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Antique Dolls: A Page For Kids
What do you think about when you hear the word "doll"? Maybe a Barbie, Bratz or an American Girl doll? But what dolls did your grandmothers and great grandmothers play with long ago? This is a little webpage especially for kids who want to learn a little about antique ("very old") dolls! By the time you finish reading this website, you will know as much about old dolls as some doll collectors do, and more about dolls than most grown ups!
When I was a little girl, I loved dolls. But I really loved old dolls! I wondered about them: What were they made of? How they were made? A lady that I bought dolls from told me to "read as much as you can". There was no internet then, so I went to our tiny town library and read every book I could find about antique dolls. By the time I was 14, I knew a lot more about old dolls than many collectors! I decided to do this webpage just for kids - kids like me who wondered about what children played with a long time ago!
(Note: If some of the photos have only an "x" on them, reload the page and try again!)
Children have
played with dolls as long as a mother had rags to tie together to make a doll that was often loved and cherished. Sometimes, dried
corncobs would be wrapped in rags and played with as a doll! But the
dolls on this page were mostly made in factories from the 1890's to the 1940's.
Here is a picture of a Raggedy Ann Doll that was made by someone's mother or
grandmother, probably in the 1930's or 1940's.
It
was cheaper to make your own doll than to buy one at the store.
The first Raggedy Ann doll was owned by a little girl around 1910. Her father wrote stories about her and her doll. Children loved the stories and wanted a doll just like Raggedy Ann, so the family began making the dolls.
The family said that the first Raggedy Ann dolls had candy hearts in their chests, but children would suck on the hearts through the cloth! After that, they had wooden hearts inside them, and later, printed hearts. If you have a Raggedy Ann in your house, she most certainly has a heart that says "I Love You" on her chest!
It's important to remember that a long time ago, there was no such thing as plastic! Since plastic is man made from chemicals, it had to be invented. In fact, the first plastic items, including dolls, were not made until the 1940's, or around the time your grandmother might have been a young girl. Most people do not know when plastic was invented; even some movie makers do not know this. If you're watching a movie that is supposed to be taking place a long time ago, and they are using a plastic doll in the movie, now you know that it is wrong! (Hint: Look carefully in both of the movie versions of "Annie" and you will see newer, plastic dolls!)
Before
plastic, factory dolls were made of many other materials. The dolls shown
in these two pictures are called "china heads".
Their
heads are made of a glazed china. China head dolls were popular from
the 1840's through the early 1900's. Sometimes, only the heads, and
sometimes hands and feet, were sold and the mother or grandmother might make a
body for the doll. There are two holes in the bottom of the shoulder plate
to sew it onto the body. Often, china head dolls have very small hands and
feet and over-sized stuffed bodies. This is because the bodies and limbs
were often made by their owners with no pattern.
These dolls were usually sold without any clothes on. In the middle to late 1800's, it was generally believed that toys should be useful objects for the purpose of teaching the child skills they would need later in life. Most people then believed that children were just small adults, without a real need to play! This does not mean that mothers and fathers did not love their children, but life was much harder back then, and people did not have as much time for fun and games as they do now.
Dolls like
these were good practice for little girls to learn to sew by making doll clothes
because when they were grown, they would be expected to sew clothing for
themselves and their families. Notice that these early playthings with
their big cheeks and tiny eyes do not
look much like babies or girls, but rather like young ladies. Over the next twenty years
or so, as adults began to want childhood to be a special time, dolls would begin to look
more like the children they were intended for.
Collectors can sometimes tell how old a china head doll is by the hairstyle it has! Real ladies wore their hair in these styles in the 1800's. Can you imagine your mom having her hair done like one of these?
Another kind of
doll that was very popular from the 1880's through the 1920's was the
"bisque" (pronounced "bisk") head doll.
People were beginning to look at childhood as a special time of its own and
paying more attention to children's needs.
Dolls were becoming fancier with more detail, but they were still very breakable and had to be handled with great care! This doll's name is "Clara" and she is 27 inches tall - over two feet high! She was made in Germany from between 1890 and 1910. (If you have read any of the American Girl Samantha books, Samantha's doll "Lydia" was a bisque head doll.) Clara's body, like many bisque headed dolls, is made of a pressed cardboard material, painted and shellacked many times over to make it hard and sturdy. My own children think that it is very strange that her body is made so differently than her head, but to make a large all bisque doll would have been much too heavy and expensive, not to mention much more breakable!
In
between her joints, she has wooden balls that make it easy for her limbs to
move.
Cloth covered elastic cords inside hold her together, like beads on
a string. You can
learn more about Clara's story and where I found her when you finish reading
this page and click the link at the bottom. You can learn how we fixed her.
When I first saw Clara, she did not look
as pretty as she does now! 100 years
with no one to play with can make even the prettiest doll very sad!
Bisque dolls with ball jointed bodies like Clara's were some of the most expensive dolls available for little girls. Today, certain very rare bisque dolls from France can sell for as much as $50,000! Today it seems strange that kids would play with a doll with a head that could so easily break! But remarkably, many of these dolls have survived 100 years and are still easy to find today. It is sad indeed to find a bisque head doll with her head broken in pieces! But even one tiny little crack, nearly invisible, as thin as a hair (called a "hairline crack") makes a bisque head doll nearly worthless to collectors!
Here
is a picture that I have of a little girl with a big bisque head doll around
1900. Notice that she is dressed all in white right down to her white
button up shoes. She looks around 7 or 8 years old. She wears a great big bow in her hair. Behind her is a boy, possibly her
brother, wanting some of the camera attention for himself! She is looking
at her beautiful big bisque headed doll that looks very much like Clara. This is a
"snapshot" on a thin piece of paper, so probably it was taken by a home camera
and not by a real photographer. Was it this little girl's birthday and she
was showing off her birthday present? Is her doll in someone's collection
today? If the girl is still alive today, she would be over 100 years old.
If we did not have this picture, nobody would know that this little girl stood
on a sidewalk with her precious doll 100 years ago! The doll looks very much like the
little girl with her white dress and short, blonde hair. Did this girl's dad just get a new camera
and she said "Daddy, take a picture of me and my dolly!" We'll
never know. In any case, her
all white clothes indicate that it is probably spring or summer and she is
dressed up for some special occasion or Sunday long ago. Do you remember how you
felt when you received a doll that you loved?
Clara's face, like the doll in the photo, is called a "dolly face". This means that her face looks like a "dolly" and not a real child! Around the time that she was made, many companies realized that maybe some dolls could look like real children and not dolls. They began to produce bisque headed dolls that showed different expressions, instead of always smiling. These special heads are called "character" faces.
Here
are two "character" bisque dolls. The bigger baby doll in
this photo is a baby doll
with a five piece body made by "Hertl Schwab" another German company. He
has a strange look, but to people at the turn of the century, they considered
this to be a realistic looking baby doll. The tiny doll on his lap is
also a character baby made by Gebruder Heubach in Germany around 1900.
He's a happy baby, but not all character dolls had happy faces!
Below is a page from a Sears store catalog from 1912. They had many different dolls available for little girls. Photographs were too expensive to take, so catalogs at that time were all drawings.
Can you see how much some of these dolls cost in 1912? A very large bisque headed doll like Clara is listed for $4.95. A small character baby, such as the doll shown in the picture above was $1.39! A smaller one is listed at 25 cents! Back then, your mom would probably work taking care of your home and your father might make $2 or $3 a day at his job. A doll was an expensive toy for a girl to have! Sometimes one doll had to be shared between many sisters. The dolls at the top of the catalog page have "kid leather" bodies and were cheaper than the large ball jointed bodies. The bisque head doll on the end sitting in a chair is called "Sunshine" kid and she could be bought for 59 cents!
During World War I,
which began
in 1914, America was at war with Germany and many Americans did not want to buy bisque headed dolls from Germany
anymore. At that time, many American companies
began to make dolls of their own. 
This group of dolls was made around
1915 by American companies. Their heads are not bisque, but composition, which is sawdust and glue,
pressed into a mold and then painted over. They were called "Can't Break 'Em"
since they could be dropped and bumped around without shattering like the
delicate bisque headed dolls. "Can't Break 'Em" dolls CAN be dented and
chipped, but they were more solid than bisque dolls. They are also character faces (remember what
a "character" face is?) What expressions do you see on their faces?
The two in front were called "Baby Grumpy" and were very popular!
The big one in the back has been with me since I found him in an antique shop
when I was 14. Look at the close up photo below of one of the doll's hands. Can you guess
what their bodies were stuffed with?
If you guessed straw, you would be right!
Composition dolls
became very common in America. In the 1920's dolls such as the
"Patsy" dolls (shown below) were very popular. Hundreds of
thousands were
made. They were made by the Effanbee
company in New York City.
Can you see how they are different from the
dolls from the 1890's? This new short hairstyle, with longer hair in the
front was very much in fashion
for both little girls and ladies alike, and was called a "bob". 
Composition
wasn't perfect though, and over time, the wood pulp that they are made of swells
in hot weather, causing cracking in the paint. Or heaven help the poor
child who tried to wash her composition doll...water made them crack and
peel almost instantly! This Patsy has some cracks on her head. If
you click the photo to the left, you can see them. We love her
anyway!
Here is a doll
that your great grandmother would certainly remember!
These
two are
Shirley Temple dolls made in the 1930's (about 70 years ago!) by the Ideal
Novelty and Toy Company. The little one has clothes that are all
original to her, as is her button that says "The World's Darling Genuine Shirley
Temple Doll". 
A copy of Shirley's own little signature is even on her dress tag and button.
This was so that nobody could confuse them with the many copies of Shirley
Temple dolls made by other companies. The Ideal company paid a lot of
money to Shirley to make a doll of her and they wanted to protect it from being
copied as best they could!
Have you ever seen any of Shirley Temple's movies on video or DVD? They were made when your great grandma was a little girl! If you have seen the Shirley Temple movie "Bright Eyes", you will recognize this checkered dress that Shirley wears when she sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop".
Shirley Temple dolls
came in seven sizes from 11 inches to 27 inches tall. A medium sized
Shirley Temple doll cost
around $6 in the 1930's. The 1930's is called "The Great Depression" and
was a time when most people in America lost their jobs, and those who were
working were lucky to just make enough to put food on their tables. $6 for
a doll was something that many people could not afford. But
sometimes, with some hard work, a girl might be able to earn her own Shirley
Temple doll. This advertisement says that if a girl sells a six magazine
subscriptions, the magazine company would give her a doll! The doll in the
picture is dressed the same as the one in the photo above and is the same size,
13 inches. Maybe the doll above was won by a girl who sold 6 magazine
subscriptions!
Many
times, Shirley Temple dolls were bought and put on a shelf just to look at
because they were so pretty and special. In the 1930's, Shirley Temple was
a movie star, but in the 1950's, when television was invented, Shirley Temple
movies were shown on TV and they were again so popular that Shirley Temple dolls
made of plastic were sold in huge quantities. Shirley Temple dolls have
been made since the 1930's and sometimes people can't tell when their doll was
made. Now you know that only the composition Shirley Temple dolls are from
the 1930's. As mentioned, many companies made cheaper copies of Shirley
Temple dolls because they were so popular, but only one company was allowed to
use the name "Shirley Temple" and these dolls are marked with her name on the
back of the head and across the shoulders.
Most little girls
could not afford a Shirley Temple doll during the Great Depression of the
1930's, but these tiny dolls could be bought for little money
in novelty stores.
They
are all bisque and are two or three inches high. A girl's father might
make her a dollhouse out of scrap wood, or they could even live in a
shoebox.
Now that you've learned that dolls cost much less than they do now, can you guess why these tiny dolls were called "penny dolls" ? A little girl who might not be able to afford a fancy doll could still have a special doll to carry in her pocket.
After the 1940's most dolls were made of hard plastic and later "vinyl" which is softer plastic. But thankfully many dolls from the past still survive today to remind of us of little girls and their lives long ago! Sometimes they need to be rescued. Click the link below to see how Clara, the German bisque head doll was recently rescued!
CLARA: THE STORY OF AN ANTIQUE DOLL
(CLICK HERE)
About Me: While I love, appreciate, own, have repaired and dealt antique dolls over the years, as far as dolls go, bisque, china and cloth are not my "area of expertise". If you are an adult (or kid!) and would like further, more comprehensive reading on antique dolls, I suggest an internet search which will pull up collector's guides and detail the various types of bisque and china much more than I have here, as well as what to look for when buying an antique doll. My purpose in this page was not as a collector's guide, but just a basic introduction for kids. My area of expertise is in Sasha dolls, and if you didn't find your way here via my Sasha page, here's the link below!
A note to parents,
collectors and
educators: When I was a young girl, I recall being in a store that
stocked newer, reproduction bisque headed dolls. Two teenagers were
walking past them and one said to the other "My grandmother has dolls like that
in her attic. I hate them!! They are so scary and ugly looking!"
and they walked away. After I got over my fit of envy, (none of my
grandparents handed down dolls to me!) I felt very sad and indignant, even at a
young age, that these lovely and treasured playthings from the past are often
misunderstood by later generations. Their intrinsic beauty is overlooked
because they don't look like playthings today. Along with introducing
children to antique dolls, I hope that this page will encourage adults who love
dolls to share their collections with children in order to educate them and
allow them to see dolls as both art and a link to other children in the past.
Some lesson ideas: I am a homeschooling mom, so I love to look for things that interest my kids on the internet in order to build lessons around them. I tried to gear the page to kids from grades 3-6. Some creative writing ideas, if your child is interested:
Have the child tell a doll's story in its own words (first person). It can be an old doll or a doll that they own! One of my kids, favorite things for story time is for me to make up a bedtime story about one of their dolls or stuffed animals. Some creative writing ideas: Where did it come from? How long did it wait in the store to be bought? If it came from a garage sale or second hand, was it excited to be loved again? Illustrate the story with drawings.
Another idea: Have your child write about her favorite doll (or other toy, if it's a boy). Have them describe it in detail and why it is special to them and if they remember what it was like to get the special toy.
Further information: Dolls are a wonderful link to the past. They are all that remains of someone's childhood long ago; a lasting remembrance of days long gone by. Libraries have many books on dolls, and with the internet, now there is even more information available for free! Do a Google search with your child for "Antique dolls" or "Doll Collection" and see what comes up. For fun, do a search on Ebay for "Doll" and select "highest first" and see which dolls are very valuable. You may be surprised! There are many doll museums and museums that feature dolls across the country. Google your state or city with the word "children's museum" "doll museum" or "museum".
Many thanks to my own kids for helping with this page in both photos and text!