Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers Biography
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There’s one cabinet showing that dolls can be used for all different purposes, even as representations of celebrities. I love the dapper Maurice Chevalier doll, stockinette over cardboard, with a very lifelike painted face and removable clothes—though it seems an impertinence to imagine little Maurice stripped down to his underwear. There’s also an insistently pink pyjama-case dolly beside a beautiful 1870s fortune-teller doll with a swivel head and a wide skirt made up of numerous folded paper fortunes. There are wooden dolls, porcelain, wax, leather, papier-mâché, celluloid, rubber, and little delicate paper dolls miraculously untorn and preserved intact for 150 years. There are china dolls as big as children, and tiny little dolls the size of a thumb. These pocket dolls were sold by La Poupée Modèle and called Mignonnette. Little girls could make extensive wardrobes for them. My favourite is a bizarre Eiffel Tower outfit: the little Mignonnette wears a pink dress decorated with silver braid stamped with the date 1889, and sports a miniature Eiffel Tower on her auburn curls like a droll hat.
The 19th-century lady dolls are all exquisitely dressed, often with little reticules and parasols and tiny kid gloves and minute fans and opera glasses. One very splendid 1860s Steiner doll wears a black and pale-green silk dress and is clearly well into her teens, but she says “Papa, Maman” like a toddler as she raises her arms and “waltzes” to left and right. Her mechanism is still in good working order and her pale blue eyes and blonde hair are immaculate because she was only taken out of her box and played with one day each year by her original owners.
Infant dolls are displayed amusingly, 15 babies of varying sizes in the care of two adult dolls. One is a nursemaid in a costume specially made by Guido, the other is a magnificent fairy queen with a bisque head by Simon & Halbig. She has a bejewelled headdress and a pearl-trimmed silk frock and two very long blonde plaits. She looks capable of charming all the babies and effortlessly keeping them quiet but, just in case, one nursing doll has his mouth stoppered by a wooden dummy.
There are more babies in an enormous seaside tableau, a disconcertingly large assembly of naked celluloid dolls making sandcastles in front of a painted sea. There’s a magnificent array of plastic picnicware laid out beside them but no food! There’s also a school display of character babies, one screaming his head off, another wearing a dunce’s cap, each sitting at a wooden desk with authentic little ink splotches.
These detailed displays delight small visitors but this is also a museum to interest serious doll collectors. The Odins are particularly proud of their Jumeau bébés. These aren’t actual infant dolls, they are little girl (and occasionally little boy) dolls, exquisitely made, with beautiful expressions. The Jumeau dollmaking firm was founded in the early 1840s by Pierre François Jumeau, and his son Emile developed the business so that the beautiful dolls were much prized throughout the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The heads were made of fine kaolin paste, moulded in plaster casts, then carefully painted pale pink. Their eyes were wonderfully realistic, painstakingly made from coloured glass rods. Jumeau insisted his factory workers served a long apprenticeship to become proficient and employed little orphan girls so that they had a chance to learn a trade.
Samy’s favourite is the Premier Portrait Jumeau, one of the first series produced in the late 1870s. She’s 25 inches high, very pale and delicate, with beautiful blue eyes and dark gold curls. She’s wearing immaculate original clothing, a red lace-trimmed dress with a tiny Kate Greenaway pattern, white polka-dot stockings and black leather tied shoes. She even has tiny black jet earrings. He also admires a little ten-and-a-half-inch blonde bébé in a cream dress with brown velvet ribbon and blue leather shoes to match her eyes. Both dolls were kept and cherished by the families of the original owners, and were clearly only played with on very special occasions.
Jumeau bébés can have closed or open mouths with little pearly teeth. There is a very large 1890s open-mouthed doll in the collection in a magnificent pale pink bonnet and silk dress. She’s smiling sweetly but her expression is a little disconcerting because she has very pronounced Frida Kahlo eyebrows. My favourites are the bébés tristes—they translate as long-faced Jumeau babies, the dolls having distinctive wistful expressions. There’s a very fancy example in beautiful condition, wearing a green and red sailor costume with a saucy red straw hat, but the largest bébé, at 30 inches, is the one I like best. She’s got long blonde curls and big brown eyes, and she wears a pale green silk hat with a satin rose and a matching dress abundantly edged with cream lace. Guido and Samy bid for her in a public sale, and when they made the clinching offer they were applauded by the whole room.
Not all their dolls are on display at one time. Samy and Guido have a remarkable private collection of dolls with extensive wardrobes. I’ve seen photographs of a pair of Jumeau bébés, Charlotte and Suzanne, with striking sky-blue eyes. They were originally owned by two sisters, Claire and Pauline, who each received a magnificent Jumeau doll on her 11th birthday. Imagine giving a doll to an 11-year-old now! But Claire and Pauline clearly played elaborate games with their dolls, dressing them up in velvet coats with matching hats, serving them many little meals on their own tiny china dinner service. I’m sure they enjoyed getting them ready for bed, using their own little washstand and possibly the miniature china chamberpot.
Many of the dolls in the museum have little dogs or teddy bears to play with. There’s a small Steiff bear that looks as if he’s been through the wars. He has a distinctly melancholy expression, and one arm and one leg are carefully bandaged. He was donated by Edith Coisson, who ran an orphanage in Italy. She’d give each new orphan the little bear for comfort—until the next orphan arrived. Maybe the bear got his injuries from a tug-of-war between two children.
There were some 1920s and 1930s Lenci cloth dolls on display when Emma and I visited, and I found them a little alarming. Their very rouged cheeks, red pouty lips and ultra-curly hair reminded me of those terrifying tots in American beauty pageants. By contrast, we greeted the more modern dolls as if they were old friends: there were the Holly Hobbies that used to be crammed into Emma’s doll’s cot, and the exact twin of her little Sophie doll, a poupée, with no mouth, big black button eyes and very long fair hair. There was even a set of Emma’s 1960s Sindies looking like a miniature cast of “Mad Men”.
I think this is part of the charm of toy museums to have that little thrill of recognition. It had an added resonance for me, because my glamorous professional daughter suddenly became that long-ago little girl with a pageboy haircut and stripy dungarees, begging me to play dolls with her.
It’s hard to explain precisely the charm of dolls. Balzac kept a little collection of doll’s house dolls on his desk and said they helped him invent his fictional characters, but some people find their intense glassy gaze disconcerting and recoil from their little outstretched fingers. I find them enchanting. I don’t often give them to the children in my own books because most girls hide away from them by the time they start junior school. My latest book, however, has a solemn old-fashioned child narrator called Rosalind. In one chapter she goes back to Edwardian times to meet E. Nesbit’s characters, and she has a wonderful time in their nursery, playing with their china dolls.
The 19th-century lady dolls are all exquisitely dressed, often with little reticules and parasols and tiny kid gloves and minute fans and opera glasses. One very splendid 1860s Steiner doll wears a black and pale-green silk dress and is clearly well into her teens, but she says “Papa, Maman” like a toddler as she raises her arms and “waltzes” to left and right. Her mechanism is still in good working order and her pale blue eyes and blonde hair are immaculate because she was only taken out of her box and played with one day each year by her original owners.
Infant dolls are displayed amusingly, 15 babies of varying sizes in the care of two adult dolls. One is a nursemaid in a costume specially made by Guido, the other is a magnificent fairy queen with a bisque head by Simon & Halbig. She has a bejewelled headdress and a pearl-trimmed silk frock and two very long blonde plaits. She looks capable of charming all the babies and effortlessly keeping them quiet but, just in case, one nursing doll has his mouth stoppered by a wooden dummy.
There are more babies in an enormous seaside tableau, a disconcertingly large assembly of naked celluloid dolls making sandcastles in front of a painted sea. There’s a magnificent array of plastic picnicware laid out beside them but no food! There’s also a school display of character babies, one screaming his head off, another wearing a dunce’s cap, each sitting at a wooden desk with authentic little ink splotches.
These detailed displays delight small visitors but this is also a museum to interest serious doll collectors. The Odins are particularly proud of their Jumeau bébés. These aren’t actual infant dolls, they are little girl (and occasionally little boy) dolls, exquisitely made, with beautiful expressions. The Jumeau dollmaking firm was founded in the early 1840s by Pierre François Jumeau, and his son Emile developed the business so that the beautiful dolls were much prized throughout the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The heads were made of fine kaolin paste, moulded in plaster casts, then carefully painted pale pink. Their eyes were wonderfully realistic, painstakingly made from coloured glass rods. Jumeau insisted his factory workers served a long apprenticeship to become proficient and employed little orphan girls so that they had a chance to learn a trade.
Samy’s favourite is the Premier Portrait Jumeau, one of the first series produced in the late 1870s. She’s 25 inches high, very pale and delicate, with beautiful blue eyes and dark gold curls. She’s wearing immaculate original clothing, a red lace-trimmed dress with a tiny Kate Greenaway pattern, white polka-dot stockings and black leather tied shoes. She even has tiny black jet earrings. He also admires a little ten-and-a-half-inch blonde bébé in a cream dress with brown velvet ribbon and blue leather shoes to match her eyes. Both dolls were kept and cherished by the families of the original owners, and were clearly only played with on very special occasions.
Jumeau bébés can have closed or open mouths with little pearly teeth. There is a very large 1890s open-mouthed doll in the collection in a magnificent pale pink bonnet and silk dress. She’s smiling sweetly but her expression is a little disconcerting because she has very pronounced Frida Kahlo eyebrows. My favourites are the bébés tristes—they translate as long-faced Jumeau babies, the dolls having distinctive wistful expressions. There’s a very fancy example in beautiful condition, wearing a green and red sailor costume with a saucy red straw hat, but the largest bébé, at 30 inches, is the one I like best. She’s got long blonde curls and big brown eyes, and she wears a pale green silk hat with a satin rose and a matching dress abundantly edged with cream lace. Guido and Samy bid for her in a public sale, and when they made the clinching offer they were applauded by the whole room.
Not all their dolls are on display at one time. Samy and Guido have a remarkable private collection of dolls with extensive wardrobes. I’ve seen photographs of a pair of Jumeau bébés, Charlotte and Suzanne, with striking sky-blue eyes. They were originally owned by two sisters, Claire and Pauline, who each received a magnificent Jumeau doll on her 11th birthday. Imagine giving a doll to an 11-year-old now! But Claire and Pauline clearly played elaborate games with their dolls, dressing them up in velvet coats with matching hats, serving them many little meals on their own tiny china dinner service. I’m sure they enjoyed getting them ready for bed, using their own little washstand and possibly the miniature china chamberpot.
Many of the dolls in the museum have little dogs or teddy bears to play with. There’s a small Steiff bear that looks as if he’s been through the wars. He has a distinctly melancholy expression, and one arm and one leg are carefully bandaged. He was donated by Edith Coisson, who ran an orphanage in Italy. She’d give each new orphan the little bear for comfort—until the next orphan arrived. Maybe the bear got his injuries from a tug-of-war between two children.
There were some 1920s and 1930s Lenci cloth dolls on display when Emma and I visited, and I found them a little alarming. Their very rouged cheeks, red pouty lips and ultra-curly hair reminded me of those terrifying tots in American beauty pageants. By contrast, we greeted the more modern dolls as if they were old friends: there were the Holly Hobbies that used to be crammed into Emma’s doll’s cot, and the exact twin of her little Sophie doll, a poupée, with no mouth, big black button eyes and very long fair hair. There was even a set of Emma’s 1960s Sindies looking like a miniature cast of “Mad Men”.
I think this is part of the charm of toy museums to have that little thrill of recognition. It had an added resonance for me, because my glamorous professional daughter suddenly became that long-ago little girl with a pageboy haircut and stripy dungarees, begging me to play dolls with her.
It’s hard to explain precisely the charm of dolls. Balzac kept a little collection of doll’s house dolls on his desk and said they helped him invent his fictional characters, but some people find their intense glassy gaze disconcerting and recoil from their little outstretched fingers. I find them enchanting. I don’t often give them to the children in my own books because most girls hide away from them by the time they start junior school. My latest book, however, has a solemn old-fashioned child narrator called Rosalind. In one chapter she goes back to Edwardian times to meet E. Nesbit’s characters, and she has a wonderful time in their nursery, playing with their china dolls.
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
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Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
Beautiful Dolls Wallpapers
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