Today, just a lovely fashion plate from the February 1862 edition of Le Follet.

I absolutely adore the purple gown with the black sleeves. It looks deliciously sumptuous! Click on the image to see the details better. I like the black gown too, but the copper/brown underskirt seems strange to me (though it does match the muff). 

Winter styles have always appealed to me more than other seasons. And the girl's matching blue booties are also awesome. 

Totally awesome 1841 set of paper dolls on auction through Theriault's. Described as "very rare" with a title: Mythologie Pour La Jeunesse. This set was made in Vienna by H.F. Muller. It includes two dolls (male and female), and 14 stunning costumes representing various Greek and Roman deities.  The auction site describes the folio as beautifully marbled with applique on the "mythologie" scroll. This set was intended to be fun and educational and came with a "72 page book, written in both German and French, detailing the writer's purpose: to teach mythology to his children by means of paper dolls with changeable costumes that represent the features of various Greek or Roman Gods."

Don't know how much something like this will go for at auction, but it being such a lovely complete set in such nice condition, I'm sure it will go dear!  

Amazing colors! Wish we could better see the male doll ~ his little head is peeking out above the short yellow toga roughly in the middle at the bottom.  Click the image to see more detail!

Today, a lovely European paper doll on auction at eBay. Because the title is in multiple languages, it's hard to know its place of origin. I am going to guess German because German is the first language represented on the box. The seller thinks it's French. 

Either way, we both agree that it's from the 1850s and it's lovely! Has a few other dresses and some hats, but this is the best representative image and besides, that decorative box is just way cool. Typical of the style of that era, this doll is printed both front and back and pieces like the veil shown here go over the head and around the shoulders; sometimes these designs were wonderfully complex for playthings; but cheap paper dolls were still another decade or so away, so the rich little girls who played with these expected the full monty (so to speak).

UPDATE: This auction ended on 3/9 and netted $431.99!