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The War Against Plastic; What will Happen to our Dolls?

Modern Porcelains had their run.

Recently, Starbuck's announced it would be fazing out plastic straws.  In fact, a lot of restaurants and businesses announced the same.   I was in a panic.  I have to have a straw to drink my coffee, even hot.  The commuter lids, also plastic, drip all over everything.  They also pop off, dumping hot coffee all over me. That lady from the McDonald's coffee case?  Let's just say I've felt her pain.  I need my straw.

I asked for a straw at our local coffee shop, and was told as follows by the Mitchell from Modern Family Look alike that used to work there.  "I'd love to give you a straw for your hot Americano, but it will melt--they're corn!"  Said with such bravado, such obnoxious glee to disappoint the woman of a certain age making the request.

The coffee shop now uses paper straws.  They get soggy.  I started saving plastic straws here and there, just in case.   I have to have my coffee, and my cokes.  Hot or cold, I need my straw.

The whole thing got me thinking.  There is really a war against plastic, and it's everywhere.  There is a movie about the life of a plastic bag.  It is very poignant.  There are commercials about plastic objects being recycled, and Earth Day fashion shows feature clothing made from discarded plastics. 

For that matter, polyester fabric is a kind of resin based material, and resin is a kind of plastic.  Here's part of the definition:  "Polyethylene terephthalate (sometimes written poly(ethylene terephthalate)), commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P, is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods, thermoforming for manufacturing, and in combination with glass fibre for engineering resins." (Wikipedia).

So, plastic is literally everywhere, and is used in every industry. Celluloid is a forerunner, Bakelite and Lucite are related.  Remember, Mattel got its start from Lucite novelties created in the Handler's garage.


And, what about Mattel and Barbie?  Literally millions of dolls around the world have been made in celluloid, plastic, vinyl, and resin.  Play dolls are predominantly plastic and vinyl.  Early Alexanders, including the breathtaking mystery dolls of hard plastic, the portraits, the Wendikins and more, are hard plastic.  Vinyl dolls are collector's dreams, cf The American Girls, Annette Himstedt, and more.


What will happen to Terri Lee, Miss Revlon, DyDee Baby, Toni, and so many more?  Billions of products besides straws and dolls are made of plastic.  What will our toys look like?  What will replace the durability of plastic?  Nothing is immortal, but we've tried tin toys, tin heads, bisque, wax, nothing seems to survive play as well as plastic products.  Modern porcelain dolls were a fad, but most were collected, not played with.  Will cloth do it?  What will popular dolls be made of? I have no answers, but this will be quite a problem.

Public domain





Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Thank you Virtual Doll Convention!

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Thank you Virtual Doll Convention!: I'm taking this chance to thank everyone at Virtual Doll Convention. We all learned and enjoyed so much! Truly, doll folk are not single...

Hellenic Muses a la Poupee

Greek dolls have been influenced by many cultures, mixing with, and creating doll simultaneously with, Greek artists.

A doll shaped Ouzo bottle; author's collection and public domain

Greek doll wearing clothing of ancient theater.  Author.

Queen Amalia of Greece; outfit she designed c. 1821 from her German Homeland
and contemporary dress.  Sequins represent coins for dowry.  1960s; author.  Brought
from Greece.  Mask face, plastic, and wire, painted features, mohair wig.  Photo Dino Milani.

From Egypt come rag dolls of coarse linen or other cloth, stuffed with papyrus.  Mary Hillier and others have theorized that there were more soft dolls played with in the ancient world, as there were probably wooden dolls and dolls of other materials.  Yet, they only seem to have survive in Egypt because the dry conditions allowed for their preservation.

Mary Hillier in "Dolls and Doll Makers" showed seated dolls with realistic faces and hair styles that resembled those on classic marble statues.  These were missing arms, but obviously had jointed arms at one time.  She called these theater figures, and it is unclear if they are toys or not.  Ancient writer Xenophon allegedly discusses puppets in his works, and Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" from "The Republic" alludes to shadow puppets or figures on the wall.

Many other writers feature ancient Greek dolls, and Sappho, classic poet of the Ancient World left a poetic fragment dedicating her doll to Artemis, "despise not my doll's little purple cloak."

Reproduction Kore figures in my collection, one made in Greece, depict young girls before marriage, and are often 2 or 3 feet high, and represent tomb figures.

Gorgeous ivory dolls wearing remnants of gold jewelry, and often found in little girls' tombs with scraps of cloth, were luxury figures, but many terracotta jointed dolls exist in the Benaki Museum and other European museums as proof that children's games of all types existed.  When I was 9, I saw some of these myself at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and I actually cried from the emotional impact.

Argyriadis writes of dolls created during Byzantium, 330-1453 A.D.  Bone dolls with etched figures, and large luminous eyes were popular.  She quotes St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and author of one of The Divine Liturgies of The Greek Orthodox Church, on the similarity between Christian dolls contemporary to him and ancient dolls. Doll makers still worked in clay, cloth, bone, ivory, and wood, just as they had 1000 years before.  Dolls were still sold from workshops.

At the Monastiraki, I bought a black silk Greek doll head, and other souvenir dolls.  We also saw antique German doll heads for sale. Argyriadis pictures many papier mache, wax, and bisque dolls, as well as Dresden German Christmas ornaments , wax angels, and other European toys popular in Greece during the late 19th and 20th centuries. She writes of these so-called "Type V" dolls as heads that come to a point, and date from the first to twelfth centuries.  They were inserted into cloth stuffed bodies, and some had wigs. They remind me of half dolls of the early 20th century.

According to Argyriadis, from the 6th century on, writings talk about little girls' dolls and their importance.  Pollucis Onomasticon mentions dolls in his work, (Lib.IX. 127). During this time dolls were found in children's tombs, and Argyridadis writes these are almost certainly toys.  Pagan worshippers still had their idols at this time, and dolls were even found in the graves of Christian adults as symbols of adults entering the kingdom of Heaven as little children (Matthew XVIII, 3-4). Apparently, she writes there was a common Byzantine phrase cited by Phaidon Koukoules, "We're not playing with dolls." An interesting note is that the Empress Theodora treated her Holy Icons as dolls.  I find this interesting; icons are meant to take the place of religious statues in the early church, yet at the same time, other citizens would have had idols and ritual figures as part of their worship.  People do revere and address their icons as three dimensional figures, and portraits and images like them are indeed cousins to the two dimensional and three dimensional images we call dolls.

 

Ten Iconoclastic Rules for Collecting Dolls; Thinking outside the Doll Box

Ten Iconoclastic Rules for Collecting Dolls; Thinking outside the Doll Box

 

Let me begin by paraphrasing George Orwell, author if 1984 and other works, from his essay “Politics and the English Language.”  He outlines his ten rules for good writing, no doubt formed from his own school of hard knocks, learned during his days of writing communist propaganda.  Basically, he said in about the tenth rule that writers should break the other 9 before they wrote anything “barbarous.”

 

I’m a big fan of Orwell and literary freedom; I don’t like collector fascists either, or collector totalitarians.  To each her own, or in the immortal words of Sly Stone, “different strokes for different folks.”

 

So, here are my ten unorthodox rules for collecting dolls.

 

1. Buy what you like.  This is the most sacred rule for any collector to follow.  Buy what you like, and opportunity and investment will come.  As you buy what you like, your taste may change or not.  You will learn about all kinds of dolls and related items, you will study, read, and improve your critical thinking skills and even your communication skills as you explore what you love.
2. Read freely of other collectors’ advice; take that advice sparingly.  Don’t let a doll snob, or even a well meaning collector, talk you out of a doll you love.  If you can afford it, you like it, have plans for it, are inspired by it, made happy by it, go for it.   Your collection is a kind of autobiography; it says things about you, and those things are good.
3. To paraphrase Mary Randolph Carter, author of The American Junk Series of books, magazine contributor, Internet entrepreneur, and executive at Ralph Lauren, never ask where am I going to put it?
4. Condition is not everything; if you have a chance to be gifted, or to buy,  a fabulous doll that is damaged but very reasonably priced, don’t turn it down.  What if that bargain baby that needs TLC is a Bru, or a Marque?  Stranger things have happened.
5. Don’t buy just for investment.  If you want to speculate on investments, become a day trader, buy bitcoin, trade in stocks, etc.   Like art, dolls and collectibles should be lived with first.  A good collection ages like fine wine.
6. More is more.  I’m sorry; it just is.  Collectors don’t like the “H” word.    Simplifying and downsizing what you like to please others merely causes you more stress.  Collecting what you like in any number you are comfortable with brings joy. 
7. All Dolls are Collectible.  CF Genevieve Angione’s wonderful book of that title.
8. Donate dolls to charity, or contribute to Toys for Tots.  Spread the word that dolls are good, and that they teach children many valuable skills.  Dolls are probably the oldest toy, and perhaps the oldest human cultural artifact. 
9. Stay away from haunted object and creepy doll crap.  Don’t let these naysayers talk you out of your dolls.  I love monster and Halloween dolls all in good fun; I feel happy and safe when I’m surrounded by my collection, writing about it and caring for it.
10. As Mr. Orwell wrote, break any of these rules before you do something barbarous, like throw away a doll.  Never, ever do that!! The Doll is always Greater than the Sum of its dolly Parts.

Rare Darrow Rawhide Dolls, 1870s