What a Doll!

In addition to bathing beauty figurines, I also collect antique dolls, and this bright-eyed beach babe is a terrific tiny "two-fer." Her pink ribbed bathing suit is accessoried with matching bathing cap tied in a  big jaunty bow. Of excellent bisque and beautifully decorated, this 3.5 inch doll is jointed at the shoulders. She is incised on back between her shoulders “62-6Germany” with faint matching numbers inside each arm. 

 

 

This September Morn is a Real Doll

As a collector, there is always that one piece you feel you really must have to fill a gap in your collection. Those who have followed this blog know that I have long lamented my lack of an elusive Galluba and Hofmann male bathing beauty (beach beau?). But there was one other bisque bathing beauty I longed to acquire, the rare all-bisque doll version of Grace Drayton's plump parody of Paul Chabas' famous (or in some histories, infamous) painting entitled "September Morn." While I still need a man, this little Miss Morn has joined her sisters in my display cases. Of good quality bisque, this 4-inch tall wide-eyed cutie is probably the smallest version of this scarce doll. The doll came in various sizes, the tallest I have seen being 7.5 inches.

She has her original, albeit faded, chest label reading "September Morning Germany."

A round label on the back declares that the design has been patented. There are no marks on the doll herself. On December 30, 1913, Drayton was granted a patent for a statuette; although the name "September Morn" does not appear, the patent drawing is clearly Drayton's comedic cartoon of Chabas' bare bather. The doll no doubt dates from this same period.

 

Another Zaiden Maiden

Previously on this blog, I posted videos featuring various clockwork cuties by Zaiden Toy Works. The post included this March 8, 1922, advertisement by Zaiden featuring seven dolls, which it declared are only part of the company’s “Sixteen new mechanical numbers,” and I wondered how many more of the company's shimmying and shaking sirens are still out there after over 80 years, waiting to be discovered? These dancing dolls were inexpensive souvenirs of the summer boardwalks and fall carnivals, quickly discarded when their mechanisms jammed or their composition began to flake. Few survived, and even fewer in working condition.  However, I have added yet another Zaiden maiden to my collection.  

This 13.5-tall  inch tall composition, wood, and metal mechanical doll wears her original nurse outfit.  She is Zaiden's "Nurse Girl" who, according to the ad reproduces "a human like motion of rocking a baby. The mother of them all." She has a head and torso of good quality composition and a mohair wig. Her face is nicely and brightly painted. The lower arms are wood and the hands metal, but the upper arms are flexible wire. Her upper legs are wood and attached to a U-shaped metal bar that curves under her body from hip to hip and her black lace-up shoes are metal. She is wound by a key jutting out of an opening in her lower back and would rock the celluloid baby (a replacement) cradled in her hands.  The mechanism is balky, but her clothes are fastened on with metal brads and I do not want to risk damaging her outfit to reach the mechanism to try to oil and clean it.