Today some small, but lovely 1867 plates from a journal called Pariser Moden, which I had not seen before (one more thing to search while out prowling for source material!). I especially love these (as some of you may guess) because they show ladies and gentlemen rather than only the ladies. 19th century women certainly wanted their men to look good and oversaw at least some aspects of their dress (and certainly in the lower classes made all their husband's and sons' clothes). So knowing what a fashionable man should look like in the ideal was important. Click to see a little more detail. Unfortunately the scans were pretty small. I found them on a fabulous French website here.
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While I am trying to figure out what project to start posting here to this blog (of my own original paper doll art), I will continue to post some collection reviews. Today's is of Norma Lu Meehan's Little Ladies of Fashion, which I received as a gift for my birthday last year. Meehan often does work based on historical museum collections and this one is an amazing collection indeed ~16 stunning paper doll costumes of 16 gorgeous dresses. Even more fascinating is the collection these designs came from, which is a doll collection owned by John Burbidge, which you have to see to appreciate. Check out THIS pinterest account to see the actual dolls (amazing!). The dolls are 29 inches tall and were used to model new fashions for ladies (so the details were very intense). Meehan does a superb job capturing those details as well. And she just always makes a nice paper doll book ~ the context on each page, with a little vignette of the collection and her sketches make this book a joy to browse (I won't be cutting up this copy, but it's awesome enough to warrant a second, I think). Anyway, you can get it at Amazon: Little Ladies of Fashion by Norma Lu Meehan. Twelve of the sixteen costumes are from the 19th century across each decade starting with 1856 and up through 1913. Sorry my images are a wee wonky; couldn't comfortably get the book on the scanner bed without wrecking the spine, so I cobbled these by various other means. I meant to post this last week, but the weekend went sideways for me, so I'm a wee bit late. This recent offering from Nova M. Edwards features two 19th Century women heroes: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. The set falls under that interesting umbrella of historical and educational dolls typically aimed at homeschooling moms. The dolls are very simple and their clothes are as well. Some of them a historically accurate based on photographs of these two remarkable women. I haven't acquired these yet for my personal collection, but I intend to. You can find them on Amazon: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth Paper Dolls. I have not been thinking about or working on this blog at all, but seeing as I want to focus some time on my paper dolls this coming year, I thought I better start getting things in order. For the moment I have just updated the Gallery a wee bit so that there is some downloadable content available. These are dolls that were featured here long long ago. I will be adding Frank Merriwell also, as soon as I can get him in decent enough shape to be converted into a .pdf. To be honest I still don't know what the long term plans are for this one. I am currently working on my comic-book themed paper doll blog (Comic Book Chronicles), but I do eventually want to get back to this one. If to do nothing else but to continue to catalog my collection. So if there are any readers out there still hoping to see content, don't give up! I'll try to post here at least once a month (which I know is not much, but it's 100% more than the dead silence that's been going on otherwise, right?). Meanwhile, above is an image of "The Elegant Girl" probably from the late 1850s, early 1860s. Not sure where the picture came from as it was just in a folder of mine labeled "Images" (not terribly helpful). Today, just a lovely fashion plate from the February 1862 edition of Le Follet. I absolutely adore the purple gown with the black sleeves. It looks deliciously sumptuous! Click on the image to see the details better. I like the black gown too, but the copper/brown underskirt seems strange to me (though it does match the muff). Winter styles have always appealed to me more than other seasons. And the girl's matching blue booties are also awesome. This is an English set of dolls from the 1860s which I found at Bibliopolis. And just think! It can be yours for the bargain price of $8,500! Totally insane price, but the set does sound very nice: "two adult paper dolls are accompanied by ten costumes, including outerwear, elegant evening dress, and a long bridal veil. One gown, fit for a ball, has three tiers of blue satin and white floral lace, and short lace-trimmed sleeves. Wrist-length kid gloves and a fan complete the ensemble. Each of the child figures has four costumes, including a boy's tunic with a tamed squirrel perched on the shoulder. Also included are fourteen hats and two stands for the dolls. All costumes are vibrantly colored and partially varnished and are also two-sided. Housed in the original gilt-trimmed, printed box". Wish they had shared more pictures. Awesome boots from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I absolutely adore 19th century shoes ~ particularly high-laced/buttoned boots like these. There are quite a few in this collection well-worth drooling over. The variety of fabrics and leathers and decorations on these shoes was pretty incredible. These shown on the left look like satin and were made in 1889. Click on the images for more detail! This second pair is leather from 1868 ~ the style of these are buttoned (the flap pulls over the front of the foor and fastens on the side. Ladies had special button hooks (sometimes very fancy ones!) to help get these on and off. It's amazing to find shoes this old in such prime shape. No matter how decorative, they were made for practical purposes and most were worn out, handed down and eventually destroyed after much use. Think about the life of your own shoes! Today, a gorgeous 1860s-style dress featured on the fabulous website Costume Dramas and Period Clothing. There was really no information provided about this particular dress, but I am guessing (based on the presentation in the photograph) that it is a museum piece somewhere. Check out the website for tons of other amazing period clothing ~ both from movies and museums. The blog has some pretty amazing movie stills and publicity/costume shots so you get to see some incredible detail on the costuming. Will be posting more original dolls (clothing!) this weekend! And: this yellow/gold dress from 1866 ~ total stunner! I could have made two separate posts, but they fall under the same category, were found on the same blog and they are both "beautiful things" so here we go. I will definitely be stealing these designs for my own characters when the time comes to work out their 1860s ensembles. I love how vivid the colors are. A woman photographed in this dress would have appeared to be wearing black as yellow and gold tones in sepia prints translate very dark (I should probably find out why, but it's true). This dress is identified as being from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection. There's no lack of cool things to post about! Today I bring you some interesting new paper dolls from Noble Rose press. Though I have not seen any of these dolls up close and personal, they look like a very nice collection and there's a huge variety to choose from (and from all different periods in history). Among the 19th century choices are: Mary Anna Jackson, wife of General “Stonewall” Jackson, and Susannah Spurgeon, wife of Charles H. Spurgeon (both shown at left). This series looks like a nice educational series aimed at homeschooling Christian mothers (for their daughters), and appear to be nicely painted and produced with good quality. I will (most likely) acquire the above set eventually and maybe share more at another time. It appears that each doll only comes with three dresses, so they aren't very extensive, but nevertheless they look fun (I would have loved them as a child). I hope the sisters who pr might make more dolls from the Victorian period as their collection grows. Today we have a doll from National Doll World that was published in the summer of 1984. She's a bisque-looking critter with a stuffed body (popular in the 19th century), and looks to be dress for the 50s or 60s. What's interesting about her is that she's got interchangeable heads! So if you like your dolls blonde or red-headed, you can cover up her brunette locks. Putting a new head on a paper doll always has seemed sort of counter to the point of having the doll to begin with (it being the stationary base on which to hang other things), but in this case I think it's kind of funny. Sadly there's no artist identified on this piece, but at least the dolls have names: Sally, Meg, and Nell. I came across this in my random wanderings on eBay. I don't have many magazine dolls in my collection and am always finding interesting ones when I have time to browse. Don't know if there was originally a second page to this (as most magazine dolls are double-spreads). The other page may have had more information about the work. As always, click on the image to see a slightly larger version that will show some the details. |
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