Medieval Inspiration

This post idea literally came to me in a dream. I dreamed of writing about dolls in the Middle Ages, and my little sleeping beauty castle was featured. I took some dramatic license, but the photos are of the castle as it is progressing, hopefully showing the Medeival influence on the Disney story. Some of the figures are by B. Shackman, now vintage, showing Victorian figures created by Pre-raphaelite artists. There is a post on this blog on Dolls of the Middle Ages with more photos. See also Arthurian Barbie outfits, Midwest doll ornaments, Peggy Niset, Madame Alexander, Air Fix, and other companies creating Medieval outfits for their dolls.

Today is National Barbie Day!

 Per Antique Week, today is our favorite doll's holiday!  I'm  posting some photos, and remind everyone that there is a brief chapter on our girl in Thinking Outside the Doll House; A Memoir. Book is available at a discount from Austin Macaulay at a discount.

Hinamatsuri The Japanese Doll Festival

 Here's an oldie but goody.  Tomorrow is the Japanese Doll Festival, aka The Girls' Festival.  Enjoy.

If you have read Rumer Godden’s Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, you know that The Girls’ Festival in Japan, also known as The Doll Festival, takes place on March 3d.  Today, the Hina Matsuri celebration is also celebrated in the United States. We receive an ad from a Japanese Grocery Store each week, and the week's ad for the first of March featured sweets and special foods for the Doll Festival celebrations. These foods include shirozake, fermented rice sake, tiny crackers flavored with sugar or soy sauce, a salty soup with clams, and rice cake.  Culturally, this is a holiday apparently alive and well among Japanese Families. For information on the Hina Matsuri and other dolls, I recommend The Yokohama Doll Museum site, and works by Scot Alan Pate and Lea Baten. Pat Smith also wrote a book on Asian Dolls.  If you have not read Rumer Godden's Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and Little Plum about the Festival and the lives of three Japanese dolls, you must. Godden liked dolls and actually had the Japanese doll house built and landscaped to inspire her.  Huguette Clark, the famous reclusive heiress and collector, had a master craftsman create special Japanese doll houses for her as well.

 

The festival dates to the Heian period (794-1192).  Ornamental dolls are taken out once a year and arranged on steps covered in red cloth.  Dolls representing the lord and lady of the palace are arranged on the top shelf.  Other dolls representing their attendants and musicians are arranged on the steps along with miniature accessories. According to Japanese-city.com, the origins of The Girls’ Festival date from an ancient custom of floating Hina dolls of straw to the ocean.  The belief was that the dolls contained evil spirits and that as they floated away, the carried the spirits with them out to sea. This custom was called Hina nagashi or doll floating.

 

Lea Baten is one of my favorite doll historians, and her specialty is Japanese dolls.  Carl Fox in The doll also addresses many interesting examples.  See our Pinterest Boards on Japanese Dolls, Doll Collection, and Nepalese Dolls for more examples. According to Alan Scott Pate in his article Hina Matsuri; Dolls from the Japanese Girls’ Day Festival, dolls have been important to Japanese culture for over 13,000 years. Pate has pointed out that the doll on the top tier of the Hina display are the lord and lady, and are not referred to as emperor and empress dolls in Japan.   Other dolls and related items important to Japanese culture are Bunraku puppets, Kokeshi dolls of wood, Hakata dolls made of clay from the city or Hakata, Kabuki actors and actresses, netsuke meant to be tied at the end of sashes, and tiny dolls made of painted rice kernels.  Paper dolls are another Japanese tradition as are mechanical figures called Karakuri that are small, realistic robots that serve tea.  Samurai and other mythic figures celebrate The Boy’s Festival, held May 5^th. Friendship dolls were went to the United States during the 1920s, and American dolls were sent to Japan in exchange.

 

Artist R. John Wright has created beautiful Japanese children as featured in The Toy Shoppe, and French automatons were inspired by Japanese Geisha. German makers also created their versions of Asian and Japanese dolls.  Some Vintage Italian dolls represent Madame Butterfly and wear the traditional Kimono.  Effanbee made a vinyl version of Madame Butterfly in the late 80s.

 

As a recent Theriault’s auction of rare antique Japanese dolls has shown, there is still a brisk interest in these dolls.  The Takara Barbie and Japanese robots and Manga dolls are popular, inspired by their vintage cousins.  Morimura Brothers made bisque dolls in the style of German bisque babies and children, and stone bisque penny dolls made in Japan were very popular during the 30s and 40s.  Celluloid dolls nad toys rr4om Japan are very popular with collectors, as are bisque dolls and figurines marked “Occupied Japan,” made while the Untied States occupied the country just after World War II.  Ball jointed dolls are currently made in Japan, and there is an active community of doll collectors there, including temples devoted to cremating worn out dolls.  Shirley Temple’s life sized Japanese doll retuned home after the 2014 auction of her collection.  Temple had a large number of Japanese dolls in her collection, which were among her favorites. 

Dolls marked Nippon, Occupied Japan, or Morimura Brothers delight many collectors. Tiny rice Kokeshi dolls are great fun, as are tiny Geisha dolls made from Rice Crackers.  At Mitsuwa Shopping Center, Arlington Heights, there is a Japanese doll on display at the grocery store.

Japanese Friendship dolls tell their own story; we even had one at Audubon school, till the school closed and a teacher took it with her.

Friendship dolls at Putnam.  Photo by Ellen Tsagaris

Memoirs of a Geisha; Putnam Museum Literary Heroines. Photo by E. Tsagaris

This March 3d, take out your Japanese dolls, and if you don’t have an actual set of Hina dolls, arrange them around a good picture, serve miniature foods, and honor a tradition that dates to the 9^th century.

 

 

 

 

Toy Fair

 

Today at the Museum included a little serendipity.   A gentleman came in with his sister to visit.  He was a Hot Wheels collector; there were doll collectors in his family as well.  As it turns out, He worked for Toy Fair in our own South Park Mall during the 70s.  Toy Fair also had a toy store in Duck Creek Plaza.  According to our visitor, Toy Fair was a Cedar Rapids company, and all the toys came from a warehouse there.  My first Sasha came from Toy Fair, as well as our B. Shackman Bye-lo babies.  I found many of my favorite Barbies there, clothes, accessories, games, you name it.  My Alexander Renoir and Dutch Miss Ginny also came from Toy Fair.  It’s hard to find anything about the store today; it was unique in its time; we didn’t have another toy store that I can remember from my childhood. 

Visions of Green

 In the bleak midwinter, amid cloudy, snowy, skies, I share some visions of green and St. Patrick's Day to give us all hope.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

We had an interesting week; weather had a diabolical mind of its own.  One day was cold, damp, slushy, slippery yuck!  Made it hard to get from Point A to Point B.  No sun for what seemed like weeks, and now it is going to be 52 and sunny, low humidity, finally.

 

                                                    My portrait of a penny doll.

                                                Wonderful Valentine Tea and Tree by my friend Bebe

        

I’ve asked God to forgive me today; I stayed home from Church and choir; exhausted and all kinds of “ouchies.”  It doesn’t help when you trip and fall on your guitar case as I did a couple weeks ago, when my guitar gently wept.

 

Valentine’s Day is imminent, I remind everyone that it is the feast day of St. Valentine, a martyr.  As a prisoner, he taught his jailor’s daughter, no small task, since she was blind.  There was no Braille or talking books or anything else.  The night before he was executed, the saint left her a note, I guess to be read to her, and he signed, “your Valentine.”  The miracle associated with Valentine is that after he was martyred, the little girl was able to see.  My college age students had tears in their eyes when they read the life of Valentine.  My , best Valentine’s Days were with my family  and with my class mates, when we exchanged cards through the Valentine Box.

 

Today, I am cooking, making Panna Cotta, and my mom’s avgolemono soup again (egg lemon).  Panna Cotta is my first go round.  I’ll let you know.  Having new projects, cooking, all inform my art and my writing.

 

Also inspired by a show on  Acorn, Stitch in Time.  Narrator demonstrated how no scrap of material went unused in a suit made for Charles II.  I thought of later 17^th and 18^th century dolls, commonly called Queen Anne, where the dresses are often made of strips of different materials sewn together.

 

Also, my book Toying with Death is now being typeset.  The good end is near!  Be safe this week and always.  Spring is nigh!!

 

 

We had an interesting week; weather had a diabolical mind of its own.  One day was cold, damp, slushy, slippery yuck!  Made it hard to get from Point A to Point B.  No sun for what seemed like weeks, and now it is going to be 52 and sunny, low humidity, finally.

 

I’ve asked God to forgive me today; I stayed home from Church and choir; exhausted and all kinds of “ouchies.”  It doesn’t help when you trip and fall on your guitar case as I did a couple weeks ago, when my guitar gently wept.

 

Valentine’s Day is imminent, I remind everyone that it is the feast day of St. Valentine, a martyr.  As a prisoner, he taught his jailor’s daughter, no small task, since she was blind.  There was no Braille or talking books or anything else.  The night before he was executed, the saint left her a note, I guess to be read to her, and he signed, “your Valentine.”  The miracle associated with Valentine is that after he was martyred, the little girl was able to see.  My college age students had tears in their eyes when they read the life of Valentine.  My , best Valentine’s Days were with my family  and with my class mates, when we exchanged cards through the Valentine Box.

 

Today, I am cooking, making Panna Cotta, and my mom’s avgolemono soup again (egg lemon).  Panna Cotta is my first go round.  I’ll let you know.  Having new projects, cooking, all inform my art and my writing.

 

Also inspired by a show on  Acorn, Stitch in Time. https://acorn.tv/stitchintime. Narrator demonstrated how no scrap of material went unused in a suit made for Charles II.  I thought of later 17^th and 18^th century dolls, commonly called Queen Anne, where the dresses are often made of strips of different materials sewn together.

 

My book Toying with Death is now being typeset.  The good end is near!  Be safe this week and always.  Spring is nigh!!

 

 

                                                                Public Domain Image

 

Writers Beginnings

 

With 2023 comfortably entrenching itself into everyone’s lives, I find myself reminiscing about what made me begin writing. Two things used to happen that influenced me.  My uncle Jim read to me from a big book of children’s Bible stories.  I still have it, with its beautiful illustrations and large print.  It i from the late forties/early fifties, and had belonged to his baby brother, George.  Well, three things happened, because George told me stories when I was around four, of Tudor history and Renaissance wars.  He also took me to libraries and book stores.   The third thing that happened was my Dad making up bedtime stories about the mouse police, and village inhabited by bunnies, squirrels, birds, and other animals that I liked.

 

Books were always number one in my house, and my mother signed me up for a child’s book of the month club.  Later, I was part of the Great Books after school program, sort of a grade school book club.    I was first in line at the Scholastic book sales, and sales of used books our teachers had once in a while.  Reading naturally leads to writing, with lots of ideas running through one’s head, percolating with imagination.

 

I liked writing stories in school, as well as little poems.  I also enjoyed making stories up for my cousins, and my classmates.  By age ten, I was part of a writers group, where three of us wrote stories and shared them with each other. 

 

By junior high, I was doing my own “books”, reports on different topics illustrated with Xeroxed pictures, or illustrations my Mom and I found in old textbooks from Kresge’s and Woolworth’s.  They always had a bibliography, and I always got As on them.  They may have been homework, but I liked compiling them.  Before I learned to type, I wrote the text by hand, laboring to make my handwriting, if not pretty, legible.

 

Since then, I’ve written, compiled, edited, almost nonstop.  I jot notes wherever I can, and have a whole library of journals with ideas, perhaps more than I’ll live to write. I’m still at it, in short.

 

Saturday, a friend connected with our local writing center brought me some books on dolls, but also some albums her own mother had compiled, full of photos and information on dolls and figurines.  I was over the moon.  This was a woman who was a kindred spirit.  She even used the same albums we had used to create scrapbooks of our family photos and mementos.  This urge to compile and conserve has dictated my professional life, and also my museum.  I have a book showing my business plan with sketches and ideas.  I also have research files and notes, and of course, a very big library.  My family is full of artists, teachers, and writers.  My grandmother was poor, and only went to school till she was eleven.  She and my other grandmother studied to be seamstresses.  Yet, my mother’s mother clipped out poems, and held them together with safety pins, making little chapbooks of her own.  I have them now, with her quilts, lace doilies, and doll clothes. I’m like one of her quilts, all these pieces of my life sewn together with a pen, and my memories, compiled into books, poems, essays, and more.