Doll-A-Day 320:Ivy Cottage Violet Pickles and Ruby Buttons

    Followers are coming in twos lately. Today we welcome Mommy And Me Dolls and astrid_nat. Check out Mommy And Me Dolls' blog. I don't think astrid has one, but correct me if I'm wrong astrid.Thanks for joining us guys.
******Because so many people ask where they can obtain these dolls, I  will always bring home any  extra Violet or Ruby dolls I find and post them here. I don't have any right now, but check back occasionally.*************************************************************************
  Today's doll is two dolls again: These two rag dolls named Violet Pickles and Ruby Buttons.

Ruby and Violet are dolls based on characters from the "Ivy Cottage" series of books by E. J. Taylor.

The dolls have totally soft floppy bodies, and are made of cozy soft fabric, with vinyl heads.

Their clothes are removable. Ruby comes with her pet mouse and Violet comes with her teddy bear.

The dolls were made by Horsman.There was also a line of PVC figures, (Seen here at the bottom of the box.), and something we never found called The Ivy Cottage Pop Up Playhouse.I still wonder what that was.We found Emma a couple of the PVCs in Canada.

UPDATE: Pop Up Playhouse mystery solved! Thanks to a kind reader you can see the playhouse HERE.
The dolls, based on the books, (or is it the other way around?), bring things sort of full circle since the author, E. J. Taylor, is a doll maker.

Some of E.J. Tayor's amazing dolls. They look like the illustrations of the characters in the Ivy Cottage books.

E.J. Taylor, dollmaker.The books were written as a side project.

We first discovered the Ivy Cottage dolls back when Emma was a baby, or maybe even before she was born.I found the dolls in 2 sizes at Odd/Big Lots. I loved them and although I didn't very often buy dolls for myself then, I had to have them. I really liked the big ones, but I thought the legs looked too elephantine.I ended up with these 12" tall ones.

Later on we found the first book,"Ivy Cottage" at an outlet store.

 

Having been an Anglophile, and having been married to an Englishman for years, I can usually detect Britishness from miles away. There was something vaguely British about the books, but they were just not quite British. This made sense when I found that E.J. Taylor is an American, but has lived in England for years.

I recognized the connection with the dolls right away, and we bought the book. I love the soft,sweet illustrations.

The premise of the books was that Miss Biscuit, a newly retired nanny,moved to the country with Violet Pickles,her rag doll companion,who is alive. Violet is bored and lonely living out in the country,so Miss Biscuit makes another live rag doll,Ruby Buttons, to keep her company.

  Emma liked the book when she was little, and we read it often. Later Ivy enjoyed the books too. (We had found others by the time she came along.) Emma wanted to play with my dolls, but I didn't want them to get disheveled, being played with.I let her play with them for a while, but eventually she got her own.
  I always thought it would have been nice if the dolls had had more clothes made for them, like their cozy night gowns and winter coats.

I didn't sew then, so I never attempted them.

  The books never explain why the dolls are alive, or how Miss Biscuit can make Live dolls. Subsequent books never mentioned the fact that Ruby and Violet are dolls.

 

 

 

 They go to school,where none of the other kids are dolls. Ruby wants to work with animals, and Violet wants to be a writer.

The dolls are very cute, and the books are sweet and old fashioned. E.J. Taylor created a world you want to curl up in and be cozy.
Tomorrow we'll see a couple of different dolls from the Ivy Cottage books.
** UPDATE** The Ivy Cottage Pop Up Playhouse mystery solved! See it HERE!