Doll

The doll head of this item is a typical 19th-century (1880-1900), German-made china doll head without its shoulderplate. A past owner (or owner's father) attached the damaged doll head to a piece of scrap wood to make a crude doll body. Although the provenance of this particular doll is not known, it does suggest how playthings of fragile compostiton might have been reworked to extend their usefulness. One can only imagine how a girl might have played with this repaired doll: wrapped in a blanket, the figure could easily imitate a doll at rest in a craddle or out for a ride in a doll carriage. The smoothness of the wood suggests that many hands, or one pair of hands many, many times, clutched this little doll in hours of playful comfort.