A Short History of Dolls

Most little girls hope to receive a doll for Christmas at least once in their lives. These days, they are increasingly human-like and could, in some extreme cases, be taken for a real baby. In fact, they were originally known as toy babies, and the word doll was used as a diminutive form of the name Dorothy. Although dolls have been around for centuries, many of them seemed more like ornaments than cuddly toys, with fancy dresses and lifeless eyes. I thought it might be fun to look at some of the dolls through history.

At first, dolls were often modelled on adults, with fancy wigs, glass eyes, and eyelashes made from human hair and were initially made from wood, clay, wax, or even ivory. During the 15^th century, Germany was one of the most famous countries for toys, and dolls started to become quite popular as playthings. Usually made of wood, some even had moveable limbs. In 17^th century Germany, the most popular dolls had wax heads attached to wooden or cloth bodies. During this period, many dolls were dressed in elaborate copies of the day’s fashion.



By permission of Deutsche Fotothek

China-ware, or porcelain, arrived in Europe from Portuguese ships in the 16^th century, bringing a new medium for making dolls. The first real western porcelain was made at Meissen, near Dresden in Germany, in 1710, although Standard English porcelain, bone china, was made in the 1750s by adding bone ash to the soft paste. From the 19^th century, porcelain was increasingly used in making many of the dolls. By 1850, the first wax dolls to be fashioned in the image of an infant were made in England. Unglazed porcelain, known as bisque was used for a great variety of dolls’ heads from the late 19^th century to the 1930s, mainly in France and Germany.

Even today, some of the highest priced, and most sought after toys, are German bisque character dolls from the early 1900s, produced by Kammer and Reinhardt of Watterhausen. Using a very advanced design, their baby and toddler dolls were modeled on real children, with varying facial expressions. Bisque made dolls tended to look more realistic than glazed china porcelain.

It’s no wonder that dolls are often the subject of creepy films and stories, and I’m not overly surprised that my own daughter (who is now an imaginative writer), was never very fond of dolls as a child. Sometimes, they look a bit too realistic!

Romy