paper dolls

I am writing from my new pink net book, a birthday present! Never mind which birthday. I have been thinking a lot about paper dolls lately, all types of them. I confess sitting during many a boring event and doodling entire families of them in ball point, then coloring them and cutting them out to populate doll houses and shadow boxes. I've always loved making them by cutting out magazine pictures and making collages, too.

I read in Helen and Teacher that Annie Sullivan used to cut pictures out of Godeys to make paper dolls, and that she and her little brother made homemade flour paste and glued them to the walls of the morgue where she and her little brother played when they were incarcerated in the Tewksbury Almshouse. Children will play in any situation, if only to divert and comfort themselves.

My other paper dolls came from books, or craft kits. Dozens were from magazines. I loved Betsy McCall, and the earlier Dolly Dingles and Lettie Lanes. My first antique examples came from flea markets, and a few from antique stores. I have some very large examples,and one that was a Shackman reproduction of a doll representing Ellen Terry. She well-loved, and came from the gift shop of the Museum of the City of New York. Mom dressed her in green hued tissue paper.

I made dolls out of Kleenex, raffia and tissue that resembled cornhusk dolls, and often dressed dolls in tissue paper. I have one home made antique Mom found with gorgeous layered tissue paper dresses, and 3D tissue and crepe paper dolls. I love to collect these, and had a trauma in kindergarten when my teacher made me toss one when we were cleaning. Since then, I have a need to save every doll I can, no matter what!

When we got Apple IIGS at school, I made paper dolls and used cross stitch patterns in the old fat bits function. I soon found Swedish and Japanese 3D examples, and even have an old bisque doll dressed in crepe paper.

Paper dolls inspire me, as they did Ruth Handler when she created Barbie. I spent many happy hours in Holiday Inns and Best Westerns with my folks travelling the West when I was growing up, and drawing historical paper dolls, most of Anne Boelyn and Marie Antoinette, on motel note pads. They still exist in my albums.

I made a paper Greek Temple of Mt.Olympus in 10th grade, and populated it with my paper doll versions of the Gods. In sixth grade, I did small paper finger puppets to illustrate plays we wrote in literature. I have made them into pins, and posters, and have done a whole book with paper doll and doll collage illustrations.

The greatest thing about them is that you can have a collection of thousands and make them an album paperhouse or a box where they can all live. Sylvia Plath and Laura Ingalls loved them. The Japanese and other cultures have religious rituals involving them. The French have their pantins. I love them all. Happy Dolling.