Until I can post those and get some new material up, you will just have to enjoy this gorgeous Worth gown from 1893. I don't love the 90s because of the crazy leg-o-mutton sleeves, but some of the dresses are still quite beautiful.
Went out of town through this past weekend, which really put me behind in the posting. I'll be leaving again first week of November, so I wanted to make sure I posted some eye-candy for the interim and I should also be posting more stuff this coming weekend.
Until I can post those and get some new material up, you will just have to enjoy this gorgeous Worth gown from 1893. I don't love the 90s because of the crazy leg-o-mutton sleeves, but some of the dresses are still quite beautiful.
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This is an amazing supplement from the Boston Sunday Globe, which produced numerous wonderful paper dolls and toys at the turn of the century. This was originally posted at an amazing blog well worth checking out called Antique Toy Chest.
This is an amazing variety of stand-up style dolls depicting scenes from the literary classic Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is very interesting to see such a painful part of American History reproduced so starkly (the man with the whip is pretty skeery~ as are the dogs and dying Little Eva), but the educational value of a supplement like this probably cannot be underestimated. Like most of the Globe supplements, this one came with instructions which are not provided here. The instructions were usually about how to assemble the various scenes and descriptions of what those scenes represent. I am tagging this entry "antebellum" also because the dolls represent pre-Civil War characters even though this was produced in 1896. Here are a couple of pictures from another amazing 19th century doll house environments (these are also authentic from the period!). Both feature typical McLaughlin dolls of the late 1900s. To see a couple more "rooms" in this amazing collection, check out A Home for Dolly.
I have always had an ambition to create my own paper doll environment (never so ambitious to want to build it in three dimensions, but have for years conceived of a flat surface "house" with various rooms and props). Probably made a few as a child, but none of them survived, alas. I remember very distinctly drawing and coloring tiny little food items and cutting them out. One of these days maybe I will attempt another. Looking at these examples lately certainly is inspiring! This Italian blog shares some wonderful images of the interior of the Victorian Paper Doll House produced by Piggy Toes Press. I had always wanted one of these, but never picked one up. I think now they are getting hard to come by except in used (and tattered, most likely) condition. The pictures show off how much amazing detail went in to designing this lovely pop-up house. Go to the website to see pictures of the dining room and more. Probably, if I had known the book was this well-done, I would have bought one all those years ago when it could be had for a relatively reasonable price. Maybe they will reprint it. I haven't searched too hard for one lately, so it may yet be out there. I have for you today an embossed chromo-lithographed paper doll probably from the very late 1880s or early 1890s. Royal subjects were very popular and this one is Kaiserin Augusta Victoria of the Hohenzollern Portrait dolls produced by W & S. The seller of this doll notes that "The same doll is shown on page 13 of Marta K. Kreb's book The Royalty of Paper Dolls and a copy is reproduced in that book as a centerfold." I have that book and this is entirely true This is an image of the original, however, and it sold on eBay this year for $67.68 (seems like a bargain!). The doll was accompanied by four gowns, one jacket, and two hats. The doll measures 6 1/2" from the top of the head to the tip of the toe. It's interesting that the original does not include the square base pictured in Kreb's book. Today a doll that testifies to America's unending fascination with the foreign royals: a doll of the Czarina of Russia with a veil and traditional Russian costume. Also, the inclusion of a dressing screen described as a "piece of furniture" on the back of the doll (I didn't post the verso here). This is one of many dolls produced by McLaughlin's Coffee and was found on eBay. McLaughlin produced these dolls mostly around the turn of the century. Based on the costumes, this one was likely created in the early to mid-1890s.
In honor of the holidays, we have this appropriately dated November 24th, 1895 art supplement to the Boston Sunday Globe, which printed a lot of fun cut-outs and paper dolls at the turn of the century and into the next. This one is interesting as it shows a traditional family: mother, father, son, and daughter, all sitting down to their holiday meal.
These interesting assemblies are a strange lot. Definitely a lost plaything of the past. What's this? Another post so soon? Could it be a sign of the apocalypse? No, it's just Veteran's Day and I couldn't let it pass without posting something patriotic. This is a Under the Stars and Stripes paper doll set from about the turn of the century by Raphael Tuck featuring a patriotic theme (including an Uncle Sam outfit!). The others are uniforms for cavalry, infantry, and the navy. These uniforms are all in the style of what was pretty common by the end of the 19th century (American soldiers still wore blue), and the navy uniform in particular hadn't changed since the early part of the century. Although the doll is a bit stiff (being at attention), this is a nice set and was auctioned off last year some time at Morphy's. I had downloaded so many interesting vintage paper dolls from that auction and have scarcely begun to post them! Anyway, the resolution on these isn't the greatest, but they are nevertheless nice to look at. This veiled mourning dress is from a round robin (how fun!) collection featured online by Klein. It seems like deep mourning of this kind was already beginning to fall out of fashion at the end of the century. The "modern" age had everyone looking forward, moving faster, and spending a year in black as a widow was a fading ritual in mainstream American culture. Too much sentimentality for the new era, perhaps. Advances in medicine, too, had made death a little less common (and therefore more morbid) than it had ever been. The idea of a paper doll round robin seems like such a cool thing. OPDAG features one every quarter in their Paper Doll Studio publication (for which, sadly, my subscription has lapsed). We should have a round robin online! Fritzi Scheff was an American actress and singer who was popular in the early 20th century, though I have included her here because she was working by the turn of the century and her outfits are certainly reminiscent of the end of the Belle Epoque. This single page was done by John Axe and sports one of his nicer female dolls.
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