The Doll Podcast
All the latest news and views from the world of dolls.
The Doll Podcast
Paper Dolls, Fashion and Play with Samy Odin
Did you know paper dolls were the original fashion influencers?
Samy Odin author, lecturer and former Director of the the Musée de la Poupée-Paris joins host Louisa Maxwell to discuss the historic role of paper dolls. Samy takes us through the evolution paper dolls from their beginnings as a playful exploration of identity in the 17th century, to promoting fashion and the arts. These delicate creations are now valued collectables and a record of fashion and play through the centuries.
Welcome to the Doll Podcast. I'm your host, louisa Maxwell. Paper dolls tell a unique story. As we trace their history, we discover that they have been used as fashion plates, as advertising, to promote the arts and, of course, as toys to play with. My guest is author and lecturer Samy Odan. Samy Odan served as the director of the Musée de la Poupe, paris for 25 years. During that time, he was fortunate enough to curate exhibitions with some of the world's most beautiful and precious dolls. Sammy is the author of numerous books on dolls and shares his expertise lecturing at conventions and exhibitions. Sammy has a new feature dedicated to paper dolls in the American monthly magazine Antique Doll Collector Sammy Audin. Welcome to the Doll Podcast. Hello, louisa, I'm so thrilled to be back. Well, it's so wonderful to see you again and I am absolutely fascinated by this topic. I read your articles and it's just amazing what a huge world it opens up when you begin to explore paper dolls.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. I've been privileged to be, you know, playing paper dolls since my childhood. So here I am.
Speaker 1:Sammy, reading your recent feature in Antique Doll Collector reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing with paper dolls as a child. I was fascinated to learn how long these dolls have been produced and how they reflected famous personalities, fashion and childhood throughout the centuries. So, to begin with, how did you start collecting paper dolls?
Speaker 2:collecting paper dolls. Well, I was fortunate because my father was a painter and I was raised with two cousins, a girl and a boy, and we were exposed to the existence of paper dolls since our very small childhood. I remember I was probably four or five years old when we already had paper dolls to play with during our rainy days, so this is something that really has been constant throughout my life. My father drew paper dolls for me, which I kept, of course, and I drew paper dolls myself. Once I was a little more able to use a pencil, and long before I got interested in antique dolls, I was already a paper doll collector.
Speaker 1:I used to play with them as a child too. They used to come in comic books that we used to get in Ireland and also my mother's magazines that we used to get in Ireland and also my mother's magazines, and you'd cut them out and you'd play with my sisters, put on all the little clothes and it was so delightful the colorful costumes and it was very sympathetic with things like Cindy and various things I was playing with at the time. But I also felt that the paper dolls just like when you see illustrations about Barbie or Cindy or any 20th century doll that the doll seems to come to life in the illustration and I also noticed this with the paper dolls. There was a vibrancy in the expression, in the way that sometimes the clothes seem to have a little bit of movement because the doll was gesturing. It was such fun.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was, and I have the feeling that you know. The fact that paper dolls have been constantly linked with three-dimensional dolls made the doll scene so much more colorful and opening up ways that you can, as a child, get to enjoy those playthings. And adults, of course, have been as much into them, since we will discuss later that initially it was an adult entertainment more than a child entertainment a child entertainment.
Speaker 1:That's what fascinated me about your article and when we were discussing this for the podcast that paper dolls really go back as far as the first paper that was created. People were making figures and using them to animate them with fashion or with ideas. One of the earliest games that you told me about is in the mid-17th century, and that's the jeu de métamorphosis. Well, perfect.
Speaker 2:In French we say it's jeu de métamorphose, but of course it's metamorphosis with an English pronunciation.
Speaker 1:It's a little metamorphosis or a transformation, and the games have little characters and they have maybe interchangeable heads, bodies and feet, which can be combined in different ways to create humorous or dramatic changes. What are some of the early examples of this game and what kind of characters did they feature?
Speaker 2:Well, the real source for Jeux de Métamorphose goes really back to the 17th and 18th century, before even paper was really used for it. They had those wonderful hand-painted portraits that were most of the time only representing a head, and then you had the costumes that were hand-painted on mica overlays. So there was no paper in it, it was a transparent material that was called mica and that you could hand-paint, of course, on the back of it and have an effect that you would change in the transformations that were so popular under the Ancien Régime. You could pretend to be anyone through these guys. So you had different social status, appearances. You could both be in gender, male, female. In between. It was very open and, you see, those portraits usually are extremely good looking, but it's the way they are painted. They can be turned into a male or a female indiscriminately. So it's interesting to see that society at that time didn't seem to have to struggle with gender as much as our present.
Speaker 2:So Les Jeux de Métamorphose that I've been admiring for so long, because most of the major museums, public museums and private museums have in their collections sometimes we present people from the courts the Court of England, the Court of France and they were probably painted either in France or in Holland and they were ateliers who were specializing in these portraits with mica overlays.
Speaker 2:And they were atelier or specializing in these portraits with mica overlays, and they were kept into a very chic little container that was usually covered in leather and you could add, layer after layer, all of these disguises. So I think it was really a social way, you know, of pretending to be someone else. And when you think the way aristocracy used to gather for bowls, most of the time they would be invited to a disguised bowl. So this was really part of the. You know you would get inspiration from the theater, from the actuality, from novels, and I'm sure that most of us today don't get the cultural reference that these disguises refer to, but they must have been, you know, very easy to understand and to read for the people from the 17th and 18th century.
Speaker 1:Ah, it's a little bit like, for example, when we hear about the language of flowers. Flowers used to have a specific meaning, so these disguises had a specific meaning and of course that's very apt to Halloween and masquerade and we start to imagine ourselves as other people. So in many respects it's such a modern concept.
Speaker 2:As you said, it moved outside gender and it was a very fluid idea of exchange of ideas and fun. Yes, indeed, I think we we as collectors today to get the chance to look at some of these jeux de métamorphose. Very few are representing a full figure, so most of the time it's only portraits. But the portraits have these layers that really tell you a lot about these guys. It's also those inspired by the Commedia dell'Arte from Italy, and all those concealing identity was really part of the social game of the time, especially for adults.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is really good. So would this be a game? Because it's so interesting to try and think about how they played. This game would be this kind of an after dinner game where you'd all get together and there'd be almost an innuendo, or.
Speaker 2:I think so, and it was probably, you know, something that we forgot about and we no longer are able to read. But since society was so codified, you could probably send messages through simply, you know, showing your pictures. If these portraits were representing the sitter, then you could pretend to be. You know, send messages that were implicit. But. But to us today it's difficult to understand how it worked. But it certainly did work because I've noticed Jeux de Métamorphose in almost all of the major museums in London. There is one exceptional in the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston In the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. There are several in Italian museums in the UK, some in American major institutions, including the Met. So, yes, the Jeux de Métamorphose are difficult to find, but when one happens to find one, it's really very highly sought-after, collectible.
Speaker 1:They should pick that as a theme for the Met Ball and have to reveal what it means when you dress. So what kind of character?
Speaker 2:So if you're a lady and you've got the beautiful portrait, what kind of characters could she transform into? Well, the one that I have in my collection has, I would say, 50% are representing male costumes, including Episcopal characters. So you have a monk, a priest, a cardinal, and then you have royalty, so some wearing crowns, others are very flamboyant, so you have ball gowns, you have high aristocracy type of garments and then you have very at the opposite, you have very simple garments representing poor people or people that are from the countryside. You can tell that there was a game, especially with shepherds. For example, In almost all of the jeux de métamorphose that I've seen or had in my hands, there is always a shepherd somewhere seen or had in my hands.
Speaker 2:There is always a shepherd somewhere. So the game I'm thinking of Marie Antoinette, who was so thrilled to be always wearing shepherdess disguises. And then you have many that are certainly referring to the opera. So the heroes of the operas are constant and we see that even in the later period, during the Romantic era, with the paper dolls that represent ballerinas, and the ballerinas, of course, wear the garments that are the disguises for each character that they play from history or novels and all of that.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful. It's all linked up with poetry, with music of the time, marie Antoinette, the way they all used to play, and they'd have actual sheep, perfectly washed and groomed for Marie.
Speaker 2:Antoinette to walk next to and this beautiful, idealized, idyllic existence.
Speaker 1:And of course it's a movement in music and literature. And you bring all this to life when you tell us about this wonderful game. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's true that, even though paper was not involved in that stage, but it really has been the grain that bloomed into a hobby that became first a fashion hobby for adults and very quickly it turned into a plaything for everyone, including children including children.
Speaker 1:Well, that's true, because in 1834, in France, a new magazine was published called La Toilette de Sicier, nouveau Journal des Modes, sciences, Littérateurs et Beaux-Arts, and that's translated as the Toilette, and we'd say in English Psy, psyche, like a little bit like the Greek, the New Journal of Fashion, science, literature and Fine Arts. That's quite a magazine. They really covered everything. Yes, exactly. They had a revolutionary way of showcasing the latest fashions using a paper doll called Ciché.
Speaker 2:Were these paper dolls like fashion magazines today, showcasing the latest styles magazine like this, the same concept that was developed much later by Las Mendes Suzette, for example. The subscribers were kind of belonging to an elite, to a group of those who had common interest. And if you were into fashion and you would go into a shop and say, you know, I would like this and that, because this is what is trendy, the people who were publishing the magazine and giving out all of these very luxury paper dolls were certainly, you know, the equivalent of the influencers that we have today through the internet. So it was a way to really get a crowd of knowledgeable and fans club to follow up and to create a trend. I had the feeling that the companies, the couturiers, the ateliers that were behind the scene for the Toilette de Psyché magazine were actually the influencers of that time and it worked, as I understand from them.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, I haven't spent enough time to go through the magazines that are at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but going through a few, I noticed that you could feel the mentality of the editor was to you know, we are among ourselves, we are.
Speaker 2:If you want to be in, you have to do this, and that it was very almost judgmental, you know, but they would give directions and the way they describe each garment, which is so important today for us, when we look at from three-dimensional point of view, it's a wonderful source of information to, for example, understand which fabrics are trendy at a certain time and which techniques are supposed to be used by seamstresses in order to get the right effect, are in a fashion scene that is much more open to diversity when, I think, during the 1830s it was extremely codified, so if you wanted to be perceived as trendy, you really had to be following the pattern and, you know, be very respectful of what was shared through these magazines. La Toilette de Psyché. Only the wealthy people could afford it. It was not something that you would find in middle class. So it's interesting to see that we still have some that have survived, and it's an interesting collectible for the fact that it was refined enough to have a value as an artifact.
Speaker 1:So, like haute couture, like today, the amount of people who can afford a real Chanel suit are only a certain exclusive. They call them, I believe, the couture club, or they're used to the ladies who lunch in New York?
Speaker 1:And this is reminiscent a little bit of that. It's a very exclusive group of people, but it's also allowing them to look at the clothes in three dimensions, as you said, to look at the back and the front, because it's a beautiful Ciché is a beautiful demure paper doll and I imagine she could be mounted on a she was a kind of a stiff cardboard and on a little stand, and then you could actually look at the fashions, discuss them Must have been an incredible talking point for this group of people.
Speaker 2:I think so. Also, of course, pichet wears a wardrobe that is printed back and front, so you really have the possibility of looking at all the details and looking at each garment carefully. It's the best explanations for a seamstress that want to get that result. I'm sure that there were local seamstresses that simply by subscribing to a psyché they could actually realize wonderful garments that were probably not from the haute couturier, but they would get as close as possible. And this was the point the magazine was saying you know, this is the style, but if you are good enough you can make it yourself and go and get this very luxury poncher de soie in a certain shop and then you will be able to make this. So before or at the same time with the craze for fashion plates that were in most of the other magazines, la Toilette de Psyché was actually pointing more on the social side of it, were kind of more advanced than the others, and I can guess that it was a circle of people that had this elusive kind of consciousness.
Speaker 1:You know, when you were talking about Tzvi, it reminded me of people copying. For example, one of the great moments in fashion was the wedding dress of Princess Diana. She emerges from the carriage and everyone goes. It's wrinkled, but after that, and apparently couturiers everywhere were drawing patterns and by the time the wedding was over you could get a pattern of Diana's dress and people were already sewing them. So it's interesting to see that these concepts of, as you said, influencers and she was a tremendous fashion influencer go on and on and on and are nothing new. No, not at all. By the middle of the 19th century, advances in print technology meant that paper toys, books and board games could be mass-produced. Publishers like the McLaughlin Brothers in New York and Raphael Took and Sons in London used the chromolithographic print process to publish colourful prints. They could mass-produce them, making books and toys readily available. What type of paper dolls did they produce, sami, with this new technology?
Speaker 2:You are right. It really is the force of the technical improvements that became affordable for the mass, for the mass that helped in divulgating paper dolls and prints for children, printed books for children and all sorts of popular imagery to the widest possible public. What amazes me is that the role that publishers and lithography printers gained at that time was enormous. And actually if you were an artist, an illustrator, the only way to get visibility at that time was to be in good terms with a good lithographic company. They had the power, they were the ones that were behind the entire machinery that brought all of these items to the public and they were the ones that had the money. When I look back at the way publishing worked let's say the 1850s, 60s, 70s really it was the printers who had the solid background to be able to offer a service that was making money. And it's especially starting from the point where they were mass producing that the costs started to go down, but starting to also give an opportunity to those companies to make more money. And of course, it's like when you go back in older times if you were an artist in 1550, you had to go through either the church or a very wealthy aristocrat to get orders and for illustrators in the mid-19th century you had to be in good terms with a good printer and this is why Raphael Tuck became so popular in England and worldwide. They had points where they would distribute their printing in France, in England, in Germany, and they were good in choosing the best printers.
Speaker 2:Most of Raphael Tuck's production was printed in Germany because the Germans were really ahead of time. Even compared to the printing techniques that we had in France, they were doing a better job. The French were probably doing more elusive, smaller quantities on demand. So you could. The lithography was each color had to go through the print phase, each color separately. So of course if you wanted to do a very elusive product that went 20 times into print, you could, but it costed of course much more.
Speaker 2:When I look at what McLaughlin was doing, most of McLaughlin's paper dolls are actually quite basic. The quality of the printing is not that great compared to what the Germans did, but their purpose was to really reach out to mass production that would be profitable without spending too much into the printing process when the Germans evidently, technically they were more advanced and they were able to make for a reasonable price very good printing. So really that generation, especially the 1870s, 1880s, is the generation that has given the opportunity to quality of the printing, for example, of what we call the Victorian chromolithographies, which are exquisite, especially when you get the gilded details that give a wonderful depth to the images. And that quality, when we want to print the same today, it's flat, it's non-significant compared to the originals. And this is probably where the force as collectibles today, the force of paper dolls and scraps that have been printed with that system of chromalutography of the second half of the 19th century, is really fantastic.
Speaker 1:In photography. When we work with film, it has much greater depth. I mean, today digital really does compete with film, but if we look at a print, especially from a colour film, it really has incredible depth. Isn't it amazing to think that if we looked at a Victorian print of a paper doll and we tried to realise the same thing with our modern printer, even a really good printer and really good paper, it's still not going to have that depth, it's still not going to have that magic, because they applied the colors in a different way. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Indeed, In a way, we are not far from the supremacy of the Dutch painters of the Renaissance, which the fact that you would paint over and over and over and over on the same image for so long gave such a depth to the image. And it's like today. We tend to be very conscious of nature and try to use a recycled paper to print newspapers, which is fine to me. But when you put on the same balance, something that has been printed on poor, recycled paper and something else that is more I'm thinking, for example, of the fantastic Italian magazine Franco Maria Ricci, FMR, which for years was printed in those glossy, fantastic pictures that you could have you know you would important to get your eye used to noticing the differences. And some are very well printed, others are not so much, because not all of them, even in the system of mass producing, not all of the sheets were coming out in the best way. It's like with normal dolls some are well painted, others are not so well painted. So it's really a matter of educating your eye to quality.
Speaker 1:So when we go to collect Victorian paper dolls ourselves you know, inspired by this podcast and your articles we go to collect we need to get used to seeing the print quality so that we're not buying a reproduction, for example, because someone can try and reproduce them.
Speaker 2:But really the quality and the depth of this color is something we've got to start to learn to look for of a lady in America whose name was Maureen Popp and she had the best eye I ever met in immediately spotting where the quality was on a print. She was a collector and dealer, but when it came to paper dolls that were really her intimate passion, she had the best eye I ever met. And the second lady that I remember meeting and I was so privileged because she was so generous and, you know, she really was a mentor to me was Shirley Fisher. And Shirley Fisher had a gigantic quality collection of early, early paper dolls and she gathered the most elusive things.
Speaker 2:I would go to these conventions and she would always get the best blue ribbons ever. I mean, the things that she had in her collection were out of this world and she was excellent in perceiving when dolls were complete. I mean the documentation that she had at home and the experience she had seen so much that she knew exactly when something was wrong or missing. And this is something that you don't acquire, you know, like this nipping in your hands. So it's good to start educating your eye and you will see that your collection will improve quickly.
Speaker 1:How do you store? Because I'm thinking of some of the illustrations you have in the magazine and they really do attest to the fact that there is a difference in the richness of printing. You can even see it in the pages of Antique Dog Collector magazine that there's a richness in the colors and the vibrancy. But if somebody buys I noticed that some when we were doing the research some of the sheets, for example for La Poupee Model, they're going to be quite big. How do you store them and preserve them? Because they are quite delicate, they are paper.
Speaker 2:Any of these wonderful Victorian prints paper any of these wonderful Victorian prints. Well, I think this is a concern that most paper doll collectors have, you know, to find the right techniques to preserve these paper fragile things. One lady who was masterful in keeping her collection was Cynthia Musser. Masterful in keeping her collection was Cynthia Musser. She had an extensive collection and I remember her giving talks and seminars about preserving this. So it's true that, of course, to use acid-free supports to keep them safe and, of course, avoid bending and I'm the kind of collector that likes to go through a collection I mean to use it, to take it out and look back, and not simply look at the pictures on my computer. You know I really need to have the physical contact with the object, but I admit that, of course, over and over, it can, if not ruin, but at least use it a little bit. But I try to be careful in the movements.
Speaker 2:What I think paper doll collecting is fantastic is that most of the time you have to be on a slow mode. You don't want to be rushing with paper. It's a hobby where, like with people who get interested in stamps, it's a quiet moment where you take your time, you enjoy, you contemplate and then the pleasure comes. It's a way a very calm kind of hobby, yet very exciting to be looking for the missing hat or finding. You know, when there are series, you're always a very addicting kind of hobby.
Speaker 1:It is. I find, with doll collecting, you are looking for, as you said, the missing glove or the pair of shoes, but with this, what I loved about it was that it is very ephemeral, but there are so many accessories. It's not just the dress, sometimes the dolls have little wiglets that go on, and then a hat and a bag, and the level of detail is just fabulous. And I have to say, if I had it I would very carefully want to play with it. The French children's magazine La Poupe et Modèle, which was launched in 1863 during this era by Parisian businesswoman Madame Lévelé Perron, was published monthly and each issue included stories, plays, recipes, puzzle and supplements of beautifully coloured paper dolls and accessories. What type of paper dolls did they feature, and do you have many of them in your collection? Were they ladies or children, or both?
Speaker 2:Actually, la Poupee Modèle is probably the magazine that has been the most flamboyant in publishing and distributing paper dolls. They started as early as 1863, as you mentioned and they first realized a doll that, like the Huret and Romare dolls, were actually representing a child but who was wearing mostly mode enfantine. At the beginning Some had a childish proportion, I would say the proportion of a 10-year-old child but very quickly it evolved into a wide range of characters that could go from infant to elderly ladies. So when you start collecting La Poupee Modèle paper dolls it's a never-ending process because they really printed hundreds of them and they are of course clearly documented, because if you own the magazines the original magazines there was always a column that was mentioning the annex. So the annex were either printed fabric or printed paper and they were included in the subscription for those who took the full subscription and they could be purchased separately at the shop of Madame Lavallée Perron or by special order. But of course they were luxury addendum to the magazine itself and the paper dolls were printed on a regular basis and not only did they print the dolls but sometimes also the pieces of furniture, the background, so you can, out of the paper dolls you can create a world and it's.
Speaker 2:The number of printed cardboard sheets that La Poupe Nadelle has distributed is really amazing and I've been deep into that for a few decades now and I still am far from being complete with the collection. You know, I especially remember those that I couldn't afford to buy at the beginning and never saw again. But I do have a rich documentation on that and it's a topic that I think is just glorious. I mean, for a collector if he has time to dedicate to that, it's very rewarding. The quality of the printing, especially during the two decades the 70s and 80s was extraordinary. They had these wonderful sheets that sometimes were folded in half in order to fit inside the format of the magazine. And you open those pages and with those vibrant colors and those little girls that look like a urée, they are really very fun pieces to have.
Speaker 1:There's such a rich history of how people interacted with these magazines and it's the same with the paper furniture and the paper dolls and the joy and the enjoyment and how we're enjoying it today and also we're learning so much about the history of this wonderful magazine and how it affected French children's lives. As time went on, paper dolls also took on a new role as companies like Nestle used them to promote their products. Paper dolls were also used for direct marketing to parents and children. In 1867, Nestle launched their Nourishing Foods for Babies and Children. They understood the power of advertising and decided to give away branded paper doll sheets. In your recent article for Antique Doll Collector magazine, it features an array of these beautifully illustrated sheets. How many generations of children went on to enjoy these paper dolls distributed by companies? What a wonderful thing. It's a gift to the customers.
Speaker 2:It's true that advertising became a real propulsing force for paper dolls because, especially at the turn of the century, and I would say down to, I would, the mid-1930s, so before second world war started paper dolls were perceived as one of the best advertising mediums, especially if you wanted to reach out to families. So it was meant for children, but of course the main purpose was to get the attentions of the adults who were buying the products. And Nestlé was of course very strong in distributing paper dolls on one side and scrap vignettes on the other, and those both are highly collectible today. I remember being aware of the importance of certain series, for example of scraps in the 1980s, and the prices that I had to spend in order to get a complete series or a paper doll sheet by Nestle in the 80s was a fraction of what they cost today, when they are in pristine condition, which means that the world of collectors is recognizing the value, the historical, the aesthetical and I would say, patrimonial value of these things today.
Speaker 2:And it's true that certain prints from the Nestle series of paper dolls are, for something that was given away, amazing for the quality sheets that include the paper doll and their garments and their pieces of furniture on the same sheet which could be folded, and to find them in those, I remember one that has a deep blue, royal blue details with gilded details. My goodness, gilded details, my goodness, that was. So you feel the same excitement as looking at a very luxury bijouterie on the Fifth Avenue, that sensation of luxury that was yet affordable and available for the majority. And Nestle was distributing their products worldwide. So I happened, for example, to buy a sheet of a Nestle paper doll when I went on a tour in India a few years ago, and I couldn't believe that I would find this in India. Wow, and there it was, you know. So the exposure of these artifacts is so wide that I better understand why now, as collectibles, these are so valuable, because they remind things to many populations and they are really the reflection of the popular culture.
Speaker 1:They really are. That's extraordinary. So it's become a worldwide hobby. You can go to all corners of the earth and if they market it there, you find the paper doll. That's amazing. Yes, now in the 20th century, paper dolls continued to be a popular feature, especially in women's magazines like Women's Day or Ladies Home Journal or McCall's. These magazines targeted women with homemaking tips, parenting advice and recipes. The American magazine Pictorial Review featured Dolly Dingo, illustrated by Grace Dayton. Dolly reflected the changing roles girls could dream of, as she not only dressed up for play and parties, but also became an aviatrix or joined the Red Cross and explored the world. Dolly was intent on becoming the new woman of the 1920s. She was produced from 1913 until 1933. Do you think she inspired girls to be more than just wives and mothers?
Speaker 2:Well, my father was a very dedicated Grace Drayton collector and he loved Dolly Dingle and got inspired by it. And all that when I came to be aware of what Grace Drayton had done with Dolly Dingle and got inspired by it, and all of that when I came to be aware of what Grace Drayton had done with Dolly Dingle, actually I realized that the ingredients that made Dolly Dingle such a popular character were the same that we already had seen in 1905 with the third-dimensional doll of another magazine that was for children and it was Bluette for Las Men de Suzette. We had exactly the same pattern.
Speaker 2:You know, you dress, you have a wardrobe that changes depending on if you travel to this country or that country, or if you go for a Sunday, in your Sunday best, for traditional family gathering, or if you go into sports. Then you have all the series of possible different sports, from the riding horse or skating, and so the reflection of what people really did in their everyday life is evident in the sheets of Donny Dingle as well as in the wardrobe of Bleuet. So they really are the representation, through the child form, of how people lived at that time and the kind of education that they were getting. Bleuet had several wedding gowns, so did Dolly Dingle, but of course they are still in the child proportion. So they are preparing for what will come next. And it was more evident in that kind of creation of playthings that the playthings were really the lives of the adults in the process of educating children.
Speaker 1:And it's just the same play pattern which children have, even with Barbie. The doll will have an adventure, but it'll have a wedding. It's all about imagination and what game the child wants to play and what's inspiring them.
Speaker 2:Yes, and what's inspiring them.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was a child I used to have Barbies, but I also had paper Barbies. They came on cardboard with richly colored clothes. You cut everything out and it was really interesting. Did they make paper dolls of other 20th century dolls too? I mean, there's Shirley Temple paper dolls and they look like the doll, but they're also related to her films and they're very interesting. But did they make paper dolls about other three-dimensional dolls?
Speaker 2:Indeed, and actually this, I would say, is a niche. Within the niche, there are collectors that only are interested in the dolls that represent three-dimensional dolls, Of course, are interested in the dolls that represent three-dimensional dolls. Of course Barbie was the best known. The variety of albums Barbie was more than single sheets, it was more albums that were published with Barbie and her fashions from as early as the 60s.
Speaker 2:So Willie Mattel was very self-conscious of the importance of reaching out as a promotional campaign to children through the paper dolls first, in order to get them tempted to then get the three-dimensional items. Paper dolls at that time, of course, were, I would say, a cheap way to satisfy a child. So I put myself in the mind of a mother who would have, let's say, in 1961 or 62, a child who badly wanted a Barbie and didn't want to spend the amount of money for a real one To get the paper doll version of it was good enough to keep the child quiet for a while and wait for Christmas to get the paper doll version of it was good enough, you know, to keep the child quiet for a while and wait, waiting for Christmas to get the real thing that's so true.
Speaker 2:It was the best way also to keep the child interested in what he liked without being completely. You know, it was a projection and Barbie was the most evident derived product of a three-dimensional doll. But the competition to Barbie. Tressie, for example, existed as a paper doll and Mary Quant existed as a paper doll, and this is the generation, of course, of the 1960s and so forth. But in the past you mentioned Shirley Temple, but they made tons of paper dolls representing the Dion quintuplets, and those are something that has been going on between the two world wars, especially in the 1930s. And so they did with other child stars like Sonia Hennig or in the past they already had started with great celebrities such as La Taglioni the dancer and other, sarah Bernard, who was also made in the shape of a paper doll, and Charlie Chaplin, who was adimensional derived products. But the art itself was a very efficient way of advertising.
Speaker 1:It's also, as you said, something that jogged a memory in me, that my mother wasn't going to buy me a Barbie, but every week when I got my allowance, I could buy paper dolls, and you could buy, as you said, an album of paper dolls, and the wonderful thing is it took you a while to cut them all out and you could mix and match different ones, but the illustrations were very beautiful, very vibrant, and so it was a different aspect of your play, and that's an important thing, because it allows you to free your imagination in a new direction the importance for children to act on their plaything itself.
Speaker 2:So you would get a page where you had a complete outfit that was printed in color and vibrant and all that. And then the very same page was printed only in black and white so that you could color it yourself and then create a little bit. And I've seen that evolving into the era where the paper dolls stopped being cut out because in the meantime there was a concern to give scissors to children, to children which I'm always kind of sorry for the kids who were not allowed to use proper scissors to cut their dolls out. So the magnets arrived on the market and you have the generation in the late 70s, 80s and later where everything had become magnetic, but of course the things were already. You had to peel them off, but there was not the pleasure of cutting them out, which to me was kind of, you know, frustrating.
Speaker 2:But after the magnetic ones you got the generation of those paper dolls that were actually with a glue so you can peel it off, put it on the doll and put it back and reuse it again. There is no magnet, but it does stick. I think that generation made the game no longer exciting for children because it was too static you were not doing much of anything, that simply moving piece to another, and probably this is what killed the habit of giving paper dolls to children. But I have the feeling that with, especially, the virtual reality that are brought by our computers, now children are back. They are not drawing them, but they are creating paper dolls through the applications that they have on their computer, and this is something that I think is opening up to a new generation of paper doll collectors.
Speaker 1:It's very important that whole aspect, as you said, of cutting out. And so now maybe the child is interacting with the computer and seeing something grow on the screen and once again they're creating, taking chances, because you know sometimes you cut them out and you'd make a mistake and snip a tab or something, and you know you learn an awful lot by having to engage in a physical process and that's what paper dolls offer us. But I think also as collectors, I really see, and I've learned so much from your articles because I never thought, I thought of them as part of my childhood.
Speaker 1:I recognized them as part of La Poupee Model, but now I want to become a dedicated paper doll collector because I think that this is an aspect of collecting that is really really fascinating, has so many social implications, and it seems that paper dolls are a complement to any doll collection, whether you collect antique or modern dolls. And also, paper dolls have the bonus that they take up a lot less room, so you can have more of them. Sammy, thank you so much for inspiring us to learn more about the history of paper dolls and we look forward to your articles in Antique Doll Collector magazine. And we look forward to your articles in Antique Doll Collector magazine. It's a really amazing study and I can't wait to get started on the adventure of paper dolls.
Speaker 2:Oh, welcome. I'm so thrilled that through your podcast, this column will get more people interested. I always have been a dreamer of strong collectible bases. I always have been a dreamer of strong collectible bases. The emulation between us all is so important to keep having fun.
Speaker 1:It's so important and also I can never emphasize how much importance magazines hold. I used to write for Doll magazine when I was in Britain and I look back on that as a really enjoyable experience and I keep the issues and sometimes when I need to do research to go back into something physical, we have this with, of course, uftc Doll News, but also with the Antique Doll Collector magazine. If you're able to keep your volumes, you have a wonderful library and we're able to hold in our hands your article and really inspect and look at the pictures. But of course, antique Doll Collector, they're very forward thinking. It's also available online.
Speaker 1:So if you're like me and kind of traveling around the world, often I opt for an online subscription and then download it on my iPad and it does look very beautiful and I can also zoom in and really look at. So magazines are a very important part of our study and I'm delighted that you're doing this new series on paper dolls. It's a whole new adventure for collectors to get involved in and just to maybe add a dimension of it to your own collection would be a most well. It's always a great adventure to be looking for something new to add, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, and I also realize now that I've been looking at private collections all over the world. Simply as faire-valoir we say in French Collectors who like to display their dolls in cabinets and so on, the combination of three-dimensional dolls and paper dolls in settings is sometimes so thrilling, I mean you really get like a diorama with matching. You know the doll, the paper doll and the scraps. It all comes together because they come from the same period, the same aesthetics, and I would tend to say that the expectation of the children of, I would say, the golden age from second half of the 19th century down to World War II, that period is extremely refined aesthetically. Things change after, I mean for the best in certain cases. But the fact that children were educated in having a good eye for quality during that hundred years about is really very inspiring for us as collectors today to try to preserve those achievements, because we no longer seem to be producing today things that are equivalent in quality for children. Thank you so much for the exposure of this niche market.
Speaker 1:Sammy, thank you so much for sharing this wonderful story with us, for your articles, articles for all your work, for your lectures. You travel the world to lecturing about dolls and, of course, paper dolls, and it's been a thrill and a delight to talk to you today. Thank you, sammy odin, for joining us on the doll podcast.
Speaker 2:You are, sweetheart, right, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, bye-bye. The Doll Podcast is created by Niche Media Productions. Our music is by Kelty Conspiracy. Copyright Louisa Maxwell 2024,. All rights reserved. To find out more about the Doll Podcast, go to our website on wwwdollpodcastcom. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram as the Doll Podcast. We look forward to welcoming you next time, thank you.