Boudoir Belles

This lovely lady belongs to member Michele Thelen.  She is known as a boudoir doll. This gorgeous gal has a composition head and was probably made in the United States.  Her colorful ruffled gown is original and her composition complexion is in excellent condition.

These elongated long-limbed lasses were not made as children's playthings, but for fashionable women to display in their bedrooms and salons, hence the name "boudoir dolls." The boudoir doll was grew out of the art doll movement of the 1910s. Artist Stefania Lazarka moved from her native Poland to Paris prior to WWI. The coming of the war stranded many Polish citizens in France, leaving some without any source of income. Lazarka created the Ateliers Artistiques Polonais, hiring Polish artists to handcraft artistic cloth dolls, with the proceeds going to support their community.  Fashion designer Paul Poiret saw some of the dolls on exhibit and soon his fashion salon was producing similar dolls for his atelier.  He had his models stroll down the runways with with cloth dolls dressed in miniatures of his most recent creations draped over their arms.  Soon boudoir dolls became the "must have" fashion accessory of the season.  Not only did they adorn boudoirs and sofas, women carried them around as mascots and upper-scale night clubs even offered them to their female patrons.  Some dolls doubled as lingerie bags or purses, but the vast majority were purely decorative.  Soon boudoir dolls were being produced not only in Paris, but throughout Europe and the United States.  The dolls were produced in a wide variety of materials, with heads of silk, felt, muslin, or composition.  They varied in size, some a petite 14 inches or so while others stretched to 30 inches or more. Throughout the 1920s and 30s the dolls' dresses became more creative, not reflecting fashion as much as some designer's imagination.  The dolls ranged from expensive artistic creations to inexpensive gaudily-gowned ladies offered as carnival prizes.   By the 1940s the fad had faded.

This example is a petite 14-inches long and has a papier mache head that is stamped Made in Germany. She wears her original clown costume and is "puffing" a little wooden cigarette.  These dolls with a cigarette dangling insouciantly from their rouged lips are known to collectors as "smokers" and are highly sought after.  Sadly, so sought after that some less-honest dealers are cutting holes in the face of more ordinary boudoir ladies and adding often oversized cigarettes.

A close up of her face shows her very daring and detailed eye makeup.

This serene señorita is the creation of Lenci, founded by Elena König in Italy and renown for its artistic felt dolls.  She is 27 inches tall and lavishly dressed in the traditional Charro folk costume of Salamanca, Spain.  She is all original except for her necklaces, rosary and slippers.

The doll as pictured in the 1930 Lenci catalogue.

This boudoir doll head from the German firm of Hermann Steiner is very unusual, not only because she is made from bisque, but also because she is a "living eye" doll.  “Living eyes” were advertised by Steiner in 1926, and consisted of a loose glass disk iris under clear dome; when the doll is tilted, the iris slides back and forth. Most living eye dolls by Steiner  are child-like googlies.  She is incised on back of the neck with an intertwined H and S over Germany 395 0.