Doll History

The Gifted Line, John Grossman Inc.

A stick, a clump of straw, a branch shaped with a knife, a stuffed ball of fabric or a roughly hand painted ball of paper... All a little girl needs is a bit of imagination to find the companion she dreams of.

From primitive to more elaborate forms, depending on the society from which they came, dolls have left behind them traces of a quiet happiness typical of childhood play. Thus, we invariably find them associated to the everyday life of little girls or collected by rich heirs, princes and other nobility.

For the little girl, the everyday actions of dressing, feeding or do the hair of her doll is the perfect occasion to prepare for her role as a mother. During Renaissance, girls of royal blood learned with their dolls the strict codes of court etiquette.

What is a Doll?
Webster's New World Dictionarydescribes a doll as - "a child's toy, puppet, marionette, etc. made to resemble a human being."

The handcrafted doll is a repetitive, handmade artistic work, limited in its creation, which simply reproduces an already established genre.

The Art doll is the industrial reproduction of an original work by an artist. It is unsigned (copies may be countersigned, like a lithography), but it is not an original work of art.

The Artist is, by its very essence, an original and unique work of art (one-of-a-kind).

A History of Dolls

Dolls have been a part of humankind since prehistoric times. Used to depict religious figures or used as playthings, early dolls were probably made from primitive materials such as clay, fur, or wood. No dolls have survived from prehistoric times, although a fragment of an alabaster doll with movable arms from the Babylonian period was recovered.
Dolls constructed of flat pieces of wood, painted with various designs and with "hair" made of strings of clay or wooden beads, have often been found in Egyptian graves dating back to 2000 BC. Egyptian tombs of wealthy families have included pottery dolls. Dolls placed in these graves leads some to believe that they were cherished possessions.
Dolls were also buried in Greek and Roman children's graves. Girls from Greece and Rome dedicated their wooden dolls to goddesses after they were too "grown-up" to play with dolls.
Most ancient dolls that were found in children's tombs were very simple creations, often made from such materials as clay, rags, wood, or bone. Some of the more unique dolls were made with ivory or wax. The main goal was to make the doll as "lifelike" as possible. That ideal lead to the creation of dolls with movable limbs and removable garments, dating back to 600 B.C.
Following the era of the ancient dolls, Europe became a major hub for doll production. These dolls were primarily made of wood. Primitive wooden stump dolls from 16th and 17th century England number less than 30 today. The Grodnertal area of Germany produced many peg wooden dolls, a type of doll that has very simple peg joints and resembles a clothespin.
An alternative to wood was developed in the 1800s. Composition is a collective term for mixtures of pulped wood or paper that were used to make doll heads and bodies. These mixtures were molded under pressure, creating a durable doll that could be mass produced. Manufacturers closely guarded the recipes for their mixtures, sometimes using strange ingredients like ash or eggshells. Papier-mache, a type of composition, was one of the most popular mixtures.
In addition to wooden dolls, wax dolls were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. Munich was a major manufacturing center for wax dolls, but some of the most distinctive wax dolls were created in England between 1850 and 1930. Wax modelers would model a doll head in wax or clay, and then use plaster to create a mold from the head. Then they would pour melted wax into the cast. The wax for the head would be very thin, no more than 3 mm. One of the first dolls that portrayed a baby was made in England from wax at the beginning of the 19th century.
Porcelain became popular at the beginning of the 19th century. Porcelain is made by firing special clays in a kiln at more than 2372 degrees Fahrenheit. Only a few clays can withstand firing at such high temperatures. Porcelain is used generically to refer to both china and bisque dolls. China is glazed, whereas bisque is unglazed. Germany, France, and Denmark started creating china heads for dolls in the 1840s. China heads were replaced by heads made of bisque in the 1860s. Bisque, which is fired twice with color added to it after the first firing, looked more like skin than china did.
The French "bebe" was popular in the 1880s, and it has become a highly sought after doll today. The bebe, first made in the 1850s, was unique from its predecessors because it depicted a younger girl. Until then, most dolls were representations of adults. Although the French dolls were unrivaled in their artistry, German bisque dolls became quite popular because they were not as expensive. Kammer & Reinhardt introduced a bisque character doll in the 1900s, starting a trend of creating realistic dolls.
For centuries, rag dolls were made by mothers for their children. Rag dolls refer generically to dolls made of any fabric. Cloth dolls refer to a subset of rag dolls made of linen or cotton. Commercially produced rag dolls were first introduced in the 1850s by English and American manufacturers. Although not as sophisticated as dolls made from other materials, rag dolls were well-loved, often as a child's first toy.
Dollmaking did not become an industry in the United States until after the Civil War in the 1860s. Doll production was concentrated in New England, with dolls made from a variety of materials such as leather, rubber, papier-mache, and cloth. Celluloid was developed in New Jersey in the late 1860s and was used to manufacture dolls until the mid-1950s. German, French, American, and Japanese factories churned out cheaply produced celluloid dolls in mass quantities. However, celluloid fell out of favor because of its extreme flammability and propensity to fade in bright light.
After World War II, doll makers experimented with plastics. Hard plastic dolls were manufactured in the 1940s. They resembled composition dolls, but they were much more durable. Other materials used in doll manufacturing included rubber, foam rubber, and vinyl in the 1950s and 1960s. Vinyl changed doll making, allowing doll makers to root hair into the head, rather than using wigs or painting the hair. Although most dolls are now mass-manufactured using these modern materials, many modern doll makers are using the traditional materials of the past to make collectible dolls.

As far back as we can go in time, dolls have been a part of human imagination. Sometimes votive figures, sometimes toys or collectibles, they survived fashion trends through the ages, pleasing all those who cherished and still cherish them.

In fact, dolls were born long before they were given the french name of «poupée» (doll), which probably comes from the latin words «puppa» or «pupa» that mean «tétines, sein» (nipples, breast). Although it is difficult to define the doll's origin, a few ancient objects coming of Antiquity tell us that dolls were part of Greeks and Romans lives at this era.

Most of the time, these small rudimentary shaped wooden or clay figures were religious objects. Some were even laid down with mummies in burial place. In Greece, for instance, jointed dolls were found in temples dedicated to goddesses Demeter and Persephone . Such dolls were also found in Egyptian's temples.

Defining what art dolls are can be difficult for the layman as well as artists themselves since the dolls we usually know are play dolls, victorian or boudoir dolls, or colorful cloth dolls made by our mothers, relatives or local artisans.

The introduction, over the past 20 years, of a new kind of dolls created by accomplished artists, forces us to see the world of dolls on another level. My friend Ethel Loh Strickarz, an American doll artist based in New York, has asked me, as well as other doll makers she knows, to write down our own definition of an art doll. You can read their answers on her web site but here are my personal thoughts.

What is the difference between a doll and a contemporary art doll? I would say that what makes the art doll is the search for meaning. To me, a doll may be a small representation of a human being or a fantasy character, but it must carry with it something much more important than form; its soul. In other words, an art doll is a unique work of art that claims its existence, no matter what the medium or the subject. It is limited to one. It can also touch someone's heart or provoke intense or violent reactions. The result is the same: beyond the artist's contribution, it exists by itself. And being a three-dimensional work of art adds to this reality.

Another interesting aspect of the doll is the way we relate to it. When we hold a play doll, we are the dominators. We play with the dolls, we dominate the doll. The art doll is not a play thing. Since it exists by itself, the art doll tends to eliminate any dimensional or temporal barriers. We then relate to the doll as our equal. When I look at my doll or someone else's, I don't see the background anymore. I lose track of time, I penetrate another dimension. That is for me the most extraordinary part of the journey.