Holiday Party, 12/10/2023

Member Jan Irsfeld generously opened her lovely home for our club's holiday party. The club provided a variety of pizzas and members brought many tasty sides and desserts. Jan's halls were definitely decked out for the holidays!

Several members brought dolls to share. Pam Hardy displayed this beautiful reproduction Bru by famed doll artist Patricia Loveless.

Elaine McNally brought this sweet carved wood Swiss doll she recently purchased at the auction of the Jonathan Green Collection. The smaller wooden doll sitting on her lap is one of Elaine's own creations.

Elaine's daughter, Allie, brought these two well-loved antique teddy bears. The larger one is by the English company Merrythought and carries the firm's label on the sole of its right foot. The other bear is an early Steiff.

This German character baby is a family heirloom from Sylvia McDonald's daughter-in-law's grandmother. The pretty pink sweater was made by Sylvia's grandmother in the 1940s for Sylvia's childhood dolls.

Myrna Loesch brought this Gene doll ready to hit the slopes in her fashionable ski outfit.

Jan dressed this Madame Alexander Cissy in an outfit inspired by the fashions of the early 1900s.

Speaking of inspiration, Jan recreated an entire ancient Egyptian burial chamber using her imagination, staging and seamstress skills, and several Cissy dolls.

This is the top of the sarcophagus.

Inside is a Cissy elaborately dressed as Egyptian nobility. 

Beneath her is her gem-bedecked mummy. 

This Cissy represents Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who reigned in the fifteenth century B.C.E.

In 2016, researchers recreated the face of a mummified head of a young woman found in the archives of the University of Melbourne in Australia, whom they named Meritamun. This Cissy is Jan's own recreation of Meritamun. In front of her are four canopic jars topped with heads of Cissette dolls. In Egyptian tombs, the four jars held the stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver of the deceased, and each jar lid was carved with the head of the specific deity assigned to guard them.

This purple robe was displayed by Jan Irsfeld at the club's September 11, 2022, and was made by Alexander to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Elizabeth's coronation. Jan now has the version of the Cissy who would have originally worn this robe.

Jan also allowed members to peek into her meticulously organized workroom.

 

Labor Day Week; The Milkmaid

All this week our blog will commemorate Labor Day by featuring dolls in working garb. This miniature milkmaid poses with a metal milk pail in one hand and her wooden milk can in the other. Unlike the milkman, whose job was to deliver the milk, the milkmaid was responsible for milking the cows and preparing cream, butter, and even cheese.   Historically, many large estates had private dairies and employed one or more milkmaids to skillfully run them.  Milkmaids were renown for their buxom figures and smooth rosy complexions, especially noticeable at a time when many people bore extensive scarring marking them as survivors of the dreaded smallpox.  It has been claimed that Edward Jenner, who developed the first vaccine against the scrounge of smallpox, overheard a pretty milkmaid brag about her flawless skin and that she would never suffer from smallpox because she had once contracted cowpox.  Later Jenner would discover that exposure to the far more milder disease of cowpox gave the person immunity to smallpox. Although this story appears to be more fiction than fact, a milkmaid's profession appears to have helped her preserve her complexion.

This 8-inch tall milkmaid is all original and is on a fully jointed composition ball jointed body, even at her wrists.  Under her bonnet, her blond mohair wig is worn in elaborate braids and her bright blue glass eye sleep.  The front of her bodice has been padded to give her the well-fed figure associated with milkmaids and her blooming complexion is flawless.  An old faded label pinned to the back of her apron states "Belgium."  She is incised back of her head "Germany A 12/0 M," indicating that she is by the German maker Armand Marseille.  Her cow companion is Bessy by Steiff, first introduced in 1958, and is made of mohair, felt, and velveteen.