Things have really
changed! I was a young woman living in
West Texas on a ranch in Comanche county then.
Living nine miles from pavement I
was relatively isolated. My parents lived in the large city of Dallas 120 miles away, and I would load my two little
girls in the car and make that drive on slower old roads over the hills and
through the woods to grandmother’s house every few months. What an interesting grandmother she was for
them! My mother loved old toys and old
dolls and miniature rooms and doll houses which she made with assistance from
my father. A trip home for a visit
always included involvement in her
latest project. Once I returned to the
ranch with a fine old Teddy bear to mend, a find from the Goodwill store where
mama loved to dig and search. On another
of these trips Mama offered me a doll she had found, needing a wig and
restringing and clothing. By taking her home, I was hooked!
To buy doll elastic I sent for a Mark Farmer’s catalog as
advertised in Hobbies magazine. Soon I was reading the doll pages of Hobbies
mag each month and sending the required SASE for mimeographed listings of dolls
and parts for sale. Buying from these
lists sight unseen with very few of the items pictured was almost a shot in the
dark. In order to describe the item
offered, the seller would cite page and book for illustrations from the few
doll books available. Claire Fawcett’s Guide was a popular reference. Collectors gave names to different china
heads such as Mrs Bumblebottom or Mary Lincoln or other titles from these early
books. In this way you could know about what you were ordering if you sent for
a doll with a head called Dagmar. Some of these names persist until today. Very
early on, I desired most an Izannah Walker doll as pictured in Mrs. Johl’s
books and an American Greiner doll which I did not own until the 1970’s.
I had almost no money
at all for dolls. I could manage a bit
from the grocery money to buy a china doll head for $2.35 or such. But I was excited over my new hobby and set
out to see what could be discovered locally.
The town of Comanche about 15 miles from me, had as all small towns did,
a junk shop or two. In these I asked after china dolls. One shop keeper said he
had seen a doll head at the iron man’s place. It was common in a small town for
someone to put old pieces of iron in their front yard hoping to sell or swap them.
These pieces of old farm equipment or hoes without handles and other iron
pieces were often found as the iron man would check the city dump grounds on a
more or less regular basis. When I found the iron man he told me yes he
had had a little chine doll head from the dump grounds and sold it to Mrs.
Dofloppy down the street for 50
cents. The iron man’s grandchild had
been playing with the little head in a coffee can in the dirt of the yard. Coffee cans of that time were wide and squat.
I knocked on the door there and was admitted to the living room to visit this woman, and I soon spied the little doll head sitting on top of a bud vase on a shelf. This perch on top of the flared vase gave a “body” to the little head, which was without it’s shoulders. I was able to purchase the doll head for 75 cents. I clasped my first real antique doll find and was thrilled with her! She was a little common blond head, needing everything. Hands and feet were ordered from Mark Farmer, and I made the doll a body and a dress, and named her Resurrection! I was not to have her long. My mama came from Dallas on a visit and grabbed Resurrection and announced that She must have the doll. My protests counted for nothing. Mama was building a salt box doll house and intended to show it in the State fair that October and 6 inch tall Resurrection was the very doll she needed. So in less than a year, Resurrection went from the Comanche city dump to the state fair of Texas in my mama’s winning blue ribbon exhibit. Believe!
Our family has not kept many of mama’s miniature rooms, and that was not the only blue ribbon she won. But we do have Resurrection in that doll house still. My mama’s little great great grandchildren ooh and ahh at it through a pane of plexiglass.
And the hobby that began for me in my 20’s has kept a firm
grip until this time in my 80’s.
Helen tried to write this as a comment but that did not work so here is the sequel she sent me this afternoon!
"I own a "cousin" to Resurrection, the little blonde china of this story. In
the 1960s, my sister's family lived in Comanche, and on a visit to a junk shop
there locally called M & S (though the faded sign said Mc's), I found a
small brown metal object which proved to be a rusted tin doll head, a German
Minerva for a 12" doll. I bought it for a few dollars (inflation had come to
the doll market there), took it home with me to Fort Worth to a doll repair shop
for repainting, ordered china arms and legs and a body pattern from my Mark
Farmer catalog, made a body from a pale pink linen guest towel, and muslin
pantalettes, petticoat and a dimity dress. The "professional" paint job proved
to be amateurish and unsatisfactory, and since I didn't yet know Edyth O'Neill,
I couldn't take it to her to fix. So I repainted it myself, not good, but
better, and at least my own mess. My dear sister is gone now, but I still have
that doll, packed away in storage waiting to see the light of day again. Edyth
perfectly named her reclaimed treasure, but mine is still Nameless. Helen
Pringle"
