Doll head

By about 1880, German makers of dolls introduced porcelain heads (both glazed and unglazed) with novel features. Unlike the doll heads of previous decades, manufacturers offered heads clearly intended to represent children. These new heads had simple, short, curly hairstyles, short necks, chubby cheeks, and round eyes. The depiction of children came at a time when Europeans and Americans began to think of childhood as a unique period of the life cycle, and middle-class children in the late 19th century (for whom the dolls were intended) were purposely given time to be youngsters. In other words, they were not hurried into labor on family farms or in small factories as the youngsters of earlier generations had been.