doll collection

Happy Dolly Fourth of July!

~ writergal42 ~ Leave a comment

This is just a quick post to wish my American readers a festive July 4th. I am currently in Colorado visiting with my husband’s family. My in-laws live in a mountain community of less than 1,000 residents. No more than a dozen businesses line its main street, and there is no stop light. It is a quirky town, and breathtakingly beautiful.

When we visited last summer, I took a doll with me and photographed her against the mountains, valleys, and lakes we came across. This year I am doing the same, with the added bonus of sharing my doll photography time with my 7-year-old niece, who brought along her American Girl doll. It’s been so much fun getting to share my love of dolls with a little girl who is just starting to become enchanted with them. As soon as I arrived, my niece unpacked her backpack of American Girl clothes and accessories, and we both began redressing our respective dolls. I adore my son, but it is so magical to be able to relate to a child through doll play. Playing cars and trains with my son just isn’t the same.

Today my niece and I took our dolls outdoors to photograph them for the Fourth of July holiday. A holiday craft project created by my mother-in-law provided a festive backdrop.

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Even Barbie joined us for a while.
Even Barbie joined us for a while.

This year, my travel doll is “Sage,” a platinum Cinderella Tonner doll repainted by “K.” Sage wore some older Tonner separates for her photo shoot. I love the pieces that Tonner created for Tyler and friends when that line was in its heyday. They remain the basic staples of my dolls’ closet, and I return to my favorites (like Sage’s top) again and again.

Last year, Blush and Bashful Tyler accompanied us to Colorado. I was able to get some terrific photos during several day trips we took.

After our photo session was done, my niece and I headed for a playground, where our dolls joined us on the swings. It will be difficult to leave the crisp mountain air for Florida’s heat and humidity when we return home in a couple days.

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When a doll collector moves

~ writergal42 ~ 11 Comments

Moving is a nightmare for anyone. But for doll collectors, that pain is magnified by as many dolls you’ve amassed over the years. I last moved nine years ago, when my husband and I relocated from Maryland to Florida. Now we will retrace our steps, reuniting with family and friends and beginning a new chapter in our lives. And that all sounds great–until I go into my doll room and realize the massive amount of hoarding that I’ve engaged in during the past decade. And then I just want to say “fuck it,” and stay home.

When we relocated to Florida, my collection was roughly half of the size it is now, and I spent months lovingly packing each individual doll into its corresponding box. Hair nets were put on, ribbons were tied, silicon bead packs were included. I made damned sure no harm would come to my treasures on their journey. And I must admit that it was kind of fun going over each doll and creating a spreadsheet for all of them. I was able to spend time with and appreciate each one.

Towers of boxes in the garage
Towers of boxes in the garage

mess11Today my collection is twice as large and I share my home with a hyperactive 5-year-old child and a menagerie of needy animals, all vying for my constant attention. I no longer have my mother to help out, and my “packing time” during the week is limited to the precious hour and a half I get to myself after my son finally goes to sleep and before I myself fall into bed exhausted.

Spot the kitty
Are you done yet, Mommy?

I am finding this packing process to be the polar opposite of the “fun” I had preparing to move here. I long ago gave up trying to match up individual dolls with their original boxes. I just aim to match them up with their corresponding manufacturer box. That means that nearly all of my Tonner boxes have scribbles on their ends indicating the doll they now contain. Sometimes these scribbles are crossed out and relabeled multiple times. Limited space in our small townhouse (there are no basements in Florida) has meant that I’ve had to significantly cull the number of boxes I store. So this time, each girl will not have her own individual coffin in which to travel. Many of them (carefully packed) will make the journey in plastic bins. Assigning my girls to indignity of this mode of travel would have horrified me nine years ago. Now I don’t give a shit. They’ll be fine.

dolly jail
dolly jail

Our move will likely not take place until the end of the summer, but–knowing now how much time it can take to pack a collection of this magnitude–I began organizing, sorting, and packing dolls three weeks ago. Last weekend I packed dolls for two full days. On Sunday evening, I had packed 325 dolls. And it didn’t look like I made a dent.

I suppose at this point I’m supposed to get philosophical and ponder whether I own my things, or if my things, in fact, own me. And then I should conclude the latter, foreswear all material objects, and walk into the sunset in search of some ascetic commune to join.

But then I would miss the next doll convention. And I’m just not that strong.

Even my bedroom is not spared the dolly box invasion
No room has been spared the dolly box invasion

Vogue

~ writergal42 ~ 5 Comments

Like many people, my picture-taking skills are confined to the point-my-camera-at-something-pretty (usually my son), press-the-button, and hope-something-turns-out variety. In all of my 22 years of collecting dolls and photographing them (jeez, I’m old), it’s never gotten more sophisticated than pointing and shooting. I began taking pictures of my dolls back in the Dark Ages, when people actually had to drop rolls of film off at the pharmacy, wait three days, and then pick them up. It was not uncommon to spend $15 to get a role of 24 photos developed only to find about three that were half-way decent.

I recently came across some of those decades-old photos while cleaning out my garage. I uncovered dozens and dozens of blurry doll pictures. I hate to think how much I had spent on getting that crap developed. Nevertheless, those blurry pictures brought back memories, and it really hit home how long I’ve been in this quirky little hobby of mine. When I took my earliest doll photos, I was living in a college dorm room. And now I’m a middle-aged soccer mom in Florida balancing a full-time corporate career I never imagined myself in with raising a gorgeous, precocious little boy.

I had plans after cleaning out the garage to photograph a new doll that had arrived that morning. Those decades-old, blurry photos served as a reminder that 20-year-old Barb and 42-year-old Barb were enjoying the same hobby. Reflecting on that, I realized that dolls were probably all those two people had in common any longer. Life had changed me. But–for better or worse–I retained my passion for dolls.

So I tossed those blurry photographs back into the box I found them in so 52-year-old Barb can discover them again and reflect on her life as a doll collector and the mother of a teenage boy. Will she still be as passionate about the art of doll-making and see beauty in miniature sculpture and couture? I’m guessing so. For many of the most committed doll collectors and artists I know, this is a life-long passion.

But I digress.

The photos I found inspired me to push myself a little to see if I could improve my picture-taking skills just enough to do some justice to the dolls I was photographing. So I visited eBay and selected a backdrop to scale with 16″ dolls that cost me $17.25 (shipping included). It took two weeks to arrive from Shanghai.

The backdrop arrived rolled in a tube. The image was printed on a durable fabric parchment. Well worth the price.

I took the backdrop into my son’s room in the afternoon, just when it is filled by afternoon sunlight. I taped the backdrop to the wall behind his dresser and arranged a couple dolls selected for the occasion. Then I took my camera phone and started experimenting.

“Alma” by Paul Pham and “Riley” by Helen Kish. Alma wears Stratus’ wig, her original earrings, and a sweater and slacks by Tonner. Riley wears Boneka.

These were the best four out of the dozens of shots that I took. My biggest mistake, I see, was in my placement of the backdrop. In this setup, I’ve hung it too high, so the floor begins on the wall. It also might have helped to move my subjects back a bit to enhance perspective and place them deeper into the scene.

Once I cleared up my photo shoot, I got to tinkering around with Alma’s wardrobe, and I found a Gene outfit (“White Hyacinth,” I believe) that went beautifully with her complexion. Rather than set up my backdrop again, I just shot a couple of photos of Alma on her shelf.

I friggin’ love this doll. She looks amazing in anything.

Anyway, such went my first foray into putting some actual effort into capturing the beauty I see when I look at my dolls. I invested in a couple of books about doll photography a while back, and I’m going to dig them out and see if I can make some more progress.

Stay tuned. And Happy Valentine’s Day!

A (doll) room of our own

~ writergal42 ~ 6 Comments

Every doll collector knows that the only thing better than a new doll is new doll space. For those of us outside of the 1%, the biggest burden we bear as doll collectors is trying to find space to display the damned things. Dolls, of course, are like potato chips. … You can never have just one. Or two. Or two dozen. Dolls get lonely too. They need friends. And friends with benefits. And spouses. And kids. And mistresses. And extended family. And nemeses. They breed like rabbits. And they need their space.

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Surely I can squeeze one more in…
Perhaps not.
Perhaps not.

I am one of those lucky people with a “doll room.” Which, for me, means that the majority of my dolls are crammed into our small third bedroom. When my husband and I purchased this house–our first–eight years ago, I was delighted to finally have that “grail” that all serious collectors covet–a room of my own designated specifically for my dolls. My husband was more than happy to give this to me. In our former apartment, he slept in a bedroom festooned with dolls, including the 3-foot Himstedt that stood on his bed stand. He took the second bedroom as his “man cave” (which he would have to sacrifice three years later when our son came along, but everyone knows that doll rooms take precedence over man caves).

All lined up
All lined up

What my room lacked in square footage it more than made up in vertical space. I eyed those cathedral ceilings and envisioned tall display cabinets and shelving that would help me maximize what I had to work with. When I set up my doll room in my new house eight years ago, my collection had room to grow, and, over the years, I slowly filled up the space with creative display techniques that have enabled me to show off the majority of my collection at once. It’s an organized sort of chaos. Yes, it’s crowded, but it also feels like home. A futon in the middle of the room gives me comfortable space to stretch out and redress my girls while listening to the latest podcast of This American Life. (It’s a guest room too–for those who don’t mind 500 pairs of eyes staring at them while they sleep. On the plus side, it keeps down the number of overnight guests we get.)

The shelf over the closet makes a great space for Dorothy and her friends.
Don’t let those room corners go to waste!
Look! Floor space!
If I get on a ladder, I can just about reach this top corner.
It would be a crime to let the surface on top of shelves stay vacant.

I just about reached maximum doll capacity a few months ago. The one piece of real estate left was a bookshelf that contained a selection of my husband’s large military history book collection. (Doll collectors and military historians share a surprising amount of chemistry.) This was the last remnant of the “man cave” that predated my son’s entrance into this world, and I generally tried to keep my mouth shut about how cool it would be to have that space for the girls who had taken up residence in the garage due to the doll room’s worsening real estate crisis.

And then out of the blue the husband tells me he’s rearranging the house and is moving the bookcase elsewhere. It was like hearing that Christmas was coming twice this year.

I immediately began to make plans in my mind. I had my eye on a beautiful, tall, long-neglected walnut bookcase in our garage. Its deep shelves could accommodate 16-inch dolls, and I envisioned creating mini dioramas in them. All of the rest of my shelf space was filled to capacity with dolls lined up like toy soldiers. This space would be different–it would be my creative space, my in-progress space, where I would frequently rotate displays.

I’ve enjoyed playing with this new space during the past month, and I’m happy with the mini dioramas and small scenes that I’ve created thus far. I recently ventured into the resin fashion ball-jointed doll (FBJD) world, and I now have space to better access and display them.

Ellowyne and her friends enjoy the view from their perch.
The Integrity girls enjoy an afternoon gossip.
Stratus has her own shelf too.
Alma enjoys a glass of wine.
Fashion royalty deep in conversation
On her shelf, Tyler helps a client with a new design.
The Effner crowd provides the cuteness factor.

I am so grateful for this little escape in my little townhouse in my little central Florida town. In this doll space of my own, I escape the sometimes difficult realities of a full-time job in corporate American and an obstinate four-year-old boy who is certain that my function on this earth is to please only him. After I close my computer for the night and tuck the little one into bed, I am able to get creative with my dolls for an hour or two before it’s time to head to bed and face it all again.

And that’s why we’re in this hobby, right?