If you would like to download this Lovely Lady to color and cut, visit Rachel's website at Paper Thin Personas! Hope you enjoy!
We have another Round Robin in the works. If you would like to be part of it, leave a message and we'll let you in!
19th Century Paper Dolls |
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Check it out! Our inaugural Paper Doll Round Robin is a thrilling success with four intrepid paper-dollers coming together across the country to create for you a Happy Halloween Lady of Late Autumn Legend and Lore! Rachel, Toria, Liana and myself all contributed to this spooky fun creation.
If you would like to download this Lovely Lady to color and cut, visit Rachel's website at Paper Thin Personas! Hope you enjoy! We have another Round Robin in the works. If you would like to be part of it, leave a message and we'll let you in!
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McLaughlin made some strange animal paper dolls in the 1890s (you can see some others if you click "animals" under the categories to the right. But this is probably the strangest I've come across. I suppose it has charm; makes me wonder at all the creepy dolls and toys that are on the market today that 100 years from now people will wonder about the appeal. Here is a very beautiful German set of dolls that were misidentified on eBay as Edward VII and Alexandra, but they are really Kaiser Frederick III and his wife consort Victoria. The dolls date from the late 1880s and have the most gorgeous color. Paper dolls of German manufacture during this period were quite impressive and royal personalities were a favorite subject (they were the movie stars and the tabloid fodder of their day). Click on the picture to enjoy the detail! So much beautiful art out there in the paper doll blog world. Can't seem to focus on my own. It may continue to be a while before I post anything original, though I will try to be regular-ish about keeping up this blog while I sort out what it is exactly that I want to do. Hope you enjoy these posts! Came across this fun and unusual advertising doll, which is typical of the late 19th Century. These dolls always required assembly and I love all the parts! Wild Ike is a non-copyright-infringing variation on Buffalo Bill & Co., which was at the height of its popularity (fascination with the Wild West would see a precipitous decline within the decade ~ not to be revived again until the advent of television). America was climbing out of a depression and paper toys like this were relatively cheap. It was one of a series for which there were 5 dolls, with interchangeable costume pieces. Found this example on eBay. I had seen one actually cut and assembled before, but it's really cool to see how it originally appeared on the page. Click the image to see more detail and read all that teensy tiny print! An exchange over at RLC's blog about double-sided paper dolls reminded me suddenly that I hadn't updated my own blog since returning from a long visit to my sister's. So I thought I should share a few double-sided dolls I came across (I know not where) during my internet travels. This is an advertising set (though I don't know what the product was), and the figures are characters from the Pocahontes story. I would love love love to make full-on double-sided dolls in the style of the 19th century, but I am horrifically daunted by the complexity of it ~ I can barely seem to get single-sided dolls together, let alone tackle something like this. Still, I do get all moony-eyed and hope-sick when I think about how totally cool these are. Just a quickie for Fashion Plate Friday! This one was originally published in Le Follet (a Paris magazine), in November of 1839.
Love the green dressing/smoking gown with the red lining and cap ~ also the little gold slippers. The other two gents are wearing evening clothes (at left), and (at right) what looks like a typical day-to-evening frock (more casual than the dinner tails). Aside from the clothes, I really love the ghosted-in room decor: the fireplace, candelabra, etc. Click on the image to see more details! Neither of these images is Photoshopped and unfortunately, I can't recall where I found them originally. But I think they are hilarious (and a little weird). A good reminder that our ancestors were not a bunch of prim God-fearing people who never smiled (smiling was difficult for photos because it's hard to hold a natural smile for the length of time it took for the exposure). Anyway, here at left we have two theatrical critters: Hedgehog and Rabbit. Hard to tell when it was taken ~ can't even hazard a guess. Even the style of the coats is likely "costume" and not contemporary. This second picture is easier to date because the woman is dressed quite normally (so I would place this in the 1870s based on her hairstyle and dress style. Who knows who the person in the diving suit is ~ probably a man, maybe her husband? Diving suits of this type were still experimental (Jules Verne made much of them in this era, as did other adventure story writers). I like to think this couple, aside from being adventurers themselves, had quite a fine sense of humor to want to take this portrait, which sort of sets typical classic portraiture on its end. Fun stuff! I am sharing with you today something in a similar theme: a pair of woman's bicycle boots from the 1890s. These are in the collection at the Minnesota Historical Society and have an interesting provenance: they were made by the North Star Shoe Company in Minneapolis and worn by a woman who later ran for City Council and served as a land patent attorney in the 1940s. She was obviously a woman ahead of her time and these shoes are totally awesome! Reap the Wild Wind was a 1942 action flick starring Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard (with a young John Wayne and Susan Hayward!). It's a romance about Clipper salvage in Key West the 1840s (an interesting and unusual subject!). In 1973, Marilyn Henry created this lovely paper doll set based on the film. I came across this on eBay and would love to bid on it, but I am sure it will go too dear. It's a nice set of the sort that you could color yourself (color printing was too expensive 40 years ago unless you were a big publisher). It nonetheless has a spot color cover (presumably heavier stock), so the characters have tints. My absolute favorite is the inclusion of the octopus (definitely a stand-out character in the film). The film, of course is rather silly and the costumes are not especially period-appropriate (this was a low-budget film made during WWII, which adds to its overall "cheap" look and feel ~ but hey, they did pretty good with what they had! There are four pages of clothing in the set, but I only have some rough images of two of the four (below). The usual apologies for my absence lately. I hope to maybe post something new of my own soon. In this painting by Constantin Hansenfrom 1837, we see a bunch of Danish artists lounging around in an apartment in Rome. Love the variety of fabrics and colors for their vest and trousers, love the long pipes, the tall hats, the delicate tea cups and saucers, and the dog hanging out on the chair while the men are lounging on the floor. Was looking for pictures of boy's clothing from this period and came across this by happy accident, so I thought I would share. I was hoping to post something doll-like today, but alas, the evening is getting away from me, so it may have to wait. Sorry! Click on the pictures to see the details ~ this is a great portrait of gentlemen at their leisure from a period when portraiture was otherwise generally still pretty stuffy and formal. |
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