy bodies already made, as well as china arms and legs to sew on to a homemade body.

The china parts were made in Germany and shipped to this country in great packing cases that held hundreds of each size. They were sold all over this country and were very much cheaper than dolls are today. Most of these china dolls were "lady" dolls to be dressed in grown-up fashions. They were the mamas of the doll family. The doll in the picture above with its homemade body, arms, and legs, is an unusual "little girl doll" of the 1840s.

The children of the doll family usually were homemade of cloth or wood. Dolls were frequently made by grownups for their children. Then, of course, children themselves have always increased their doll families by making some of their own.

A china head and homemade body, made about 1840.

	1. Braided flax doll. 2. French dolls with china heads, legs, and arms, kidskin bodies. 3. Penny wooden dolls, two inches high. 4. Twig with acorn head doll. 5. Wooden mixing spoon dressed up. 6. Very fancy doll made from corn husks.

Many different kinds of materials and objects were pressed into service. A hank of flax could be braided to look like a doll, or an acorn could be stuck on the end of a twig to serve the purpose for the time being. Skillful fingers could contrive really elaborate dressed dolls, using corn husks and silk for the working materials. A string tied around a rolled up rag or a piece of wool or cotton batting transformed a common material into a very acceptable "doll-baby".

It is fascinating to make dolls for yourself. There are so many different ways of doing it and so many different kinds of materials to use. Dolls can be made and dressed without a bit of sewing: little ones that can be turned out quickly from odd scraps of materials, and more elaborate ones that are round and soft, and paper dolls whose dressmaker costumes are cut, shirred, and pleated just like real fabric clothes.

The following chapters describe how to make a number of different kinds of dolls. There are easy ones and more difficult ones. There are patterns and directions and drawings to make doll-making easy for you, no matter what kind you want. Making dolls and their clothes is fun! Let's start right now!

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