Black History Month; Vintage Cloth Doll

We continue our club's virtual meeting in honor of Black History Month with this endearing cloth doll from member Elaine Jackson. Cloth or rag dolls are probably the earliest type of doll. Their soft bodies made them especially cuddly and comforting as children' playmates. The dolls could be made economically out of scraps of leftover fabric and a simple doll could be sewn by a loving mother or relative with no pattern other than the maker's imagination. Beginning in the 1800s, monthly women's magazines not only included stories, poetry, music, and articles, but also patterns and instructions for embroidery, sewing, and other handicrafts, including for making dolls and doll clothing. However, even as commercial patterns became more widely available, many homemade dolls were freehand creations. Cloth dolls can be dated by the style of their embroidered faces, the type of fabric, and whether they were made using a commercial pattern. This 10-inch rag doll has yarn braids, button eyes, and a sweet, but simply embroidered, features. Elaine says that the doll is wearing her original dress and was probably made in the 1930s to 1940s. The doll has stub hands and feet and is mostly likely on-of-a-kind.

 

Black History Month; Composition Topsy Doll

 Continuing our club's virtual meeting honoring Black History Month, member Michele Thelen shares this composition cutie. Michele says that the 12-inch tall doll is unmarked and is wearing her original outfit. Beginning in the 1910s, a number of American companies began producing dolls out of composition, a mixture of glue and sawdust. The dolls were lighter and not as fragile as their bisque and china counterparts (although not washable!). Composition dolls dominated the American doll market from the 1920s through the early 1950s, when hard plastic dolls began to appear. There were many American companies producing these dolls and unmarked dolls were often sold to jobbers and department stores to dress and sell under their name.

Often Black composition dolls had two or more inserted pigtails of yarn and were marketed as Topsy dolls. Topsy originated as a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the book, Topsy is a brutalized and neglected child. When first introduced, she is a Black enslaved girl about eight years of age, clad in a filthy ragged dress and carrying the scars on her back of multiple beatings, Topsy has never known love or kindness in her short life; she does not even know who her parents were. All she has experienced are harsh labor and beatings, berated as being wicked and lazy. Topsy is amoral, having learned how to lie and steal in order to survive. The slaveowner Augustine St. Clare cynically purchases Topsy as a gift for his sister, Ophelia, to "educate." Although Topsy is clearly intelligent and resilient, Ophelia harbors prejudice against Black people and has no empathy for the child, treating her with distaste. It is only when Augustine's daughter, Eva, learns that Topsy has never been loved and treats her with true compassion and kindness that Topsy is inspired to learn and improve. In the book, Topsy was a symbol of the degradation and brutality of slavery, which affected not only the enslaved, but tainted the rest of society as well.

So how do we get from this pitiful abused, beaten, and neglected child to the cheerful Topsy dolls? Uncle Tom's Cabin was extremely popular and, thanks in part to lax copyright laws, minstrel shows seized upon Stowe's characters, putting on what became known as "Tom Shows." The shows, typically only very loosely based on the book, stripped out much of Stowe's strong anti-slavery and religious sentiment (there were even pro-slavery versions), although they kept some of the melodramatic scenes, such as Eliza carrying her child as she struggles to cross the icy Ohio River and into freedom just ahead of the slave hunters. For the most part Black characters, typically performed by whites in blackface, were mocked as exaggerated stereotypes and used as comic relief, often breaking into song or dance. In these shows, Topsy became the mischievous mirthful "pickaninny" with a head full of pigtails. Sadly, most of the images the American public has of Uncle Tom's Cabin are drawn from these Tom Shows, working their way into popular culture (including Felix the Cat and Bugs Bunny cartoons some of us watched as children).

Black History Month; Million Dollar Baby (In a Five and Ten Cent Store)

It was a lucky April shower, it was the most convenient door 

I found a million dollar baby, in a five and ten cent store 

Music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mort Dixon and Billy Rose, 1931

As part of our club's virtual meeting celebrating Black History Month, we introduce a baby from the five and ten cent store belonging to member Sylvia McDonald. While the little Black all-bisque baby in the wicker buggy might not technically be worth a million dollars, Sylvia bought it when she was around seven or eight years old from a five and ten cent store and to her it is priceless (Sylvia thinks that the original cost was 25 cents). Japan first entered the doll market in WWI when German dolls were embargoed, often directly copying German models, and continued producing inexpensive little bisque dolls into the 1950s. The Japanese dolls did not match the quality of the German bisque dolls, but they were also less expensive and just the right size and price for the growing five and dime store chains. The little girl in the green plaid dress is by artist Heidi Ott doll and the other doll was designed by Sylvia Natterer and is named Deborah.

Sylvia thinks that about this same time she bought an Amosandra doll. Created by the Sun Rubber Company in 1949, Amosandra was the first mass-produced rubber Black doll, a cuddly baby who could drink and wet. The doll was produced as a tie-in the the popular radio program "Amos ’n’ Andy,” which later became a short-lived show on CBS television. The original radio show was a comedy featuring two characters, Amos Jones and Andy Brown, Black farm workers from Georgia who had moved to Chicago (and later Harlem in New York City) for a better life. The radio show was extremely popular and it was estimated that at its peak one-third of the country tuned in. The doll coincided with the birth of the youngest child of Amos and his wife, Ruby, her name a mixture of Amos and Andy. On the radio, Amos and Andy were voiced by two white actors (who appeared in blackface for publicity photographs, although the television show did cast Black actors). The show was criticized by some in the Black community as depicting Blacks in derogatory ways.

However, little Amosandra was extremely popular with children of all races, but unfortunately her soft rubber skin hardened and deteriorated over time. This was the sad fate of Sylvia's doll.

Black History Month; Petite Pair of All Bisque Dolls

Continuing our club's virtual doll meeting commemorating Black History Month, today we present a pair of early-all bisque dolls in their original box and elaborate costumes. The 4.75-inch tall dolls have set brown glass eyes and swivel necks. They are barefoot and have molded gold bracelets and anklets. On the cover of their fragile box is written in pencil "Sadie Newell from Grace Bronen." Inside the cover, also in pencil, is "Robert Newell Kinnaird 7 years 27 of Aug" and "Given to Sara Newell when she was about 8 yrs old." Inside one of the sections in the box is written in pencil "From Grace to Sadie Newell Christmas 1889." 

The dolls' festive finery may indicate that they are prepared to participate in a cake walk. The dance originated on slave plantations in which enslaved men and women dressed in their best clothing danced in a procession. The winning couple was awarded a prize, typically a cake. In some cases, the dance was performed for the white slaveholder, who judged the contest, and white guests. However, according to some sources, the exaggerated steps and gestures of the cakewalkers were subtly mocking the highly-mannered dances of the white upper class. Following an exhibit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial which featured Black dancers performing a version of the cakewalk, the dance became a feature in minstrel shows and music halls. The costumes were increasing colorful and elaborate, with men often attired in top hats, gaudy topcoats, and striped or patterned pants and the women donning fancy hats and gowns. The cakewalk was performed in 1889 at the Paris World's Fair, spreading the dance craze throughout Europe, where it was performed everywhere from the stages of Paris to the aristocratic ballrooms of England. The idioms "to take the cake" and "a piece of cake" may originate from the cakewalk.

 

Black History Month; Hand Carved Hitty-Type

≈

Because of the pandemic, the club is not holding in-person meetings, so this month we are holding a virtual club meeting with members sharing their Black dolls in honor of Black History Month. The first is this wonderful one-of-a-kind creation by our talented member Elaine McNally (a pair of her beautiful Izannah Walker cloth creations have appeared earlier on this blog). This diminutive doll is 6.5 inches tall and carved from black walnut. Elaine thinks that the doll resembles Ruby Bridges as portrayed in the Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live With."

This type of little wooden doll is called a "Hitty type," inspired by the wooden doll heroine of Rachel Field's 1929 children's novel, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. In the book, the eponymous Hitty (short for Mehitabel), a simple wooden doll carved by a peddler in the 1820s, narrates her adventures and travels over her century of existence. Hitty was based on a small antique wooden doll acquired by Field and the book's illustrator Dorothy Lathrop and the original Hitty now resides in the Stockbridge Library Association collection. The book's charming historical tale has inspired generations of doll artists to carve their own versions of Hitty.