doll with paper doll look alike
An array of paper doll costumes from artists Linda Peck and Marilyn Gandré surround a classic 29-inch Tête Jumeau, circa 1885 onward. Peck-Gandré Presents Michelle: A French 1907 Jumeau was published in 1983.

By Karen B. Kurtz
Photos by Mark A. Kurtz

I’ve collected dolls all my life and am still passionate about them today. When I recently shone a bright light on a few paper dolls and researched them against my antique dolls, comparisons, contrasts, and interesting effects interlaced amid names, fashions, and hairstyles. What delightful serendipity across time and space!

Jumeau

The poured bisque socket head on my 29-inch Tête Jumeau, circa 1885 onward, is marked “DEPOSE / TETE JUMEAU / Bte SGDG / 13” and has red artist marks. She has a human-hair wig over a cork pate; large, lustrous paperweight eyes; heavy, feathered brows; accented nostrils and eye corners; a closed mouth; a well-defined chin; and applied ears. Her ball-jointed, wood-and-composition body is marked with a paper sticker: “BEBE JUMEAU / Diplome d’Honneur.” A pull-string “mama-papa” crier, inserted into her torso during manufac­turing, still works.

Artists Linda Peck and Marilyn Gandré printed Peck-Gandré Presents Michelle: A French 1907 Jumeau in 1983. My original boxed paper doll set contains a 20-inch paper doll with six col­ored fashions plus six in black and white for coloring.

kewpie doll with kewpie paper dolls
An unmarked 12-inch composition Kewpie with a jointed body, blue wings, and a chest mark is juxtaposed with Saalfield’s Kewpie-Kin Paper Dolls With Wrap-Around Dressmaker Costumes (1967).

Kewpies

Rose O’Neill published some of her Kewpies in Ladies Home Journal in 1909. They were so popular, she asked Joseph Kallus to design a bisque doll. Legend says 30 German factories had a hard time keeping up with the demand.

Distributor George Borgfeldt held on to the design patents after O’Neill’s death. Eventually, he passed the rights to Kallus, who was then president of Cameo Doll Company in Pennsylva­nia. Kallus licensed Effanbee, Strombecker, Knickerbocker, and Amsco to manufacture Kewpie dolls in composition, plastic, and vinyl to meet an ever-strong demand. Jesco took possession of the Kewpie trademark and copyright in 1984.

The Kewpies: A Paper Doll Book (Saalfield/Artcraft, 1963) has three punch-out paper dolls and six costume pages. Saalfield printed Kewpie-Kin Paper Dolls With Wrap-Around Dressmaker Costumes in 1967. Tom Tierney’s Cupie Paper Dolls in Full Color (Dover, 1984) features two roly-poly paper dolls with red cheeks, topknots, tiny wings, and twinkling eyes. He depicts two-sided paper dolls and imaginative costumes for better viewing.

kewpie paper dolls
Dover’s Cupie Paper Dolls in Full Color from artist Tom Tierney, 1984, depicts two-sided paper dolls and imaginative costumes for better viewing.
kewpie paper dolls
Saalfield/Artcraft published The Kewpies: A Paper Doll Book in 1963.

François Gaultier

Peggy Jo Rosamond depicts three new, mint-in-box dolls (Antique French Doll: Paper Dolls, Evergreen Press, 1975), just as they appeared in a stylish Parisian shop long ago. Fancy costumes sprinkle over four pages, and the “Charity Bazaar Doll Stall” provides even more interactive fun. Rosamond rendered a François Gault­ier (F.G.) lady with a bisque shoulder plate and a marked Gesland body.

When I stumbled upon an F.G. child in a Louisiana shop, I sucked in air because F.G. children are more elusive than his ladies. The doll had a pale bisque head, large paperweight eyes, long lashes, plump cheeks, pierced ears, and a dusty gray mohair wig. On her French composition body with straight wrists, she wore an original red velvet dress trimmed in black, a black fur-lined stole with matching muff, dainty underclothing, black stockings, and tie shoes with buckles.

I happily paid the dealer and packed her carefully for Indiana, where costumer Elaine Wojcinski cleaned my F.G. child and her clothing, added a cork pate, and washed that pitiful old wig. Miraculously, a cascade of soft blond curls emerged. I named my precocious child Sassy and entered her in competition. Amazingly, Sassy won first place in her category!

doll in red dress
A 24-inch French bébé by François Gaultier, circa 1887-1900, poses alongside Peggy Jo Rosamond’s F.G. lady on a marked Gesland body. The bébé won first place in competition.
paper dolls in regency french style
The front cover of Peggy Jo Rosamond’s 1975 book, Antique French Doll: Paper Dolls, portrays a fully dressed F.G. lady. Inside, pages include detailed outfits and a “Charity Bazaar Doll Stall.”

Black China

Antique dolls in Rosamond’s paper doll books seem to glow, and nowhere is this more evident than in Antique Black Doll Paperdolls (Hobby House Press, 1991).

Experts think my Black china doll, circa the 1870s, was manufactured in Germany by the A.W. Fr. Kister Company. She has a porcelain shoulder head, gleaming ebony complex­ion with realistic features, short hair arranged in tight curls, deeply sculpted eyes with upturned black pupils, pronounced eye whites, and a closed mouth. She is marked “3” on her neck. She came from Virginia in a simple homespun dress.

black china doll with paper doll look alike
A spread in Peggy Jo Rosamond’s Antique Black Doll Paperdolls depicts an undressed china doll of the late 19th century and fancy costumes. The “Christmas Lady Dress” transforms her into a street peddler selling Black dolls to families. In contrast is a 16-inch Black china doll in a simple homespun dress, by A.W. Fr. Kister Company, circa the 1870s.

Brownies

collection of brownie dolls
A cluster of 5.5-inch unmarked cloth Brownie dolls, circa the 1930s to 1950s, gather with early Brownie paper dolls from Lion Coffee, Woolson Spice Company, Toledo, Ohio. Writing on the back of the Spaniard paper doll promotes the brew: “Avoid glazed coffees, for who knows what this shiny coating is really composed of? It only adds to the weight without corresponding benefit to the consumer. In a package of Lion Coffee, you get 16 ounces of pure coffee—nothing but coffee—and so Lion Coffee is the most economical.”

Palmer Cox’s twinkling imagination inspired his Brownie dolls. Growing up in Quebec, he was fascinat­ed by his family’s Scottish folktales. His Brownies are an adventurous, mischievous group of wee folks with their own personalities, nationalities, and occupations. They perform good deeds together and always overcome dif­ficulties with good cheer.

Cox published Brownie stories in the children’s magazine St. Nicholas and Ladies Home Journal. He published books, too, but few Brownie books survive. Paper dolls, cloth dolls, bisque figurines, and other treasures are still found.

He was the first artist to license cartoon characters for advertising and mass mer­chandising promotions. Children begged for a complete set of Brownie paper dolls that came free in packages from Lion Coffee and New York Biscuit Company.

Arnold Print Works arranged 12 Brownie characters on a yard of fabric and their cloth dolls are well known. Mothers bought them in shops to cut and sew at home. Orig­inal Brownies are marked “Copy­righted 1892 by Palmer Cox.” Re­printed dolls often have a faded, washed-out appearance.

brownie doll on bull
Lion Coffee’s Riding Spaniard paper doll with Bull is 4.5 inches tall.

My cluster of unmarked cloth Brownies, circa the 1930s to 1950s, adds color and whimsey to a shelf. They are about the same size as the Standing Brownies from Lion Coffee.

collection of brownie dolls
A trio of Palmer Cox’s Standing Brownies paper dolls from Lion Coffee each stand about 6 inches tall. The heads on the two-piece Esquimau, Jockey, and Scotchman are interchangeable.

Bun China

Factory owners considered doll heads mere trifles in the time when Germany was the worldwide center of china doll manufac­turing. Dozens sat on the kiln shelves alongside expensive figurines and dishware. Dishes were marked, but not the china doll heads.

Manufacturing mysteries persisted until the 1990s, when Mary Gorham Krombholz and other researchers traveled to the old fac­tory sites to study shards buried under attic floorboards and in the dumping grounds. (Access opened after the Berlin Wall fell.)

Krombholz’s book says the prolific Dressel, Kister and Company manufactured my early unmarked bun china lady, circa the 1840s onward. And Inside Porcelain Doll Shoulder Heads by Elizabeth Ann Coleman and Kathy Turner agrees. (This doll company was re­named A.W. Fr. Kister, under the leadership of a second-generation family member, August Wilhelm Friedolin Kister, in 1863.)

My bun china doll has a quality pink-tint china shoulder head with pink-tone china limbs, a muslin body, a cameo-shaped face with serene appearance, an aquiline nose, and a long neck. A molded and painted hairstyle falls from a smooth center part, flows over her ears, and ends in a braided bun at the back.

Bun hairstyles come in many variations, and paper dolls sup­port the look: The Genuine Young Victoria by Brenda Sneathen Mattox, 2017; Queen Victoria by Eileen Rudisill Miller; and 1840s China Head Doll With Articulat­ed Peg-Wooden Body by Roy L. Brindamour, 2005, not shown.

queen victoria paper dolls
Artist Eileen Rudisill Miller depicts a bun hairstyle on her paper doll Queen Victoria.
queen victoria doll with paper doll look alike
This original pink-tint bun china doll with a muslin body was made by Dressel, Kister and Company circa the 1840s. Her first-place blue ribbon lingers alongside Brenda Sneathen Mattox’s gentle paper doll The Genuine Young Victoria from 2017.

French Mystery Maker

Rosamond’s comprehensive paper doll book Antique Black Doll Paperdolls highlights Black doll manufactur­ing from early wood and papier-mâché, through china and bisque, to 1930s composition. Historical accuracy coupled with splendid period costumes preserves its importance.

Rosamond’s spread “The Lady of Sudan Goes to Paris” re­sembles my Black bisque doll from a French mystery maker. My doll has black pupilless eyes and a human-hair wig, but her features are not realistic.

White factory owners used cost-saving measures whenever they could; producing Black dolls with realistic features was time consuming and expensive. These factory owners knew white dolls sold easier than Black dolls, so they created moun­tains of white dolls. Occasionally, the factory workers — who were often children — painted a few of them black or brown.

Was my doll a tourist souvenir from French Algiers, Mo­rocco, or Tunisia? Back then, women were treated like chattel — sold as concubines or slaves to Black and white men alike.

My original doll’s exotic beaded silk outfit is “laddering.” Ro­samond’s “Lady of Sudan” seems ready to step into an elaborate costume. Both may depict cultural transformations.

doll in Sudanese dress with paper doll look alike
Peggy Jo Rosamond’s paper doll spread “The Lady of Sudan Goes to Paris” pairs with a 12-inch Black bisque doll from a French mystery maker. She wears an elaborate original costume over a simple pin-jointed body.

The simple exercise of plaiting a few antique dolls and pa­per dolls in my collection together, entwining and juxtaposing them, taught me more about their individual beauty than cur­sory glances in my tubs and cabinets.

Karen B. Kurtz specializes in writing about dolls, history, and antiques. Find out more at karenbkurtz.com and sophiasgiftbook.com.