Doll Development in 1900–1945 Period

No material used in subsequent years has matched this mimetic capacity, and perhaps this led to the return of bisque dolls as ornaments of girls’ lives in the 1980s. The illusionistic potential of bisque was apparent in even in relatively cheap models, giving it a popularity that more than compensated for its capacity to shatter. Celluloid dolls were also produced around 1900. Like all early plastic items, they closely imitated more expensive and highly regarded materials; thus these plastic dolls, which resembled bisque dolls, were fixed to kid leather or jointed composition bodies as were bisque heads.

These German dolls were generally fashioned as images of little girls, frequently bearing a solemn, calm expression and a slightly slimmer, longer figure than was the norm for later dolls. The most favored body type was the ball-jointed composition and wood strung with elastic. Thus these dolls were both more fragile and far more flexible than typical dolls later in the century. The majority of these dolls came from two cities in east central Germany. The trade was split roughly into two parts: Sonneberg was known for the ordinary but thoroughly acceptable grade of doll, and Waltershausern produced the more expensive models, although Sonneberg also exported a small number of extremely fine dolls. The general quality level of the Sonneberg dolls is far superior to the cheap plastic dolls produced in the second half of the twentieth century. Although assembly and shipping were concentrated in factories, the majority of steps needed to complete a doll, including the modeling of individual components and limbs, wig making, shoe making, and box construction, were broken down into small segments and performed by thousands of home-based workers living around the main centers, who brought their items to a central factory and received pay and materials for the next week’s work.

Porcelain head making required kilns and heavy equipment, and so it was generally concentrated in the factories. Doll production was engaged in by all family members to maximize the income stream. The sad irony that German doll producers employed girls who were the same age as the girls in othercountries who played with the exported dolls did not go unnoted in the press at the turn of the century. Even children nominally enrolled in public schools worked after hours on doll production. The trade was international in its scope, and prior to about 1940 most girls born into families from the prosperous end of the working class and higher in any urban center around the world, race and cultural context notwithstanding, owned at least one German bisque doll.