Haunted Dolls…

I’m no expert on haunted dolls, but I do have a rather large collection of antique dolls–the kind that were played with, not the kind that have spent the last century on display–and I’ve experienced paranormal activity in my home after acquiring some of them.

Also, being a sensitive, I can kinda sense which ones are “different”.

Now, none of my dolls have moved more than can be attributed to gravity or other purely natural circumstances. They don’t (as far as I know) become animated and run around on adventures all night. I’ve never put a doll in one place only to find her in another later on…unless someone put her there.

In most cases, I got these dolls from flea markets, eBay, thrift stores or they were given to me by family or friends…and then there was the one I found right on top in a trash can almost as though whoever threw her out had hoped someone else would come along and rescue her.

I do not collect display-only dolls. I have a few, but they just don’t have the history the other girls have. A broken finger, missing paint, cracks, dents, chips, rips: all those things are what I prefer when I look at a doll.

And those are the things that devalue dolls the quickest. For instance, I could buy a doll for $300 in perfect condition or get the same doll for about $80 in broken condition. Hmmm… I can rescue a piece of history at a fraction of the cost of a perfect doll, and it’s a piece of a person’s history, not just of doll-making. Gee, tough choice. I’ll take the cheap, interesting one with stories to tell over the girl who sat on a shelf or in a box her whole life.

So when I say that when I got this doll she was missing eyes, wig, dress and one of her arms had fallen off, you understand why I had to have her. I don’t recall exactly how much she cost about 4 or so years ago, but I’m betting she was under $100. At the time, in mint condition, she was worth a little over $200 probably.

Honestly, she wasn’t in bad shape, just far from display-ready. I ordered a wig (still kicking myself for buying a new one instead of waiting for a used one in her size), found a set of eyes in my stockpile and set them (she was supposed to have sleep eyes that open and close, but I still haven’t gotten up the nerve to give those a try especially on such a small head) and then hunted through my collection of dresses. The only one I had that’d fit was one my mom’s grandmother had made for one of her dolls when she was a kid. It was far from antique looking, but I put it on this doll, got her a doll stand and put her on display. The one she’s wearing now, is a hand-sewn antique I got within the last six months.

I’ve already chronicled the paranormal activity that happened around the time I got this doll. Since then, I don’t believe anything else has happened that I can attribute to her. I’ll post pictures of some of my other “different” girls later… One of which I considered getting rid of, but just couldn’t because I didn’t want to shove the “problem child” on another unsuspecting person.

In all honesty, as long as a ghost isn’t bothering me, I don’t mind the company. I’m not going to throw out a ghost for opening my refrigerator once or twice, but I’d consider it if it kept turning on all the lights in the house over night. Them electric bills can get costly!

So, in other words, I’ll be posting about my doll collection and the many facets of them. From the restorations I do to the ghosts who are attached, I plan on covering it all. Why? Because I like sharing my collection. Whenever new people come to my house and see my dolls, if they ask about them, I have to refrain from talking their ear off over how the dolls were made or where I got them or what I’ve done to them. My dolls are something I enjoy talking about, so why not share them here on my blog? I’ve got a few hundred of them and each one has a story…

Is this creepy?

Okay, so maybe my doll parts shelves are a little creepy…

I don’t know if it’s the ones missing eyes, the upside down ones or what, but my husband hates being in my craft room because of these shelves. I’ll admit I’ve got a lot of work cut out for me. I’ll get to it someday. Mostly, I like knowing that whenever I finally have the time, most of these girls have all the parts they need. I’m only actually missing dresses and wigs. The rest just need repairs or eyes set.

I need to learn how to do sleep eyes…the ones that open when the doll is upright and close when she’s laid down. I can set stationary eyes in my sleep, but I just haven’t gotten up the nerve to try my hand at sleep eyes. I’ve got several dolls ready to go, but I haven’t mustered the courage to give it a try. I just don’t want to screw up and have to start all over again.

Fixing the arm

A funny thing happened when I finished the leg and was ready to do the arm. I’d looked over the broken one, thought about the best way to attack it. I looked at the other one to see how it had been done. They were slightly different, but the idea was there.

I set the doll down and…

Yep. The cord that strung the arms decided to break. I think it had broken a long time ago as well because while the arms matched both bisque, and leather over wood, the elbow joints didn’t. One had been done with wire and two buttons while the other was a screw bar into sprockets. Both were correct for the time period, as far as I could tell.

First, I used a scrap of cardboard to build up the bottom of the broken arm. I glued it in place and made holes for the bar. It took me awhile because I was learning as I went along and if I didn’t get it aligned right, I’d have to start all over. Her arms had to face the same way. I glued a new piece of leather around the outside for extra strength.

Once I was satisfied with getting the lower arm back on, I set about restringing the arms. Thankfully, I’m a pack rat and had some waxed cotton cord laying around. That was what had snapped. A few knots later, her arm was back on and the doll was done.

I patched a little hole in her belly with a tiny piece of leather, dressed her and put her back on display.

As with all my doll adventures, I learned a lot and can’t wait to do the next one. Remember the one that I wrecked my middle finger on shortly before April Fool’s Day? Well, I glued her head back together and now it’s time to do the fabric reinforcing before putting her eyes back in. She still needs a ton of work.

Fixing the leg

Since I didn’t know how I was going to fix the arm, I figured I’d do the easy part first and patch up the leg. The rest of the body is remarkably tight and supple. Sure, she’s got some staining, but she’s otherwise a lot more solid than many of my other girls.

It took a few hours to work my way around the leg because I didn’t want to lose any of the stuffing. There’s sawdust in most of the leg, but thankfully the top part was stuffed with excelsior near the top joint. That made my little job a lot easier while giving me time to figure out how I was going to fix the arm.

I used the broken arm to help hold the leg in place. This bit was so easy, I forgot to take pics. I need to work on rounding the edges on the patches. That’ll be on my next project. One of the dolls near this one in my display has been leaking sawdust just sitting there. When I lifted her dress to see what was going on, I discovered a lot of rips.

Anyway, on this girl, I just cut patches, shoved the excelsior back in the wound and bandaged her back up. Nice and simple. Trouble didn’t strike until I started working on the arm. But that’s another entry…

Broke it, then fixed it

I don’t remember why, but I lifted the hand of one of my dolls…and it came off in my fingers. Ummm… Uh-oh. Since she’s on display, I didn’t want to put her in my project pile unless I really had to, so instead of leaving her there, arm next to her feet, I inspected the arm. Why had it fallen off?

This is actually the ‘after’ picture, but I didn’t take one with her dress actually on, so it’s doing double duty.

Her head looks strange because its made of celluloid. There’s a crack in the back, but it doesn’t concern me yet. The celluloid is pretty thick and nowhere near as fragile as some of my other celluloid dolls. This one is either original or damn close to it. To me, she kind of has the face of a boy, but the dress is so old and has spent so long on her, that I’m just leaving her that way. If anyone knows for sure, please let me know.

Somewhere in either 2001 or 2002, my husband and I were wandering through an antique store in Old Town Pasadena when I spotted this doll in a glass case…way underpriced. I mean, I know she’s celluloid and therefore not desirable, but she’s also on her original body–another reason I’m not interested in taking off her head in order to reinforce the small crack on the back–with potentially original clothes.

Fast forward to 2008 when I picked up her hand. I think I was wondering if her arms were jointed or gusseted. I found out the hard way that they were jointed. The bisque lower arms are hinged at the elbow.

Well, since her arm came off, I had to find out why and see if there was anything else that needed to be done. I removed her old, yellowing dress and undergarments to discover that one of her legs had a gash in the back which had caused about half of the leather to rip to the front. I guess I didn’t notice when I first got her.

That set the stage for about a day’s worth of repair over the course of a week. I kept the doll next to my computer here on my desk and did a little at a time…mostly because I wasn’t sure how to do it! I’ve put broken or missing arms back on, but they’d only come loose. The elbow on this doll had disintegrated and I needed to rebuild it.

I guess at some point in her life, she sat in water or something for awhile. You can see the staining in the pics. It’s not just her dress, her leather body is stained, too. And on the side where her lower arm fell off, much of the leather is kind of crunchy.

Doll repair is a hobby of mine, not a profession. I’m untrained, but I care a great deal about my dolls and strive to do repairs that can be reversed. I also don’t fully restore or repaint because then the doll doesn’t look her age. 90% of my dolls are old and played-with. New ones just don’t belong in my collection. They look really out of place. I’d rather see scratches, dents and cracks than 200+ sparkling, shiny faces. I collect for the history, the stories behind the dolls.

I, myself, am not sparkling, shiny and new. I’ve got tons of stories to tell. That’s the way I like my dolls. Most collectors would turn up their noses at my junk, but those are the girls I prefer…and I like to think they prefer me, too. I put them in old dresses made by hand–sometimes even by children. That’s they way they were when they were new.

Oh, and for any of you who might be wondering…I did not notice any new paranormal activity when I got this doll and nothing new happened after I fixed her arm. I did experience a few new things at home, but I think those belong to a doll I just acquired rather than being a result of the repairs on this girl.

If something new happens, I’ll include it somewhere here on my blog for sure.

My love for old dolls

I’ve been collecting dolls since I was in fourth grade. Sure, I had a lot of dolls long before then, but that’s when it really started for me.

When I was about five, my aunt gave me two of the dolls she played with when she was a little girl. One was a big, tall Patty Playpal–who was taller than I was when she was given to me! The other was a small doll that by my mom and aunt was called a “Ginny doll”.

Since Patty and I were about the same size, she got to wear some of my clothes, but Ginny came with a red trunk full of clothes. She was nothing like a Barbie or Darci or any of my other contemporary fashion dolls.

One day, for reasons I no longer remember I brought the Ginny doll with me when my family went out to dinner. (I was about ten years old… It made sense at the time.) There happened to be a doll shop in the same building, so after we ate, I went into the doll store.

Me being a little girl holding an old doll was too cute for the lady behind the counter to resist. She struck up a conversation with me and asked if she could look at my doll. I handed the doll up to the lady. She was older, had a sweet smile and was wearing this weird Hawaiian print dress that seemed so out of place in the doll shop, but yet it kind of suited the lady.

She told me that my doll was made by Madame Alexander in the 1950s and was worth about $125.

One. Hundred. Twenty. Five. Dollars.

To me, that was more money than there was in the whole wide world. She might’ve said the doll was worth a gazillion dollars and it would’ve been the same amount.

I walked out of there in a daze. Of course, I’d never sell the doll, but that was the beginning of a real fascination because I’d never even thought that people sold or bought old dolls. To me, dolls either came from my mom, my grandma, my aunt, my second cousin or from Toys R Us. Someone would pay money for my little doll? Someone would pay THAT MUCH for her? Wow. She must really be special.

That Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a Doll Price Guide (which I still have for chuckle purposes!) that I read almost like a regular book. I wanted to learn of every different kind of doll out there. I had no idea there were so many manufacturers, so many different materials that dolls were made of.

Then here’s the real curve ball. My mom had given me two of her dolls. One was a ballerina marked only with 16VW and the other was completely unmarked. How was I to find them in my price guide if they weren’t marked? I tried the library, but still couldn’t figure out who these two girls were.

Fast forward to college when I discovered dolls at flea markets and thrift stores and best of all, I had a car and could drive myself to the library or the bookstore.

Since then, I’ve amassed a collection of books. There’s always the internet, too. Not to mention ebay for a sort of real time price and identification guide.

I’ve also amassed quite a few dolls. I now have at least one from every decade from 1870 through the present. My passion is for the pre-1920 dolls, though. They have so much more character and I love doing repairs on them. More on that in later posts, I’m sure.

Meet the girl who started it all… Aunt Linda’s “Ginny doll”.

First Finish in Quite Awhile

Last week, I did something I haven’t done in awhile. Aside from wrecking my middle finger for awhile, I also randomly walked into my craft room, grabbed one of my antique doll projects and started working on her. I don’t know why I did it, but I did…and aside from the pain, it reignited my antique doll habit.

Don’t worry, it won’t last long. My old doll habit has been with me since I was in 4th grade or so. But it wasn’t until about ten years ago that I got into antique dolls. I don’t even remember what the initial reason was. At the time, the earliest dolls I had were from the 40s. I picked up one from the 30s at a thrift store. Then, another from the 20s at a flea market.

And then I went to a doll show. While most of the dolls were modern and completely uninteresting to me, I got to come face to face with dolls from 1910 back to about 1860 or so. I was utterly mesmerized. They were so different back then. Yeah, I’d seen china dolls before, but not the bisque ones with glass eyes, not the ones with heads made of wax, papier mache, celluloid, even metal. They were a whole new world…

Then, there was this place called eBay…where I could buy antique dolls at a fraction of their price if they were incomplete or broken. I could even buy piece by piece until I got a whole doll–some assembly required.

This unintentionally led to a bizarre doll parts collection much like the kind a doll hospital would need to have on hand for repairs except that I am far from a professional doll doctor. I just assemble dolls as I get the parts. Yeah, I’ve got a list of necessary parts and work for each doll I’ve collected, but I never focus on just one. I guess I’m more into the spontaneity, I don’t really know for sure.

Anyway, last week after the finger incident, I went back in my craft room and started looking at all the girls laying there in various states of disarray. I found one that needed eyes, wig and dress. The eyes were in a little plastic cup sitting inside a wig right next to her. Did she really only need a dress? Didn’t I just get a bunch of dresses from eBay? I started looking and sure enough, while it wasn’t the best for her, it fit and didn’t look horribly wrong.

So, before dinner, I busted out the plaster and did a little eye-setting job. This morning, I cleaned up a few rough spots, patched a tiny hole I found on her leg, dressed her and voila! Project no more.

On the note I’d written probably two years ago that was sitting next to her, I wrote that she was a Kestner 141? Yeah, question mark. I don’t know what led me to believe that she is a Kestner 141. She’s only marked 14/0 in a circle on her back. Maybe whoever I bought her from thought she is a Kestner 141. I suppose I could look her up in one of my doll identification guides. It really doesn’t matter too much to me anyway. I just think she’s a great addition to my collection.

And who knows, maybe altering her appearance might wake up an old ghost or two in her. I haven’t tried to get EVPs with her yet. I suppose I’ll try when I work my way through my collection. I’ll be busy for quite awhile!

April Fool’s Day was early for me

So, I had literally a couple minutes before I needed to leave for yoga class. Earlier in the day, I’d embarked upon a sort of odd project. I’d gotten a messed up antique doll on ebay probably a year or more ago. This particular doll had been the victim of a bad eye-setting job…and whoever’d done it used some sort of permanent, hard goop. Usually, you get the head a little wet and the plaster falls right out. Not this time. (I forgot to take a “before” pic. Darnit.)

I soaked this one in lacquer thinner and it sort of made a difference, but not really. The goop got a slightly mushy…enough that I was able to scrape out most of the trouble and only one of the eyes broke, but it wasn’t catastrophic. I can glue the eye back together and the seam probably won’t even show once that eye is installed.

Aside from the crooked eyes that I absolutely will not tolerate in my collection unless they were set crookedly at the factory back in the 1890s, this doll head had already been glued together once. I pulled that poor repair of her shoulders and part of the back of her head apart so I could get at the eyes a little easier. While I scraped, I discovered another two hairline cracks in her forehead…the hard way. Oh well. What’s done is done.

Okay, now here we are back to the initial paragraph… Two minutes before I was to leave for yoga class, I went back out to the garage to do a little more scraping for good measure while the mystery goop was still a tiny bit mushy. I got off a couple big chunks and was about to pick up my mat and head out.

But, just one more scrape…

OUCH!!!!!

I took the following pic two days later… after Krazy Gluing my finger back together. Notice the nice sharp point of the bisque porcelain? That was a hard stop against my knuckle. There’s a dime-size patch where I can’t feel anything and I’m of the opinion that’s a damn good thing. The joint and bone still hurt like crazy. The whole finger is swollen and won’t bend all the way, but at least the gash has sealed back up thanks to the Krazy Glue. It turned a little purple and green for a few days, but now aside from the lack of full bending ability, the dull pain is at a minimum. I haven’t tried to get my ring off, though. I shudder just thinking about it!

Why do I go through the torture? Well, honestly it has been quite a long time since last I really hurt myself. My husband and various friends hate me for that, too. I’m always so careful. When I worked in the scene shop, co-workers were amazed how I could wallow in paint, dirt, glue and sawdust all day but still manage to go home without wrecking my clothes. I’ve had close calls with the table saw, radial arm saw and did a nice manicure with the band saw once. I’m just like that. Somehow I stay out of trouble. So when something like this happens, I take it like karma and simply pay my dues.

Also, though, this doll is a mold #154, supposedly made by JD Kestner, one of the finest German manufacturers of the day. There aren’t a whole lot of these girls running around and dog gone it, I think she’s pretty.

Plus, she’ll be a great bigger sister to another project 154 I have if I ever get her finished. This little cutie just needs a body, wig and dress. But you see why the broken 154 is worth it. She’s gorgeous.

The broken one needs gluing, resetting the eyes, patching the body, reattaching the arms and a dress if I don’t already have one laying around, but she’s actually closer to being done than the little one. I tend to only put antique heads on antique bodies, so sometimes it takes awhile to find just the right body. I’ve had the small head for almost ten years now. I haven’t actively looked for another body, but still that’s an awful long time to sit on my shelf.

So my April Fool’s Day foolish stunt happened a little early this year, but that’s okay. I was able to go to yoga class and managed not to bleed everywhere, so that was good. I have also reactivated my interest in working on my collection–which I think was the real ‘reason’ I was given this karmaic injury.

I’ve got plenty to work on. These are the ones unfit to display:

Some are closer to done than others. Some were solely purchased very cheaply for a challenge and practice. This can be an expensive hobby, so I tend to stick to the girls who’ve been heavily played with or otherwise damaged. I’d hate to see their history be forgotten just because they’re cracked up or paint is flaking off. These were all toys at one point and in many cases, they were probably the ONLY toy a little girl had. That’s kind of neat to me.

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