Dolls

1
Dolls
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History of Corn

• Corn began from a strain of the grass "teosinte"
  and s till grows wild in parts of Mexico. The
  Aztec, Maya, and Inca peoples began to cultivate
  corn and, during the 1400s, corn growing spread
  to Argentina, Chile, and Canada. The Navajo,
  Hopi, and Pueblos eventually learned to grow
  corn. Christopher Columbus took seeds from Cuba
  to Spain in 1492 and by the late 1500s, corn was
  growing in Africa, Asia, southern Europe, and the
  Middle East.
• Corn is also known as "maize." Corn is now one of
  the world's most important crops. The United
  States produces about two-fifths of the world's
  corn. Corn grows best in the Corn Belt, a region
  of the American Midwest, which includes Iowa,
  Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio,
  Missouri, South Dakota, and Kansas. Other major
  corn-producing countries include Argentina,
  Brazil, China, France, Mexico, and Romania.

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Corn Husk Doll

• American colonists learned to grow corn from the
  Indians and depended on corn as one their basic
  food staples during the 1600s and 1700s. The
  Indians also taught these early settlers how to
  make cornhusk dolls. The dolls could be made with
  corn husk clothing or real fabric scraps plus,
  other decorative ornaments could be added to the
  corn husk doll to make it as beautiful as any
  little girl wanted.
• Native Americans did not waste any part of the
  corn. Cornstalks were used for poles to support
  crops or as walking sticks or kindling for fires.
  Corncobs were used to make pipes or soaked in fat
  and used for fire starters. Cornhusks were also
  used to weave mats and make dolls. Corn silk was
  used for healing teas.

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Corn Husk Doll

• The general idea that a doll would be a lasting
  toy is not a belief of many Indian tribes. Even a
  very beautifully decorated cornhusk doll would be
  expected to fall apart. A cornhusk doll, like
  many playthings, would naturally disintegrate
  over time and as the child grew older, he or she
  would no longer need the toy anyway.
• Some cornhusk dolls were used in sacred healing
  ceremonies. An Iroquois cornhusk doll was made to
  carry away the evil spirit of a dream, and the
  doll was later put back to earth after it had
  served its purpose. The Oneida tribe has a legend
  about why the cornhusk doll has no face.

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• Colonial mothers made dolls for their daughters
  from a variety of items that were available
  around the homestead. A wooden spoon featured a
  ready-made head for a doll, which could be
  adorned with paint for the face and hair, or with
  yarn for hair, or with fabric for a bonnet. The
  body was formed around the handle of the spoon
  and was probably made in numerous designs because
  each mother worked with items that were available
  to her. If the mother had a little extra time and
  the supplies, she might make arms and legs and
  use lace. If time was pressing, she might just
  wrap fabric around the handle in a way that it
  looked like a dress. For a young colonial girl,
  any doll was special.

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Jamestown and Wooden Spoons

• From inventory records, we know that the early
  Jamestown settlers brought wooden spoons to the
  New World. Native Americans whittled wooden
  spoons from laurel wood and sold them to the
  early settlers. Because the blunted knives
  imported from England around 1630 were hard to
  eat with, the colonists began using a spoon to
  steady their meat while cutting it. The early
  practice of eating with a knife involved a very
  sharp one or possibly two (this was before forks
  were invented), one to hold the meat and the
  other to cut up the food.

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• All colonists, rich and poor, used wooden
  utensils for nearly the first century they
  inhabited North America. Some wealthy families
  were able to procure metal utensils before the
  1700s. All colonial kitchens were sure to have a
  wooden spoon, as this was a significant tool,
  along with wooden bowls, trenchers, and tankards.
  Even after metal knives, forks, and spoons were
  in common use, no kitchen was without a wooden
  spoon.

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• In Wales, a spoon was carved and given to a woman
  who was about to be married. She would hang this
  spoon on her wall as a message that she was
  "taken." The word "spooning" comes from the
  giving of a wooden spoon, usually carved, to the
  intended. Her suitor might carve a heart-shaped
  spoon which meant "I love you." A key-shaped
  spoon meant "You hold the key to my heart." A
  bell-shaped spoon meant "Let's get married." A
  wheel-shaped spoon meant "I will work hard for
  you." The carved wooden spoon given to a newly
  married woman was called a "love spoon." Some of
  the other patterns carved into a spoon had
  special meanings, such as a chain (a wish to be
  together forever), diamond (wealth or good
  fortune), cross (faith), flower (affection), and
  dragon (for protection).

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• In recent times, some brides have carried a
  wooden spoon tied with ribbons and flowers along
  with their wedding bouquets. Since a wooden spoon
  was absolutely one of the most useful items a
  newly married woman could have, a female friend
  would usually give the gift. The bride's mother,
  sister, and friends would make sure to provide
  her with the necessary kitchen utensils to "set
  up house."
• Wooden spoons have been a common item throughout
  history and in nearly all cultures because most
  artisans could carve spoons and they were
  inexpensive to make. Is there a wooden spoon in
  your kitchen?

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Fun Facts

• Many sailors carved wooden spoons during long
  voyages.
• A wooden spoon was listed as a necessary item for
  cake baking in the 1894 edition of "White House
  Cookbook" by Ziemann and Gillette.
• Stainless steel utensils were invented in the
  1920s.
• The earliest "love spoon" found (so far) is
  displayed in the Welsh Folk Museum in Cardiff and
  is dated around 1667.

11
Clothes Pin Doll

• The clothespin began as a one-piece wooden
  clothes peg made by hand. One of the traditional
  occupations of American gypsies, who first
  appeared in the 16th century, was the clothes peg
  maker. Gypsies from Scotland were also clothes
  peg makers. In 1820, wooden clothes pegs were
  manufactured by Lyon and Company. Their package
  of 48 clothes pegs sold for 17 cents. That's
  about like getting three clothes pegs for a
  penny. Other companies began manufacturing wooden
  clothes pegs and, between 1852 and 1887, the U.S.
  Patent Office granted patents for 146 different
  clothespins. It's amazing to find that there can
  be so many different designs for such a simple
  item as a wooden clothespin. In 1908 and, again
  in 1926, the U.S. Patent Office transferred
  thousands of patent models to the Smithsonian,
  including clothespins.

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Manufacturing of Clothespins

• As early as 1857, Ezra B. Eddy began
  manufacturing wooden clothes pegs at Table Rock
  in Canada. George and John Lewis started a
  clothespin factory in Maine in 1895 in an area
  they named Lewiston, which was rich in yellow and
  white birch. After the clothespins were
  manufactured, they were packed in boxes made from
  softwood sawn at the mill. In 1921 and 1922, the
  peg factory was dismantled and shipped to East
  River, Sheet Harbor, by horse and wagons. They
  had depleted the forests of the yellow and white
  birch and the destination for a new factory was
  Stewiacke. The machinery from the factory was
  stored in the warehouse but then the two brothers
  dissolved their partnership so John built the peg
  factory at Ship Harbor. Later, the peg
  clothespins changed in favor of the spring type.
  Another manufacturer located in Maine, the Penley
  Corporation, was started in 1923 and made
  clothespins until December 2002. Most of the
  one-piece wooden clothespins, which are really
  clothes pegs, are now packaged as "doll pins" and
  are made in China.

13
Wooden Penny Doll

• Jointed dolls made from wood and clay have been
  found in ancient Greek and Roman tombs.
  Archeologists are not certain whether these items
  were children's playthings, or whether they had
  religious significance. One particular doll from
  ancient Rome circa 200 B.C. features jointed arms
  at the shoulders and jointed legs. Other types of
  wooden dolls follow the era of ancient dolls.
  Less than 30 primitive "stump dolls" from 16th-
  and 17th-century England still exist. Wooden
  "shoulder-heads" for dolls were made in many
  countries around the world and feature the doll
  head and chest from one piece of wood. Antique
  Doll World magazine reported one early American
  hand-carved wooden "shoulder-head" to have been
  made in Maine in 1810.

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• Penny wooden dolls are also known as "peg wooden
  dolls," "common wooden puppets," and "penny
  wooden." They were produced in Germany beginning
  in 1810, were very simple, and resembled a
  clothespin with simple peg joints. These dolls
  were fairly durable and could be carried around
  by little girls without the fear of breaking
  them. These dolls were readily available in
  English "cent shops" for a penny. A cent shop
  carried candy, cookies, small dolls, and other
  inexpensive toys for children, much like the
  American "dime stores" that appeared during the
  1950s and 1960s. One resource notes a 2-inch high
  penny wooden doll, which is a lot smaller than
  the 7-inch doll sold by Historical Folk Toys. The
  earlier made small penny wooden dolls would have
  been easily available to many children in small
  quantities so they might afford a whole family of
  them. Of course, inflation has hit the wooden
  doll market since the early 1800s, and these
  dolls are no longer offered for merely a penny.
  Other dolls, even as large as 11 inches, of this
  same type have been made and feature round heads
  and carved noses.

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Poppet

• "Poppet" is just another name for "doll." The
  Medieval English word for doll was "poppet." The
  French word "poupette" meant the same and was
  derived from the Latin word "pupa." The Spanish
  word for puppet is "titere" and derived from the
  French word "petite," which means "little one."
  The stringed marionette puppet did not evolve
  until the 17th century. The German nickname for
  "Dorothy" was "doll" and as Germany had a great
  influence on the English, they began using the
  word doll instead of puppet or poppet by the 18th
  century.
• Actually, a poppet was any doll that was probably
  made from cloth. Many dolls resembled puppets
  with only a fabric handle under the dress to hold
  on to. There is no particular pattern for a
  poppet so references to poppets may describe many
  different cloth dolls. The word "poppet" was used
  in early America and is referenced in the book
  "Sarah Morton's Day" by Kate Waters. This book is
  about a day in the life of a Pilgrim girl.

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Pew Baby or Handkerchief Doll

• During the Civil War (and at other times when
  supplies were scarce), dolls were made from
  handkerchiefs for little girls. These
  "handkerchief dolls" were carried to church and
  did not make noise if they were dropped. They
  were also known as one of the "Sunday toys" that
  children were allowed to play with only on
  Sundays, along with Noah's Ark, Jacob's Ladder,
  Buzz Saw, and other quiet toys. Some mothers
  would put sugar cubes or candy in the head of the
  handkerchief doll for a youngster to suck on to
  keep the child quiet during the long church
  service. Other names for the handkerchief doll
  are "church doll," "church babies," "pew doll,"
  "pew babies," and "prayer doll."

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Rag Doll

• The pocket folk doll belongs to a group of dolls
  known as "rag dolls" or "cloth dolls." The simple
  pattern used is called a "pancake style pattern"
  because it is flat on both sides. The miniature
  doll may have first been made as a baby for a
  larger doll or just because the materials at hand
  would only make a small doll. The history of
  dolls dates back to ancient Greek and Roman
  times. Many dolls were just playthings for girls,
  but some dolls had religious significance. Cloth
  dolls can probably be traced to when woven cloth
  was invented, but none exists today because
  fabric disintegrates over time.
• Miniature dolls were made for dollhouses that
  date back to the 1500s. There are records from
  the 1800s showing that many dollhouses came from
  Germany. Some of the earliest miniature dolls
  were made from wood or wax. Later, they became
  more elaborate and were made from glazed china
  and bisque.
• Let your students show their creative ways with
  doll-making. During colonial times, dolls were
  made of all sorts of things. They were made from
  pine combs, corn husks, rags, and even socks.
  Dried apples were even sometimes used as a face.
  It is lots of fun to make sock-dolls with your
  students. Each child will need one sock, two
  rubber bands, and rags for stuffing, glue,
  scissors, buttons, ribbon, and assorted material.
  The students will need to cut off the old sock
  right above the heel. They will then stuff the
  sock with rags. Then they will need to pull the
  bottom of the sock together and close it with a
  rubber band. To form the neck, they will need to
  squeeze the sock a few inches from the end
  opposite the rubber band. Then they will secure a
  rubber band over the section being squeezed to
  separate the head from the body. Then they can
  glue the button eyes and material for clothing.
  Be sure to make room for your students to display
  the toys they created.

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Black Folk Doll

• Dolls have been created for children in nearly
  every culture. Handmade cloth rag dolls would
  have been popular in the early American colonies
  since porcelain dolls from Europe were very
  costly. Slave children in the southern
  plantations were not allowed to play with white
  dolls. So many children were made black dolls by
  their relatives using unwanted fabric. Surviving
  black rag dolls have been found in "Underground
  Railroad" hideouts where black slaves hid on
  their escape routes to the north for freedom. A
  child would not have been able to carry much and,
  in a hurry, could have dropped or misplaced a
  doll in the dark. Since there is not much history
  written on handmade black cloth dolls, much
  information is relied on from oral history that
  has been passed down or from the actual dolls
  that were found.

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Post Civil War Black Dolls

• After the Civil War, black women had few
  opportunities available to them, except
  dressmaking, so some of them became very skilled
  seamstresses. They would use the leftover scraps
  from the beautiful clothes they made for their
  customers to make elaborately dressed dolls.
  Beginning in 1893, the E.I. Horseman Company
  manufactured a black Baby land Rag Doll named
  "Dinah." This doll was featured on a U.S. 32-cent
  stamp in 1997. A "Black Mammy" cloth doll was
  produced around 1900 by the Baby land Rag
  Company, which also made black dolls with
  lithographed faces. Patterns for black dolls were
  produced during the first half of the 1900s. Some
  of these vintage patterns are still available.
  Most of these dolls are the cherished possessions
  of individuals, and some are even featured in
  museums. Many of these dolls have become
  collectibles and are considered to be valuable
  folk art today.

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Topsy Turvy Doll

• Considered a controversial doll by some, the
  authentic Topsy-Turvy doll features a black doll
  with a headscarf on one end and a white doll with
  an antebellum-style dress on the other end. The
  black doll could represent a maid, slave or
  servant and the white doll could represent the
  master's child or the mistress of the house.
• The original Topsy-Turvy dolls were created
  before the Civil War in the Southern United
  States on plantations where slavery was
  prominent. Arguments arise as to whether the
  dolls were made for the slave children to play
  with or whether they were made for the white
  children who lived in the plantation house.

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Topsy Turvy

• With one identity on one side and an opposite
  identity when flipped, slave children could have
  played with their prohibited black doll and then
  flipped it to the white doll when the master was
  around. Others believe that the double-ended
  dolls were made for white children with the black
  doll used as a maid for their other dolls.
• Stephanie V. Siek writes that this doll "was a
  mirror of the African-American woman's life. She
  took care of white children, but had children of
  her own -- the white child is present when the
  black child is invisible, the black child is
  present when the white child is invisible."

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Topsy Turvy

• Kimberly Wallace-Sanders has explored the
  possibility that Topsy-Turvy dolls were made by
  the black mammies to represent the two categories
  of children they took care of the white master's
  children verses their own. After the Civil War,
  the white side of the doll was identified as that
  of a child, while the black doll suggested the
  black mammy caretaker.
• Black and White Topsy-Turvy dolls began to be
  mass manufactured after 1900. One of these dolls
  made in 1901 was purchased with the
  advertisement "Turn me up and turn me back,
  first I'm white, and then I'm black." The Baby
  land Rag company produced a Topsy-Turvy doll with
  a hand painted face in 1901. Later, wooden
  Topsy-Turvy dolls were made with jointed arms.

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Nursery Rhymes Topsy Turvy Doll

• Regardless of the dolls history, it is a very
  unique doll and many storybook and nursery rhyme
  characters have been based on it since its
  inception. These upside down dolls have been used
  to teach the differences between the characters,
  showing contrasts between two opposites, good or
  bad, rich or poor, average and prominent,
  innocent and evil, subservient and authoritative.
• During the mid 1900s, McCalls, Vogart, Redline
  and Butterick pattern companies began producing
  their own Topsy-Turvy Doll patterns. Vogart's
  pattern in the1940s was titled, "Topsy and Eva
  Doll--One doll with two change about faces."
  Redline's pattern in the 1940s was called Topsy
  and Eva. McCalls' 1940's pattern 1014 was for an
  "Upside Down Doll," but both dolls were white.
  Some of these historic patterns are now available
  as copies.

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3 faced Topsy Turvy Doll

• Some of the dolls that were made in the mountain
  regions of North Carolina in the1970s featured
  one doll head on one side and 2 to 3 doll heads
  on the other side, like Goldilocks and the Three
  Bears (with three heads), or Little Red Riding
  Hood on one side and Grandmother on the other
  side, but with the wolf on the back side of
  grandmother. Even Hansel and Gretel appeared with
  two heads (the children) on one side of the doll
  and the evil witch on the other. Some of these
  dolls are featured in a book titled, "How to Make
  Upside-Down Dolls" by John Coyne and Jerry
  Miller, published in 1977, which features
  patterns and instructions for ten upside-down
  dolls. The introduction in this book mentions the
  Crafts Unlimited group and craft cooperatives
  that the doll makers in the Appalachian area
  belonged to. Many of their dolls were sold in New
  York City and Chicago. John Coyne states, "This
  book is the first time any of these upside-down
  dolls have been shown in a 'how-to' fashion."
• We don't know if the original Topsy-Turvy dolls
  were used in a teaching manner or whether they
  were just played with. Only a very few of these
  flip-flop dolls remain from the early 1900s.
  Several are located in museums and others are in
  private collections.

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Symbolic

• Valerie Borey who holds a B.A. in Cultural
  Anthropology from the University of Minnesota and
  an M.A. in the Social Sciences from the
  University of Chicago writes "Although the
  Topsy-Turvy doll had changed substantially in
  design since the pre-war years in the American
  south, it retained its essential capacity to
  emphasize the differences between the powerful
  and the powerless. For this reason, it is a doll
  uniquely able to detect and reflect cultural
  tensions as they changed with the times and
  economic conditions. As if a looking glass into
  the American social order, the two-headed,
  reversible, upside-down doll is able to turn
  things, well, topsy-turvy. In this sense, it is
  more than a doll--it is a symbol of power, of
  resistance, of secrecy, and of revolution."

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Yarn Doll

• Yarn dolls were made during the Colonial America
  period from homespun yarn. Yarn was one of the
  first products to be industrialized in North
  America. The Coats and Clark Company in the
  United States first marketed Red Heart Yarn in
  September, 1936, and the first acrylic yarn in
  1959. Making yarn dolls became a popular pastime,
  and the yarn doll was listed as a craft activity
  in one of the earliest Brownie Scout Hand Books.
  Yarn Dolls are a fun and easy craft project that
  is perfect for a group activity or an individual.

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Apple Dolls

• Apple Dolls are folk dolls originating from early
  rural America when settlers made dolls from
  whatever was at hand. Apple dolls are made by
  carving a face in an apple and drying it. Due to
  the different effects drying produces, no two
  dolls are alike.