DOLL COLLECTOR GALLERY

PEDIGREE DOLL

submitted by Elizabeth Brushwood, Australia brushwood@fastlink.com.au

This doll is a 28" English Pedigree walker made in about the mid fifties. Pedigree dolls were very popular in Australia during the late forties and through the fifties. They came in many sizes and styles.

This particular doll was a real "find". During 1994 I had a shop selling embroidery supplies. It was coming up to the doll club's annual doll fair in the July, so I had one of my Franklin Mint dolls, the Snow Queen, on display as an advertisement for the fair. An older lady came into the shop one day, saw the doll and started to talk to me about dolls. She told me that she used to dress dolls and had a few in a suitcase in storage and would I like them.  WOULD I! I said. So we arranged for me to go to her flat to pick them up. When I arrived, she said that she had two suitcases that I could have. One of them contained the dolls and the other heaps of nylon tulle, a lot of which was from wedding decorations from the pews at the Salvation Army Citadel that she attended. I asked her how much she wanted for them but she didn't want any money but asked if I would make a donation to the Salvation Army. I gave her A$50, which she was very happy with.

When I got the suitcases home, I investigated and found the pedigree doll as well as a 32" Canadian Regal, plus a couple of other nondescript dolls. There was also another Pedigree in an advanced state of plastic breakdown which really stank and had to be thrown out.

Poor Mary-Louise (this is what one of the lady's at the doll club named her) was as naked as the day she was made, so I set to work designing, smocking and making the dress which she now wears. She also has a pair of pants and petticoat made out of an old piece of "swarmy" material. I'm not sure what the correct name for this material is but it was used to make ladies' pants and petticoats in the forties and fifties and is shiny on one side and dull on the other. My Mum always called it "swarmy". The dress is made from a material which has self woven squares and dots. I know this has a special name also but am not sure what it is. Her socks were my best friend's daughter's when she was a baby and the shoes I picked up in Perth when my husband and I visited last year.

The doll dresser which is beside the doll was given to me for Christmas in about 1956/7, and was made by the patients at a psychiatric hospital where my mother worked. Some of the pieces of china on the shelves were mine as a child, others were my daughter-in-law's and the others I have either been given or have bought since I started collecting dolls.