The Last Doll Show of 2025.

       So, at last I'm posting this doll show post. I was super busy in December NOT getting all my Christmas stuff done.

   I went to that final doll show of the season in October. You'll notice from the pictures that it was right around Halloween. The entry price had gone up, and was $8!! Maybe you live where an $8 doll show entry fee sounds like a deal, but here, that's getting pretty outrageous. We sort of made up for it though, because Ken went with me, and he won a door prize! Before we went home we went to the car for something, and we checked the board to see if either of our names had been posted as door prize winners, because we didn't hear any of them announced. Alas, we weren't on the board. But we checked again when we came back in, and Ken had won! There wasn't anything good left to pick from, or so I thought. But then I spotted a lone doll show gift certificate for $10, laying between all the cheap porcelain dolls. Ken had me spend part of it, and he kept the other part. So we made back a little more than one entry fee. Of course, then we spent half of it!

  I hadn't been to this particular show for a while. I has gotten pretty big. Here are some of the best things I saw.

  I don't see very many of the original 1952 Betsy McCall dolls at shows. I mostly see the 8 inch dolls that came out later, or even the 8 inch Tonner ones from the recent past. But at this show I saw several of the very first Betsys. These dolls were the very first (non-paper) Betsy McCall dolls made. They were made by Ideal in 1952, and were 14 inches tall.

  I don't know who this lady is. She's a cheap knock off, with a vaguely Tressy face.

  This pair were probably made of celluloid, (the doll on the left), and hard plastic.

  I've featured the felted dolls of Bristol Park Studios before. She's done some really good ones, and they just keep getting better.

You can find her Etsy page HERE. She's also on Facebook. She takes custom orders!

  You know I love Alice in Wonderland, and she had a lot of Alice related dolls this time. There was this great Mad Hatter, and the Red Queen.

  Look at that Grinch!

  She's really good at horses, and had plenty of beautiful animals.

  The cat! The tiger!

  More great animals.

  An awesome Oompa Loompa, and a mouse riding a horse.

  I have a weakness for Humpty Dumptys. (You might remember seeing one I made.) I loved this one.

  This arch full of bunnies was one of my favourites she brought to this show.

  Wednesday brought her parents to the show. Morticia even has, as Ken would say, her 'big wikka wing back chair' from the show. I almost missed Cousin Itt!

    This impressive Dobby was over three feet tall. My  thought on this one was that she should have used a real pillowcase, to make him more realistic. He was great though. I asked her how long he took to make. She said he took her three days.

    At another table I saw all the pieces to the Tutti friend Chris giftset Funtimers.

  This old lady was really good. Look at that face.

  There were a lot of beautiful antique dolls.

  I think this lady was made from wax over something.

  You know I love me some Shirleys.

  This was a Tressy rip off, possibly Swingin' Sally. You might have seen my Tressy clone, Missy, who looks just like this girl except for her green eyeshadow, HERE.

  More antique dolls. But then, I guess some of the other dolls I've shown you count as antique dolls now. I find ot really irksome that toys from my childhood are showing up in antique stores now!

  The other girls are beautiful, but I love the googlies on the left.

  This baby was my favourite on the whole table. I love coats, and hers is wonderful.

Not sure about that hat though!

That kid bottom right looks like a grouch.

  I loved all of these beautiful dolls, but then I came across this little basket of tiny dolls. I have  a soft spot for the little German dollhouse dolls. You may have seen some of mine, like Dollhouse Girl and Dollhouse boy, and Tillie and her maid.

  Look at this one. I think that's a muff, which is also a doll.

  This one has some personality.

  Another lady I've featured the work of in previous posts is Wendy, from WendyL Creations. She had some great stuff, as usual. I have only seen her at this particular show, so I'm glad I went.

  She does some macabre stuff, but then, it was around Halloween, so it was perfect! Like the headless bodies hanging here.

Using this little necklace rack for her headless corpses was clever.

  This bunny was good. Wendy does a lot of things in cloth, or spun cotton. This guy is spun cotton.

  These ladies were beautifully made cloth dolls. Wendy said she has been making dolls since she was a kid.

  More spun cotton bunnies and Jack O'Lanterns.

 

 Creepy scarecrows!

  And sweet little rag dolls.

    These were pins.

  My favourite things Wendy had were her Jack O'Lantern people! Aren't they cute?!

  They have spun cotton heads. My favourite was this

 guy on the left, wearing the sock sweater.

Sorry he's not in focus!

  

  Wendy said she had sold A LOT of stuff that day.

  

Leaving Wendy's table we saw these lovely girls.

  I find I am really starting to appreciate the old Madame Alexander dolls, especially the Maggie face.

That Annalee Santa is quite a photobomber!

  Here's another of the Ideal Betsy McCalls we saw.

  These two were both cute.

  This one was an unmarked Patsy wannabe, with a dark wig.

  I was shocked to see this monkey! It was sitting with a bunch of Steiff animals, but  it's just a cheap toy. I have one just like it, only with a pink skirt and a bouquet. I got her when I was a little kid. She's one of those things my sister made me buy by making the doll talk to me and beg me to buy it! "Please buy me Tammy Mommy!" Her name is Judy Poken. I had to send my sister a picture and show it to her.

  I sent along a message that said, :Judy Poken!" Instead of being amazed to see a Judy Poken clone at the doll show, she just said, "Judy Poken was wearing a skirt." Geez! The Judy clone was $30, and when we came back around, she was gone!

  These cute babies are ready for winter.

  It was near Halloween, so the witches were out.

  

  And so were the Shirley Temples.

  I have had Helen Kish's Raggedy Riley on my wish list for years. Suddenly, there she was! But too expensive for me.

  This cloth lady was kind of awesome, although she does remind me of Mrs. Garrett, from "The Facts of Life".

She's a tea cozy! (A cover for your teapot, to keep the tea warm.)

  I liked this cloth lady too.

  This little girl is a Robert Raikes wooden doll.

  This is the most mint Ellie May/Calico Lassie doll I have ever seen.

  The Calico Lassie doll is better known as Ellie May, after the character on The Beverly Hillbillies TV show. She's a Tammy clone sort, with a great resemblance to the Shelley doll by Eegee. (You can see my Shelley HERE.)She was unlicensed though, so they weren't actually allowed to call her that. She was a mail order doll offered by Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereal in 1964 and 1965. You could get the doll and extra outfits for $1, or another offer sold you three extra outfits for another dollar, or both deals for $2. From the outfits I've seen, there are at least 5 extra outfits made for her.

 These were pretty girls.

  The Roddy doll of the left seems to be getting all up in that other doll's business.

  This doll looked a lot less threatening in person! She was cute, in fact.

 

  This cloth couple was nice.

  I'm not sure what this lady is holding. A bottle of wine in one of those wicker covers?

  This doll was sort of interesting. She looks just like Dollhouse Boy, but she's a girl, and also, a totally different scale. She's much bigger than Dollhouse Boy. She's probably at least 6 inches tall.

  This old couple really are old. I don't know if you can read their label, but they were made in Canada in 1947.

  I think the boy on the left is a Lenci. The pair on the right are Kathe Kruse. Does anybody remember Little Lulu, sitting on the right? The strange little guy to her right has a real face.

  This girl is different. I'd say she was probably made in Hong Kong, but there's also something Russian about her. 

  These two were really cute. I assumed they were made by the same artist, but now I'm looking at them, and their different tags, I wonder.

  This is the small one's tag.

  This one is pretty, even if she does have teeth like a girl I went to elementary school with. She wasn't finished growing teeth in yet, and her teeth parted in the middle...sideways.

  This doll was much prettier in person than in this picture. Her head didn't really look gigantic.

  Her tag says she's a 1930's Chad Valley doll 'in Welsh costume, from England'. Not quite sure what to make of that. I hope the person who wrote the tag wasn't like a lady I ran across in a store once, who tried to sell me a soap dish, saying, "It's made in England." I looked at the bottom of the dish and said, "Made in Wales" She said, "Well, Wales is a country in England." I said, "In Britain." She said, "Well, I don't know. I've never been out of..." And I don't remember if she said she'd never been out of Ohio, or out of the town!

  This little guy, (Actually, he was about 20 inches tall.),is apparently a Martha Jenks Chase doll. The dealer wasn't the owner, and didn't really know anything about him. From what I can find, Martha Chase dolls were made by dipping stockinette dolls, (spelled 'stockinet' on the dolls),in sizing, and pressing them into plaster molds, and then they were hand painted. There's an apparently inactive blog called Dotsydoodle with some info about Martha Chase dolls, and pictures of a bunch of them. Here's what it says about Martha Chase dolls: Martha Chase was an entrepreneurial woman of the late 1800's who decided that little girls needed a doll that was not only unbreakable, but also washable.  She designed and patented a cloth doll with a molded, cloth face with the features painted in oils.  Her first dolls were made in 1889, and the company continued to make dolls all the way into the 1970's.  Of course, the later dolls were made of materials other than cloth, and did not have the appeal of the earlier dolls...

  HERE'S a clip from Antiques Roadshow where they appraise a Chase doll and give some information. 

    I think he looks like he might have been repainted, from the pictures I found of other Martha Chase dolls. But he was $595! 

  Martha Chase made dolls based on book characters, dolls of various sizes, and even dols of various skin tones. Her company continued on, run by her children after her death, until 1970.

The stamp in his armpit says he's a Chase Hospital Doll. From what I can find, the Chase Hospital dolls were dolls made for hospitals, for training nurses. The first Chase Hospital doll was a 5 foot 2 inch doll nicknamed 'Mrs. Chase'. She was used in a hospital in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to teach nurses how to handle patients, turn them over in bed, etc. HERE'S a page with some information about the history of Chase dolls, and how they came to be made for hospital training. HERE you can read about the history of Chase dolls on a page of the Barry Art Museum.

  I came upon a table with something I've been wanting for ages! A Brikette doll! In fact, two!

  Brikette dolls were made by Vogue, in various hair colours and sizes. The one I want is that larger one, and of course I want a red head. She was perfect, (in her original outfit and everything!), except for the price!  Even the smaller one, also in original Brikette clothes, was too much for me.

  This girl was so pretty. I think she's a Toni. I have one somewhere. After the fire and everything getting moved around and tubbed up in storage, who knows where she is.

  I once posted a Singer Butterick sewing mannequin doll I got at a flea market. Here's a McCall's one in her original box, with all her accessories. The idea was for little girls to practice their sewing with these mannequins.

  The girl at the top is from 1916.

  There is a dealer who sells doll parts and clothes. They always have boxes of $5 dolls that are filled with, I guess, dolls they didn't necessarily want, but got in with the other stuff they did want to buy to  resell. This time they also had a table with stacks of Flagg dolls, in their boxes, for $5.  Flagg dolls are wired and bendable,like a Tutti doll. I think most people are more familiar with Flagg's dollhouse families, but these dolls are about 9 inches tall. Flagg dolls can look a little rough sometimes, but some of them are really cool. I was very taken by a couple of them. my favourites were the skier, in plaid pants and jacket, and the dancer next to her.

  I was having a hard time deciding, but in the end I bought the skier.

  The dolls were supposed to come with a paper describing the other dolls available, but mine didn't have one. I photographed one from one of the other dolls' box.

 

  Here are my favourites again. Which one would you have chosen?

  There was a table selling dolls to benefit the Mazza Museum, in Findley Ohio. The museum  houses the world's largest collection of  original artwork by children's book illustrators. It sounds really interesting. They have a whole room of pop up book illustration artwork. Ken and I plan to go sometime. 

  All the dolls had been donated to the museum by someone who had travelled a lot, but didn't fit in with the theme of the museum, so it was agreed they be sold, with the money going to the museum. Here are some of the dolls.

  This couple had stockingette over some kind of pressed molded faces.

    So what did I buy, other than the Flagg doll? Well, the first thing I spotted was this Skipper.

She was a test market Skipper, often called a Sample Skipper. These were the very first Skipper dolls on the market and are slightly different from the Skippers that most often show up. You can see my other test market Skippers by clicking on Sample Skipper in the side bar. Here she is. She'll look great after a trip to he Tam spa.

  

  I also found this beautiful wooden bench...table?

 It's a bench for Tammy World, anyway. It is actually different pieces of wood in different shades, not painted.

  The dealer who had the Flagg dolls had this tiny jointed wooden doll on a necklace too.

It's a nice sized doll for Tammy.

   I thought I'd found a new body for Tammy World, who finds her legs have been getting a bit floppy of late. Unfortunately, it was the wrong Hermione body for Tammy, because this one had the magnetic hand, and a big lever in her back. 

  I also got a coat for Ideal's Pepper called Frosty Frolics. It's had the buttons replaced, but that's okay. I love coats. I like my dolls to have coats. When I was young and thin, I had a lot of coats.

  I also got this whole bag of little dolls for $3. I only wanted the little gnome/hillbilly guy, (Can't decide which it is.), but then I saw the felt guy on the left. Then I decided it was definitely worth it. There's also one of those wooden Polish dolls.

  And that's it. Not too bad.

  

  That was the last doll show of the year. I thought about going to the last miniature show of the year the next weekend or two. I ended up not going because Ken was getting over a UTI, and he didn't need to be around a crowd and possibly get sick again. The next doll show is in the Spring. But I'll surely see you before then!