European and American Dolls

Description: Adapted from the inside flap: "Before beginning this present, definitive volume, the author read contemporary diaries and searched for several years at the Patent Office in London, collecting doll-makers' names and addresses, their individual patents, and copying the Marks deposited by them. It is this corpus of precise factual information which makes Dolls quite literally unique as a work of reference.
"Whilst the book covers a span from mediæval Germany to the period just before the Great War, it is on the 19th Century that Miss White rightly concentrates. She studies the materials from which dolls have been made: wood, papier mâché, ceramics, leather, wax, &c. Then she focuses on particular details: hair, eyes, joints, and dress. Next, a section describes such doll novelties as talking and singing, walking and creeping, "more than one face", swimming, plus many others. Finally, there is the section, illustrated by 625 examples, of the Marks. This includes makers' names and initials, monograms, trade names, and box labels."

Illustrated throughout with b&w photographs and line drawings. Includes a 12 page (stapled together) article titled Woman's Day Dictionary of Dolls from January 1965 in excellent condition.

For the collector, dealer or curator, this book is an indispensable source of facts necessary to the correct attribution and dating of any unfamiliar historic doll.

Cream, pictorial cloth boards with gilt text. Price-clipped jacket is in good overall condition, but is lightly creased along the top and has some scarring on the front and back. The book itself is in excellent condition: the boards are straight whilst the crisp pages are tightly bound and haven't been subjected to tanning or foxing.

Measures 30.5 cm × 23 cm (12.2″ × 9.2″). Folio. 274 pp.

Price: ~~£50.00~~ £45.00