The doll is as old as the human kind. The oldest preserved dolls were not used as toys but as amulets in different rituals. The man has a natural need to make a picture of himself. A child uses his or her imagination and makes a doll even if she or he does not have anything else but a piece of wood and some cloth. Dolls and playing with dolls have had many forms in the course of centuries. Dolls are used not only as toys but also as ornaments or dummies showing the latest fashion, for example. The paper doll was born in England as early as in the 1790’s. A doll can even be a means of propaganda; in the news we could see how demonstrators against the war in Iraq carried a caricature doll of George W. Bush, followed by the faithful Colin Powell Doll, whose head was attached to the body of a dog. And then, the most touching of all dolls is Baby Jesus in His crib – a sight without which Christmas would not be complete.
Dolls Reflect their Time
Dolls show the history of fashion and how our concept of beauty changes. A doll always mirrors the ideal woman of its time, just like the historical era and society are always to be seen in children’s plays. Up to the beginning of the 19th century children were regarded as small but not complete adults. Children were dressed in small adults’ clothes, and therefore it is not surprising that almost all dolls were adults, too. The purpose of an adult doll was to act as a model for little girls and help in upbringing girls respectable young women. In the course of the 19th century, the baby doll with her innocent cherubic face slowly replaced the adult doll. Once again, the doll reflected the ideology of its time.
For the first time, mostly thanks to Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), many people started to believe that childhood is such a valuable period of time that adults really ought to give attention to it. The 20th century can well be described as the century of the child. New winds started to blow in the upbringing of children. For example the Italian doctor and educator Maria Montessori (1870-1952) introduced her idea of an educational system that is based on children’s self-reliance and independence.
The new psychological approach to the child changed the idea of dolls completely and the doll even became a research object. The adult doll from the earlier centuries had to give way to the realistic baby doll. For the first time in history, the child himself was seen in the doll. In addition to character dolls there were so called caricature dolls, which were extreme phenomena of fashion. A doll of this kind was absolutely the greatest of personal dolls and appealed to adults, too. For instance the German Kewpie sold approximately five million dolls of this kind.
When motion pictures became popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s, there soon were the first dolls on the market that were inspired by the film industry. That a doll looked like someone who is admired and respected was not new, but now the dolls were not just princesses or princes any more but idols like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. The joyful Shirley Temple Doll conquered the world in the 1930’s. And a new conqueror was born in the 1950’s: the Barbie Doll.
Materials Used in Dolls
The materials used in doll making came traditionally from the nature: wood, clay, bone, bee wax and various textiles. At the end of the 18th century doll manufacturers started to use papermaking pulp. Raw materials of the 19th century doll industry were such as porcelain, rubber, gutta-percha and celluloid. The next step was plastic - the most used material of modern days.
The first wax dolls in Europe were made as early as in the Roman era. Dolls were made of wax to the end of the 19th century. Whole dolls were moulded and modelled in wax, but sometimes they made only wax head and arms that were then attached to a wooden or cloth torso. Wax was not, however, good material because it hardens, melts, or turns yellow easily. For the best result, they started to use wax only for the upper layers of the doll whereas the inner parts were made of papermaking pulp, for example.
At the end of the 18th century doll makers started to use pressed pulp that was made of wet grinded paper, chalk, plaster and glue-water mixture. Pressed pulp was used for whole small dolls, and for legs, arms, and heads. Removable heads were an epoch-making discovery that turned many miseries into joy; a broken head was easy to replace by a new one.
Then at the beginning of the 19th century porcelain took the place of papermaking pulp. The head, arms and legs were made of porcelain, and smaller dolls were made entirely of porcelain. The torso of bigger dolls was made of leather or cloth. The first porcelain heads were white and glazed with painted eyes, mouth and hair. The neck led into a small shoulder piece, and this piece had small holes that helped in attaching the head to the torso. The arms and legs of dolls with a porcelain head were sometimes pulp or some other material. Legs and arms became more and more movable thanks to ball and hole joints.
In the 1860’s manufacturers started to make doll heads with a neck that goes within the shoulder piece. The head was thus movable. The material was hard unglazed bisque (ceramic) on which the face was painted. From the 1870’s on doll makers learned to dye the bisque, and the colour of the face became natural. A doll was then for example a pink western beauty, a chocolate brown African, or a yellow Chinese.
Dolls were made of metal, too. An unbreakable metal doll was patented in the 19th century. Metal as doll material is rare except for tinplate mechanical dolls. Gutta-percha, natural latex produced from the sap of tropical trees, was first used in toys in the 1820’s even if it was not very durable. Gutta-percha was nonetheless widely used especially from the mid-19th century on. At the same time in the US Mr Charles Goodyear discovered caoutchouc, which is natural rubber obtained as latex from the rubber tree. Old rubber dolls are extremely rare as the surface of rubber becomes brittle in the course of time and the splitting ruins the painting. The production of celluloid dolls started in the 1870’s. In spite of the fact that celluloid is dangerous as it is highly flammable it was broadly used until it was replaced by plastic in the 1950’s.
Plastic made its breakthrough in industrial use in 1948. And from the very beginning, there have been cloth and rag dolls.
