Doll Collecting Resounds with Echoes of Childhood

antique dolls Evoke Bittersweet Memories of the Frontier West

IMAGINE A CHRISTMAS MORNING 100 YEARS AGO IN THE SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA SETTLEMENT OF PIMA, WHERE A LITTLE GIRL NAMED ANNIE LAURA WHIPPLE SAT IN A WHITE FRAME HOUSE, HOLDING A NEW DOLL IN HER ARMS.

The doll was the image of a child about Annie Laura's age. Her head and hands were unglazed porcelain. Her eyes were brown, her complexion the color of sweet cream, her cheeks the pink of a rose. There was a dimple in her chin. She was nearly two feet tall, and she wore a pink and green dress with a matching hat and black velvet shoes.

No one knows what the doll's hair looked like when Annie Laura first held her. In those days, dolls' "wigs" were often changed or replaced. Years later, when the doll was donated to the collection of the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, she wore a wig made of cuttings from Annie Laura's own dark brown hair.

Annie Laura took good care of her doll, no easy task in a house filled with children. She was the fifth child of William and Polly Ann Whipple, pioneers who farmed at Pima in the Gila Valley before moving to Clifton to run a dairy. In those days, families were large but fragile. The Whipples had nine children, but only three lived to adulthood. Annie Laura died of a heart disorder when she was 13, and her younger sister, Flossie, inherited the doll.

For more than 70 years, Flossie Whipple Hagan kept a record in her head and in her heart of her family's history, and of the sister she had lost. When she gave some Whipple heirlooms to the historical society in 1974, she turned over many mementos of Annie Laura: records of her birth and death, a few photographs, and a doll with a pink and green dress and dimpled chin, which had once delighted a little girl on Christmas morning.

Imagine, now, another special day, this one in 1881. It was the ninth birthday of Addie Slaughter, daughter of the famous Cochise County sheriff and cattleman John Horton Slaughter. Her father's gift to her was a bit of elegance in the rough country of southeastern Arizona: a doll made in France, dressed in a silk gown trimmed with satin and lace and fastened with tiny silk-covered buttons. The doll was the likeness of a young woman. Her hair was blond, her face full, her skin translucent. Her placid eyes were an icy, otherworldly gray. Addie's toy was what modern doll collectors call a "fashion doll." Her body was made of leather (her hands

antique dolls

had individually sewn fingers that looked like oversize gloves), and it was disproportionate. In eastern cities of the United States, fashion dolls with their elaborate gowns and accessories were a luxury, kept on shelves and played with only under adult supervision. Addie's doll, however, lived on the Slaughters' vast San Bernardino Ranch or in Tombstone. It was rough country, and no one had time to supervise a little girl's play, so the doll spent more time in Addie's arms than on a shelf.

Several years ago, some important items from the estate of John Slaughter were donated to the Arizona Historical Society. Included in the bequest were his badge, his guns, the bedroom suite used by Slaughter and his wife, Viola, and an elegant French doll with icy gray eyes.

The dolls that belonged to Annie Laura Whipple and Addie Slaughter are special in many ways. They are not only well-pre-served but still have their original clothes and accessories. Made in Europe, they were brought to America when the West was still a frontier. It wasn't until the coming of the railroads in the late 19th century that pioneers in southern Arizona had easy access to European goods. Before that most children played with dolls made of simpler stuff.

"Many of them probably had bodies made out of old feed sacks and buttons for eyes," says Mark Santiago, collections manager at the historical society in Tucson. "They were loved and played with until they disintegrated. We'll never know about them because they served their purpose so well."

Perhaps most importantly, Addie's and Annie Laura's dolls have stories. We know who owned them and how they came to be where they are today. That's not true of most

Not all of the dolls at the museum date from before the turn of the century. A 1920s' 'boudoir doll' lounges on a fainting couch. Nearby sits a collection of Shirley Temple dolls.

antique dolls because they were brought to Arizona by modern collectors, not by pioneers. It's a charming twist of their hobby, however, that if a doll doesn't have a story, a collector is free to imagine one.

"There's a lot of emotional gratification to it," says Fran Oakland, who owns nearly 200 dolls, including two valuable fashion dolls that are posed with their armoire, gowns, and accessories on a shelf in a walk-in closet. No one but Oakland sees them, but she enjoys it that way.

"I love it when I come in and get dressed, and my dolls are getting dressed, too," she says. "Actually, they're probably packing for some wonderful voyage to someplace far away. They have a lot of romance about them, and elegance.

"I think it's important to remember that dolls were made to be enjoyed as playthings.

Collectors might appreciate a doll because it's rare or costs a certain amount of money, but the simple pleasures you get out of them are really what it's all about."

If that doesn't make sense to you, come to the Arizona Doll and Toy Museum, located in a tiny historic house at Heritage Square in downtown Phoenix. Almost without exception, visitors exclaim with surprise when they walk through the door. They expect to see dolls, but they are not prepared for the expressive eyes that look back at them, eyes that seem to follow them as they move from room to room.

Many of the dolls in the museum were manufactured between 1860 and the turn of the century, during the heyday of Euro-pean dollmaking. In France the competing family firms of Leon Casimir Bru and Pierre Francois Jameau produced exquisite bisque dolls with inset glass eyes. In Germany companies such as Simon and Halbig, J.D. Kestner, and Armand Marseille made dolls that were popular throughout Europe and the United States.

"You get so that you can tell the difference," says Inez McCrary, curator of the museum. "See the eyebrows on the French dolls? How heavy they are; how they almost meet in the middle? Some people, when they first see them, say, 'Oh, why would anyone want that doll?' But they grow on you with their wonderful eyes and features that are so delicate. They're often dressed more elegantly than the German dolls, which were of the working class, while the French dolls were the elegant ladies."

Not all of the dolls at the museum date from before the turn of the century. In one room, a 1920s' "boudoir doll," made to ornament a woman's bed, lounges on a miniature fainting couch. Nearby sits a collection of Shirley Temple dolls, one of which belonged to McCrary when she was a child. After her mother's death, she found the doll in a trunk, carefully wrapped and dressed in its original dress, shoes, and stockings. "I didn't even know my mother had saved her," says McCrary. "It made me think she must have liked dolls, too."

In another room is a set of Dionne Quintuplets, made by the Alexander Doll Company of New York after the real quints Cecile, Annette, Emelie, Marie, and Yvonne were born in Canada in 1934. The dolls are one in a progression of sets produced as the real-life quintuplets grew from babies to toddlers to little girls. The five figures are identical, but each wears a different colored dress and a tiny pin en-graved with her name.

The quintuplets are part of the museum's collection, but most of the dolls there are on loan from collectors (the museum is sponsored by doll clubs throughout Ari-zona). One collector who helped start the museum six years ago is Helen Boothe, who bought her first Shirley Temple doll when she was 40 years old. Most of her collection is made up of miniature dolls like the ones she played with when she was a child during the Depression. Back then Boothe's family did not have enough money to buy toys, but two dolls were given to her by friends. They were tiny bisque figures, about four inches tall, that sold for 29 cents with clothes and 19 cents undressed. They were fragile, modest toys, but Boothe loved them. Today they are very rare. "Miniature dolls were really played with," she says. "They were cheap, and they were loved, and when they broke they were thrown away. That's why it's difficult to put a collection together because there's just not very much out there anymore." Luckily Boothe has been collecting for years, and some of what once was "out there" found its way into her hands. The "doll room" of her house is full of toys in various stages of repair. She likes fashion dolls because of their accessories, which are wondrous in scale and detail. The crowning glory of Boothe's collec-tion stands against one wall of the room. It is a cabinet, six feet high and six feet wide, divided into 21 rooms filled with antique dollhouse furniture and dolls. Boothe collected the contents of the cab-inet, piece by piece, during the last three decades. She began assembling the rooms four years ago. So far, six are complete. Be-fore she is finished, she will hang wallpaper, run electricity to chandeliers and sconces, and set tiny bricks in mortar for the floor of a stable on the lowest level. There will be a music room, a laundry, a country store with an antique cash register made of pot metal, a bathroom, a dining room in which a turkey is served at a table imported from England, a kitchen, a dress-maker's room, and what Boothe calls her "sentimental" bedroom with a magnificent set of rose furniture and tiny tin chests filled with beads she played with as a girl. There are miniature photographs hanging on walls, tiny quilts and embroidered sam-plers, flowered Limoges plates barely an inch in diameter, even a Santa Claus paying his annual visit. And there are dolls, includ-ing several rare African American figures. "Look at this one," says Boothe. "It took me 15 years to get her. I wrote to every dealer I knew and said I wanted a black dollhouse lady. This is the only one I've ever seen. She's very old. She must be close to 100." Boothe does not know where the doll came from, who made it, or who owned it. But in its face, and in the chipped paint of the tiny kitchen chairs, she sees history a hint of Christmas mornings long ago and the happy cries of children like Annie Laura Whipple and Addie Slaughter.