February 8, 2026, Meeting

Elaine gave a program on cowboy and Indian dolls. She talked about growing up in the 1940s playing cowboys as portrayed in popular culture, but explained that the way the cowboys were depicted in Hollywood is a myth. Elaine said that the cowboy traditional began in Texas after the Texas revolution, when Hispanic ranchers and farmers abandoned their cattle as they were forced to immigrate to Mexico. Hands were hired to round up the stray cattle and drive them to market. However in 1883,  Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show created the myth of the cowboy as a noble savior of the wild west. Elaine noted that although 40 percent of the cowboys were Black or Hispanic, on television and in the movies cowboy stars such as Tom Mix, Gene Aubrey, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger portrayed cowboys as a white man protecting civilization from savage Indians. By the 1940s, every American composition doll company had introduced a cowboy doll.

Elaine displayed a number of cowboy dolls from her collection. The composition boy in the back row wearing a red checked shirt and chaps is "Baby Grumpy" by Effanbee. Just to his right in the front is a yellow and white oilcloth doll by the Atlanta Novelty Company and the little tan doll is "Wild Bill," a cloth chew toy. To the far right of the picture, the cloth doll in the front with the checked shirt and red bandana was made from a commercial doll pattern first issued in the 1940s. Just behind him, in the blue shirt and straw hat, is a cloth cowboy made from an Edith Flack Ackley pattern. The tall cowboy in the brown vest and checked shirt behind him has a cloth body also made from an Ackley pattern, but he has a painted wooden head. To the right of the Ackley cowpoke in the blue shirt is a cowboy in brown and tan with a head made from a nut. Behind him, handsome in blue and white, is an all-wooden cowboy carved by Austin artist Nancy Grobe. In front of the pair is a Hitty doll carved by Connie Hardt and dressed as Davy Crockett. One can't play cowboys without Indians, and Elaine shared a number of dolls representing Native Americans. To the far left of the picture are two painted cloth Native American dolls created in the 1930s under the Work Progress Administration, or WPA. In front of the is a tiny bisque nodder doll by the German firm of Hertwig and Company.

 Elaine explained that Native American dolls were often made either as play dolls or tourist souvenirs.  The two cone-shaped dolls on the left of the picture were made by the Seminole tribe out of cloth and palmetto fibers. Elaine said that the older dolls have clothing made from appliqué, while newer versions are decorated with rick-rack. The cloth doll in blue in the center is dressed as a traditional Navajo woman and in front of her is a tiny birch bark canoe. The wooden doll, representing a Native American child, was carved by Connie Hardt.

On the left of the picture are two dolls with carved wooden heads that represent Northeastern tribes. Behind them is a cloth doll that may have been made from an Ackley pattern. The composition baby in yellow felt was from Madame Hendren, a trade name used by the American Averill Manufacturing Company. Next to him, in orange cloth, is a Native American character by the British doll maker, Norah Wellings.

In this picture, the flat colorful cloth doll is actually an oven mitt modeled after a Hopi Kachina. The two seated clay figurines are Pueblo storytellers and the porcelain Indian in the feathered headdress is a bell that was made in Japan. The brown doll captioned "Alice's Baby" was commercially made as an early teething toy for infants.

Members shared some of their Western-themed dolls. Jenell Howell displayed this cute 1955 cowgirl outfit made for Ginny by he Vogue Doll Company, 

as well as this 1952 Ginny in her original Native American outfit.

She also shared this Mary Hoyer hard plastic doll in a hand-knitted outfit representing a South American cowboy known as a "gaucho."

Bette Birdsong brought two Gene dolls in glamorous cowgirl garb.

Sylvia McDonald brought several dolls. The man in the horned headdress in the back represents a Plains Indian doll and dates from the 1930s. The plastic doll in the blue velvet blouse and red skirt was given to Sylvia by her brother in the 1950s and represents a Navajo woman. To her right is another Navajo doll, made out of cloth. In the front is Woody from the "Toy Story" franchise and a Seminole doll that Sylvia told the club is around 75 years old.

David Craig told the club that he didn't have any cowboy or Indian dolls, so he brought two dolls decked out in red and white for Valentine's Day. This blond belle is by JAMIEshow USA and is dressed in an outfit for Gene.

This lady in red is by the Phoenix, Arizona company of D.A.E. Originals.

Lynda Eitel displayed this Navajo woman doll that she had made, 

as well as a number of Western miniatures.

Ann Meier shared these Skookum dolls. Designed by Mary McAboy, these Native American souvenir dolls were from 1913 through the 1960s. They are known for having blanket-wrapped bodies with no arms and molded composition or plastic faces with side-glancing eyes. 

Sharon Weintraub displayed several German bisque examples. This all-bisque cowgirl and her little Indian companion are by Hertwig. 

This all-original Native American character doll is by Bahr and Proschild. The head is incised “244” on the back.

Created by Gebruder Heubach, this doll is based on a real Native American woman, popularly known as "Princess Angeline." Her name was actually Kikisoblu and she was the eldest daughter of Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples on the West Coast. In 1855, when the Duwamish Indians were forced to leave their land for reservations, she insisted on remaining in Seattle, living in a small cabin and supporting herself by doing laundry and selling handwoven baskets.

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.