June 8, 2025, Meeting

Member Myrna Loesch did a program on dolls made by Michele-ette, a Mexican doll company.

She told the club that she found this doll at an estate sale labeled as by Madame Alexander. Myrna said that although the doll did resemble the eight-inch Alexanderkins/Wendykins, her facial painting, such as the eyebrows, was different, she had a coarse black wig styled with two long pins, and she was unmarked. 

Some time later, Myrna found this doll on eBay, also dressed in a kimono, with the same facial painting, a coarse wig styled with pins, and no mark. 

Shortly afterwards, Myrna acquired these two similar dolls on eBay, but dressed in Mexican outfits. The dolls still carried their original tags, stating "Michele-ette Hecho en Mexico."

Myrna said that a doll collecting friend in San Antonio also had a pair of Michele-ette dolls, a girl in a traditional Mexican outfit and a boy dressed as a matador. She gave Myrna a copy of a newspaper article from the September 19, 1958, edition of the "Arizona Republic" about Mrs. Philip (Michele) Fauerso, the owner of the Michele-ette doll company in Mexico City. According to the article, Fauerso, at the time the owner of the Barbizon modeling agency and its associated schools, was vacationing in Mexico City, but could not find any canned dogfood for her dog. She started making her own dogfood and soon her neighbors were asking whether they could try some for their pets. Fauerso began selling the dogfood and at the end of her vacation sold the company for $10,000. In 1953, Fauerso was again vacationing in Mexico City with her husband and daughter. She told the newspaper that she dreaded returning to the rush of New York City and was looking for an excuse to stay in Mexico. Fauerso and her daughter noted while shopping that all the dolls they saw were ugly. Inspired, Fauerso took a small doll her daughter had brought with her and repainted and redressed it. Using a horse tail she bought at a slaughter house, she braided a new wig for the doll. Fauerso then took the doll to various shop owners and returned with $16,000 worth of orders. She persuaded her husband to stay in Mexico City and started her doll company.

According to the article, the business got off to a rough start with a single sewing machine and three  employees. They had to fulfill the first order for 24 dolls, but were having difficulty assembling the plastic dolls. Fauerso made a quick trip to the United States and returned with 24 plastic dolls, which were repainted, redressed, and re-wigged. In order to meet other order deadlines, Fauerso had her employees  purchase the dolls and used them the fill subsequent orders. This bought the company time to develop its manufacturing techniques. Another problem was with their employees, but over two years the company developed a trustworthy workforce of women. Fauerso told the reporter that hers was the only factory in Mexico with women bosses. The company had grown from a home business to a factory with 150 employees, 35 sewing machines, and ten injection machines. The article reported that over 200,000 Michele-ette dolls, all dressed in hand made fashions, had been produced.

Myrna speculated that the American dolls first used by Michele-ette may have been Alexanderkins/Wendykins and that the company may have later purchased molds from Madame Alexander, which could explain the resemblance between the Michele-ette dolls and the Alexanders. She noted that Fauerso and Alexander were both woman entrepreneurs from New York City and it may have been possible that they knew each other.

Myrna told the club that articles she found on the Internet in 2019 and 2020 reported that the Museo del Juguete MX  (Museum of Toys Mexico) had an exhibit of Michele-ette dolls from the 1970s. She said that it appears that the dolls are no longer being made.

Member Sylvia McDonald shared this example of an American-made hard plastic eight-inch doll, Muffy created by Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls. 

This is a Ginny doll, which started the trend for eight-inch girl dolls. She belongs to member Jenell Howell and is dressed as Davy Crockett, complete with coonskin cap and rifle.

Jenell also shared her newest BJD creation.

Member Elaine Jackson brought this hand-carved wooden Hitty doll by TC Vollum.

Another wooden doll, belonging to member Sharon Weintraub. She is a vintage "peg wooden" or Grodnertal doll dressed as a pearly queen.  Sharon explained that the "pearlies" are charity groups associated with England's working classes. They are famous for their velvet costumes covered in elaborate designs made from mother-of-pearl buttons. The doll's hand-stitched velvet dress and bonnet are covered in small mother-of-pearl buttons and tiny faux pearl beads.

November 5, 2018, Meeting

A festive fall theme greeted the members. 

Member Beverly Evans did a program on Mold 390 dolls by Armand Marseille. Despite his French-sounding name, Marseille was born to a wealthy Russian family in St. Petersburg in 1856.  His family later settled in Germany. Marseille bought a porcelain factory in 1884 and by 1890 began producing bisque doll heads. He acquired several other small porcelain factories, becoming one of the most prolific doll producers in Germany.  Marseille decided to add a line of affordable play dolls and in the 1890s began production of the Mold 390, a socket head, and Mold 370, the shoulder head version.  These molds were produced in various sizes and quality, and can be found on a wide variety of bodies.   Beverly brought many examples from her collection.  

Mold 370 is the shoulder head version, typically found on a kid body with bisque lower arms.

Other members brought examples to share.  This big ball-jointed girl belongs to Myrna Loesch. . . 

as does this diminutive doll.

Elaine Jackson brought this pretty example in a lacy pinafore.

This all-original Belgium milkmaid is on a fully jointed body and is just 8 inches tall.

Sallie Howard brought these charming child dolls by Miroslava Brodlova of My Meadow Dolls for show and tell.

October 13, 2018, Doll Show Special Exhibit

At our October 13, 2018, doll show, club members shared their dolls in a special exhibit that gave a brief tour of doll bodies from the 1800s through contemporary times. While it is the faces of dolls that intrigue and delight collectors, doll bodies, although often hidden under clothing, are as important an element of a doll’s history and appeal. 

Although doll heads have long been made out of papier mache, wood, bisque, and china, the bodies are generally made from another material, such as cloth or kid. Making a doll entirely out of bisque or china would have been expensive to manufacture and ship and result in a doll too heavy and fragile for a child to play with. Also, as the bodies would be covered by clothing, a less expensive body made more economic sense. For families who could not afford to buy an entire doll, shops and general stores often offered shoulder heads, with the body to be sewn at home. The larger doll features an early papier mache shoulder head by Adolph Wislizenus of Germany, circa 1865. It is on a homemade cloth body with stitched joints and separately sewn fingers. Such bodies might seem crude to our modern eyes, but no doubt this doll was beautiful to some little girl long ago, giving her a companion to cuddle and dress.

Her tiny companion is a small exception (literally) to the general rule that doll bodies were not made of bisque or china. Beginning in the 1870s, Germany and France produced small dolls entirely of bisque, often jointed at the shoulders and hips, and for the finer versions, with swivel necks. This example is by the German firm of Simon and Halbig. She, like most of the earlier and finer all-bisque dolls, is peg-strung, meaning that the elastic was pulled through a hole at the top of the arm or leg and pegged into place with a bit of wood. Later, dolls were made with molded loops, making stringing much simpler. By the 1910s, many companies like Hertwig and Company of Germany were using inexpensive and sturdy wire to string their dolls. 

Germany had a long history of producing wooden play dolls, but the seated doll is a rare example made in the United States. In 1858, Joel Ellis established a factory that manufactured a variety of toys from wood, such as doll carriages, sleds, carts, and wagons. Expanding upon his toy business, in 1873 Ellis patented a doll carved from rock maple. However, because of an economic depression, the dolls were produced for only one year. Although the head is stationary, the doll is jointed at the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees with with mortise and tenon joints and has metal hands and feet. 

The standing lovely lady is from the French firm of Jumeau and dates from the 1870s. From the 1860s through the 1880s, most dolls portrayed adult women. The French were renown for their costly fashion dolls with bisque or china heads and wasp-waisted bodies, typically of fine kid. There was an entire industry in Paris dedicated to providing these costly dolls with all the accoutrements of a fine lady of fashion. 

Kid bodies with rivets joints and bisque or composition arms were also used on the later bisque shoulder head child dolls. This example with a pristine kid body is Mold 195 by J.D. Kestner. Her face, with its large eyes, sweet bland expression, and open mouth with tiny teeth is known to collectors as the “dolly face,” a popular style produced by many German and French companies. Note this model has fur eyebrows, patented by Kestner in 1910.

In 1909, the German company of Kämmer and Reinhardt introduced Mold 100 (dubbed by early collectors as the Kaiser Baby). Not only did the bisque head realistically portray that of a infant with a toothless smile and double chin, the composition body was shaped like that of a plump baby with pudgy bent arms and legs. Other companies quickly copied this body for their own line of infants. This example of a bent-limb body is Mold 619 by the German firm of Bahr and Proschild.

German doll artist Käthe Kruse began making dolls for her daughters because she disliked the available commercially-made toys. In 1910, she displayed her dolls in a Berlin department store and they were so popular she began producing them commercially. The early dolls had muslin bodies stuffed with reindeer hair, were jointed at the hips and shoulders, and featured hand painted pressed fabric heads. The bashful boy in the back in his original underwear dates around 1912.

The seated all-wood doll was created by the American company founded by Albert Schoenhut. In 1911, the company introduced the “All-Wood Perfection Art Doll.” The dolls were jointed with a system of internal springs. They had holes in their feet and wore special shoes and socks with matching openings. The holes fit on a stand which allowed the dolls to hold almost any pose. The earliest dolls had character faces, but in order to compete with less expensive bisque and composition dolls., Schoenhut later introduced faces with more doll-like features, as well as toddler and baby dolls, and even a doll with sleeping eyes. However, by 1935 the company declared bankruptcy.

By the 1880s, child and baby dolls had pushed aside their more womanly counterparts, conquering the playroom. However, in the Edwardian period, lady dolls won a brief reprieve with the popularity of the Gibson girl. Both French and German companies produced lady dolls on womanly ball-jointed composition bodies. The elegant Edwardian in the pink silk corset is "La Patricienne" by Edmund Daspres and dates from 1905. Although her body with its narrow waist and subtle bosom was created in France, her bisque head is Mold 1159 by the German firm of Simon and Halbig.  

Beginning in the 1910s, American companies began producing dolls made entirely out of composition or with composition heads and limbs. Lightweight, sturdier, and less costly than bisque dolls, they quickly conquered the American market. Composition could not be washed and the finish could craze or crack as the underlying composition material expanded or contracted due to humidity and temperature. Composition was replaced by hard plastic after WWII. The pretty girl in pigtails is typical of many of the dolls of the era, with a composition head and limbs, but a cloth body, often with a simple mechanism that made the doll squeak “Mama” when tilted. She is unmarked. 

From 1928 through the 1940s, Joseph Kallus, the founder of Cameo Doll Company, created a series of character dolls with segmented wood bodies and composition heads. These included well-know comic characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye, Walt Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Jiminy Cricket, and advertising dolls. Others were simply charming children, such as this Joy, introduced in 1932.

This curvaceous beauty heralds the reintroduction of the lady doll. In 1955, Madame Alexander created Cissy, a glamorous fashion doll with a shapely female figure, feet molded for high heels, and a sophisticated wardrobe. Of hard plastic and 20 to 21 inches tall, Cissy is jointed at the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, with earlier dolls also having an upper arm joint. She was produced through 1962, with a vinyl version reintroduced in 1966.

The popularity of Cissy encouraged other companies to introduce similar fashion ladies. In 1958, Uneeda Doll Company introduced its own fashion lady doll, Dollikin, here seated in the brown chair.  Advertised as the “Original Doll Mannikin,” her body was jointed in 16 places—neck, shoulders, upper arms, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees and ankles—allowing her to assume a wide variety of poses. Produced until 1962, this version has a hard plastic body and a vinyl head. 

 Everything old is new again, as shown by this modern BJD (ball jointed doll) in the white wicker chair. In 1999, the Japanese corporationVolks introduced “Super Dolfie,” a posable ball-jointed resin doll aimed at adult collectors. The popularity of the dolls created an entire industry of BJD dolls, first in Japan, then spreading to Korea and China. Soon companies in the United States and Europe were creating BJDs, as well as many doll artists. Innovations such as interchangeable face plates, eyes wigs, hands, and feet inspired collectors to customize their dolls. This example is Volks Super Dollfie or SD Kira.

 From 1955 through1960s, American Character produced its own multi-jointed hard plastic doll, Toodles, a beautiful baby doll with jointed elbows and knees. She was advertised as being able to pose in 1,000 different positions.

Special Exhibit at Our Upcoming Show

This year our doll show will feature a special display of dolls entitled, "Doll Bodies, From Bisque to BJD." The exhibit will show a history of doll bodies over the past two centuries, from early bisque to modern resin ball jointed dolls.  This frisky flapper just one of the dolls that will be on display.  By the German firm of Simon and Halbig, this 13-inch tall lissome lass has a slim flapper body, shapely legs with a ball joint at knees, and feet molded to fit heeled pumps. She is all original, from her bobbed mohair wig to her scandalous silk teddy to her rayon stockings with ribbon garters and high heels.  This lovely little lady is incised on the back of her head “1159 Simon & Halbig S&H 5.”