Doll-A-Day 2017 #4 Colonial Williamsburg Betsey Doll,Plus Sarah, Junie B., and a Pottery Barn Princess

  It seems that I have accidentally done a Soft Dolls Week. We're on Day #4 and they have all been soft dolls so far. I guess I'll finish the week with soft dolls and get down to some serious fashion dolls next week.
   First of all I talked yesterday about the tiny Pottery Barn dolls, so I thought I would show you this one.

She's only 5" tall from the soles of her shoes to the tip of her crown. She doesn't have  a tag, but she's obviously made by the same company, as she has virtually the same face as the, much larger, Caroline  we saw yesterday.

I suspect this girl may also be, but, like the princess, she has no tag.

She comes in at just a bit over 5", but she seems much bigger.

 The princess is such a sweet little thing. I have something of a small collection of tiny cloth dolls, and she's one of them. Another is this girl,today's doll,Betsey.

She's 6" tall, and tagged 'Betsey 1997 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation',so obviously she's one of those historic dolls sold at Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. I got this one at a yard sale or thrift store,so who knows. I've tried to research it online, and they do sell dolls like this in stores at Colonial Williamsburg,(As well as 12" ones.),but as for them being sold other places, I couldn't say.

She's designed and manufactured by a company called Merrymakers Inc.,who also made these personality filled pigs...

They are finger puppets and are apparently the 'this little' piggies from the book "Piggies" by Audrey and Don Wood.There are supposed to be 5 in all, and the sunglasses guy on the right should also be wearing a straw hat and have a book in his hand.

...and this cute and tiny 5" Junie B. Jones doll from several years ago.(As well as the bigger ones.)Yes, I have one of these too.

Both our girls loved the Junie B. Jones books when they were small,so she reminds me of those times. (This one is missing her purple skirt.)
...but not these very similar looking 6" Linnea dolls, who are made by Determined Products.

Sorry about the nudity, but she loaned her green and white striped bibbed overalls to a Tutti body with a Peter Paniddle Kiddle head on it, and they fit PERECTLY! By the way, you can see my post on 12" Linnea HERE.

  Betsey has a slip, dress, and 'built in' shoes/boots/stockings.(I'm not quite sure what they are! They look like shoes and socks, but the sock part is painted and feels sort of leathery. Is it meant to be socks, or boot tops?Or maybe really tall spats...)

She has thread hair, and a sweetly drawn face.

Her dress won't stay velcroed though.

Her head and body are cotton, but her ears are felt!

 I love the faces on these dolls.They are so small, and yet so delicate. I like them so much, that when I found this girl...

...at a thrift store, I had to buy her, even though she's wearing only her slip.(Which is just like Betsey's.)

Maybe someday I'll find some clothes for her, or even make her some.
 She has the same painted...socks? and built in shoes as Betsey.

 
She's tagged Sarah Doll,Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,1996,MerryMakers Inc.,

 ...and she's the same size as Betsey. I think now I need a boy from Colonial Williamsburg...
   Tomorrow we'll look at another soft doll. See you then!

Doll-A-Day 273: Soft Dolls Week: Raggedy Ann and Andy

  First of all, Sunday is the Big Doll Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's a huge show. I was told by a doll maker who had a table at the show a couple of years ago that it's bigger than the United Federation of Doll Collectors Show she attended. She said it was the biggest show she had ever seen. So, if any of you are going to be in the Columbus, Ohio area on Sunday, stop by. We'll have a table there, (Which, admittedly, I won't be spending alot of time at myself!), and it would be great if you could stop by to say hello. Ken will be manning the table most of the time, but I'll be around.
  Today we're concluding soft dolls week with the king and queen of all soft dolls, Raggedy Ann and Andy.

These are my childhood Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.They were made by Knickerbocker.

I still have Ann's tag.

I got Andy first. I can't remember when I got him.I had been asking for Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls for every Christmas and birthday for a while. One Christmas I got a foam rubber Andy with a wire armature, and a Raggedy Gretel doll. Finally I received this Andy.

He has a 'bruise' on his forehead, due to an unfortunate accident that occurred at my neighbor's house. Occasionally we walked through the cornfield that separated out house from our neighbor's, and my mom would set neighbor Myrtle's hair. Such it was on this occasion, and I had taken Andy to help me while away what seemed like forever at Myrtle's house. Playing in a dusty shed, I dropped Andy on the floor.He had a dirt spot that would probably have brushed off, but being a kid I tried to clean it with that old stand by: saliva.Once it got wet of course, there was no brushing it off.

I bought Ann later, with money I got for my birthday when I was in third grade. I remember actually going to a toy store somewhere, which is something I only remember doing one or two other times.Ann is musical. I wanted a plain one, but on the occasion when I bought her, the musical version is all that was available.

Since I was older by then I didn't play with Ann as much as Andy, and she stayed fairly new looking. But Ivy fell in love with Ann, and that's where most of her wear has come from.

That and plain old AGE. Ann wears socks now because her toes 'blew out', and then her shoes began to divide from her striped stockings. I only noticed recently that Andy's toes are doing the same thing. The black fabric seems to have a weakness. The rest of them, especially their bodies, is fine.

All the white spots you see through the sock are holes!

Why does it load sideways?!

Ann should have a hankie in her pocket that matches her dress. It's around here some where.

Raggedy Ann and Andy have been around for a long time. They were the creation of John Barton Gruelle, who was born in 1880 in Arcola,Illinois.

But you can just call him Johnny.

Before Raggedy  Ann Gruelle did several comic strips, and beat 1500 other entrants in a competition for a comic strip job, which resulted in his writing and illustrating the tales of a wood sprite named "Mr Twee Deedle" that appeared in newspapers from 1911 to 1914.

Beautiful!

There are many different stories of how Ann and Andy first came about. The story most often told is that Gruelle's daughter Marcella found an old rag doll with no face in her grandmother's attic, and brought it to her father, who put aside his work and drew a face on it for her. Taking a book by family friend James Whitcomb Riley off his shelf he took names from his two favourite poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie", and suggested they call the doll 'Raggedy Ann'. According to "Raggedy Ann and Andy: History and Legend" by Patricia Hall, the most believable version of the story, (since it's the version that was told by Gruelle's wife Myrtle),finds Johnny finding an old rag doll his mother had made for his sister, while rooting around in his mother's attic one day around the turn of the last century. He remembered the doll years later when their daughter Marcella was small and playing with dolls. .

Myrtle and Marcella Gruelle.

The name Marcella will be familiar to those who have read the Raggedy stories, as the name of Ann and Andy's young owner. Gruelle named the character after his daughter when writing the stories, following his daughter's death at 13 years old. (Marcella Gruelle died from either an infected small pox vaccination at school, or a second vaccination, after which she developed diphtheria and died. Vaccinations were given at school in those days, and parental consent was not needed. Children were also vaccinated several times for the same thing. Marcella Gruelle's case was determined to be vaccination poisoning by 6 out of the 7 doctors called in on the case. The 7th was head of the school board, so make of that what you will. In any case, Gruelle became part of the anti vaccination movement, and Raggedy Ann became a symbol for  the same. Ironically, Gruelle was granted a patent for Raggedy Ann the same month in 1915 as Marcella's death.

The original patent for Raggedy Ann.

The first Raggedy Ann book was published in 1918.Andy came about when a family friend found a rag doll that was left from when Gruelle's mother and her own had made their daughter's rag dolls.She gave the doll to Gruelle, who began to incorporate twin brother Andy in the stories of Raggedy Ann in 1920

 Gruelle's family made an unknown number of hand made Raggedy Ann dolls to be sold with the books. As everyone knows, Raggedy Ann is supposed to have a candy heart  sewn inside her, which is why all the dolls have a printed heart that says "I Love You" on their chests.

Like Andy's here.

According to legend, real candy hearts were sewn inside those original dolls made by the Gruelle family. Johnny Gruelle's son, Worth Gruelle, claimed to remember being sent to buy candy hearts, and picking out the ones that said "I Love You" from all the others. He was five or six years old at the time, which makes the story a little harder to believe, since he may not even have been able to read the hearts at that age.Nobody knows how many dolls the Gruelle's made, and no Raggedy Ann dolls have ever been found with real candy hearts, or the remains of such.
  Johnny Gruelle wrote and illustrated other books besides the Raggedy books.

Like this gorgeous one from 1922.

Johnny Gruelle died in 1938.
Raggedy Ann and Andy don't seem to be very popular any more. Sales of the dolls are down.The Raggedy Ann and Andy museum in Gruelle's home town,Arcola, Illinois, which was run by Gruelle's granddaughter, closed in 2009, and the town's Raggedy Ann and Andy festival also ceased after 20 years. Some of the museum's collection of family papers, books, and rare dolls were donated to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

Tomorrow is Skipper Saturday. See you then.

Doll-A-Day 272: Soft Dolls Week: Linnea

  Today's soft doll is Linnea.

Linnea is a doll based on the character from the 1987 book "Linnea in Monet's Garden", illustrated by Lena Anderson...

...about a little Swedish girl and her elderly friend, Mr. Bloom, who take a trip to Paris to see the paintings of Monet, and to Giverny, to see Monet's real garden that was the subject of so many of his paintings.(I'll say! How many paintings did this guy do of his lily pond? Did he not get out much or what?)

Monet, on the right, in his garden, 1922. Wow. Other than the guys, this photograph looks like a painting. Monet's son left the property to The French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. After being restored, the property was opened to the public in 1980, and became a popular tourist attraction.

This version of Linnea is 11" tall, but there was also a 17" version.

 The book introduces children to Monet, and impressionist art.

She should also have a straw hat. Mine is missing hers.

There are also smaller Linnea dolls.These are 6" tall.

I love little cloth dolls. I actually have these, but my version of the first one is missing her apron/smock, and the third one has loaned her pants to a Tutti and Todd friend I made from a Peter Paniddle head and a Tutti body.The clothes are a perfect fit. You can see my post on small cloth character dolls,including my tiny Linneas, HERE.

In fact, there are almost as many different Linnea dolls as there are Monet paintings of that pond.

Nahh...maybe not.

Holy cow! Monet really liked his garden.In fact, he once said, "My most beautiful work of art is my garden." He certainly worked hard on it. He had gardeners working on it for years, and he constantly gave them detailed orders of what he wanted done.

Monet began painting the water lillies in 1899. He painted 250 paintings of the water lily pond.

Oscar-Claude Monet was born in Paris France in 1840, and died in 1926. He was part of the impressionist movement. In fact, Impressionism gets it's name from the Claude Monet painting Impression, soleil levant,(Impression, Sunrise).

Impressionism is  described by Wikipedia thus: "Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles."

It's described by me as: paintings made up of tiny strokes of the brush,with tiny bits of colour, making rough looking images that look better from a distance, where the tiny specks of colour merge into a solid object and look realistic.

Linnea was so popular that several products bearing her likeness were produced, including the dolls, doll clothes,puzzles, and the book "Linnea's Almanac".

More than once the theme of the flower show at Chicago's Marshall Fields store, (Now Macy's), was Linnea in Monet's Garden. Scenes from the book were recreated as amazing window displays.

I wonder whatever happened to the wonderful figures created for these displays. They probably ended up in some dumpster. They should have donated them to a library or children's art museum.

All the flowers and other plants in the window displays were real.

Tomorrow we'll conclude soft dolls week.