Four antique china dolls and one well-made reproduction doll.
The old china dolls are able to stretch their legs, er limbs, in front of lace curtains in our new home–still an apartment–in Oregon City, a place with enough history for them to feel right at home! This grouping of cabinet sized ladies (14″ to 16″) presents a nice array of some of the oldest hairstyles for china dolls. The doll on the left in the wine colored dress is my newest aquisition and my oldest doll. She is from the A. W. Fr Kister factory and dates to the mid 1840’s with a braided bun hairstyle. (Oh what a luscious find!) Next, in the black dress, is a doll from the Kestner factory with a covered wagon hairstyle dating to the 1850’s. She is all original, and also precious. The middle doll with the cream floral blouse is very rare with curls falling down to her shoulders, and a mound of curls in the back. She is probably made by Kister and dates to the 1860’s. The doll in the red dress has the Lydia hairstyle, with long sausage curls falling onto her shoulders. She is the reproduction, though the original dates to the 1840’s. Finally, on the right, in the indigo blue dress is a Greiner-type china made by the Kloster Vielsdorf factory. She dates to the early 1850’s with a hairstyle similar to the covered wagon, but her ears are exposed. She is a child, or kinderkopf, with her short neck and wide eyes, while the others are damenkopf with long ladies necks and mature faces. The covered wagon hairstyle was common for girls and women in the 1850’s, and the covered wagon doll shown here could be a child, though her original dress is that of a grown woman.
This photo shows the hairstyles from the side.
The little blonde girls like their perch under the lamp. They are in the range of about 12″ and date from the 1880’s to about 1900. First, in the light blue dress, is an Alt Beck and Gottschalk factory little Highland Mary with bangs and curls in back. In the middle with the pink dress and apron is a Hertwig factory doll with the high curl on the top of her head. And on the right in the white dress with lace is a shy Kling factory girl with a center part and wavy hair with brush strokes.
Thank you for joining us for this little house-warming gathering. We hope that you join us again for more history and inspiration with the dolls.
This girl wears an 1850’s style dress and has her hair in the long corkscrew curls fashion of that time. Her doll may be china or papier mache–hard to tell.
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