dollies.

this is a post i've had on the back burner for a while. i collect dolls. and loads of other things. i'm a collector... just like my daddy...but that's a whole nother story... so well, let me start from the beginning...

when i was a little girl, my nana & gdad traveled a lot. their passports were well stamped to all kinds of amazing locations: safaris in africa, ballooning in france, boating in europe, tea parties in russia or perhaps vodka, all sorts of warm islands in the carribbean and probably other oceans as well... in short, they went everywhere. and every time they came back, they'd bring presents. i remember lots and lots of presents. **disclosure: i was one spoiled grandchild in case you were unaware of this before**

there are pictures of me in traditional dresses and outfits from a variety of countries. i used to wear them for formal fam portraits as well as school pictures and probably for dress up. i'm not kidding... i've asked my mom to scan in some irrefutable proof for you guys so you'll just have to wait.

but she also brought me back dolls. pretty pretty dollies that represented whatever country she'd been to. i have no idea where she bought them b/c of course i didn't care until much later after she'd passed away, but when i travel today i can tell you this much: the kinds of dolls she brought back for me were 1000% better quality than any dolls i've ever seen in shops, if they even have representative dolls. but then again, i think nothing is made as well as it used to be... don't even get me started on what they try to pass off as barbie dolls and clothes!!


african dolls... the two on the right were presents from nana... the little guy on the left was one of hers.


one of my very favorite dolls when i was a kid... she was well well well played with. i used to make her do a lot of dancing since she had such a fabulous dress!

when i was little, i had a whole glass front cabinet where the dolls were displayed. you can tell which ones were my favorite b/c they are the obviously well loved, well played with ones. but once i reached high school or perhaps some time in middle school, the dolls were moved downstairs for awhile as i'd outgrown them in my room and then eventually they ended up wrapped up and put in the storage unit presumably for safe keeping until i had a house of my own in which to display them.

one of my other very favorite dolls... she had such a pretty dress and if you look in her right hand, there is a dangly crystal ball thing on a chain. i thought that was the coolest when i was little.


i remember taking this doll to show and tell when i was in kindergarten. i loved the outfit and the cool headdress. she had this narrow pointy thing at the top of the headdress and my mom repeatedly told me to be very very careful of this doll lest i break the top of her headdress off...

fast forward over the years until a little over a year ago when we were dividing up the possessions the hobag deemed ok for us to have and i discovered boxes of dolls! dolls i never knew existed!! and they had all been given to my nana by her mother who we called mamoo. mamoo and her husband (who died a few years before my dad was born) had traveled extensively together as well or perhaps just mamoo did by herself after he died. she's again a whole nother story as she was a fascinating woman who learned to pilot a plane in her 50s and did powder puff derbies! so it's entirely possible that she just traveled on her own. and so how neat that my nana was continuing a tradition - and i didn't even know it had existed! also in those boxes were some extremely old dolls which we think probably once belonged to mamoo when she was a little girl.

most of all my nana's dolls have been tagged - you can see the tags down by their feet. they all say what country they are from and my nana's name. for example, the doll on the left is from alaska (and yes, that's real fur) and it also says marjorie petty. the guy on the right is clearly from china.


these are a mixture of dolls: i think the one in the middle with the purple dress was my mamoo's doll, the one on the left and right belonged to nana's country collection and the three porcupines playing musical instruments were dolls given to me. i have no idea what country they are from. i wish we'd tagged where my dolls were from!


representing a variety of african nations: the 3 on the left were my nana's and the one on the right was mine.

last fall, my mom had someone put in shelving in several of the rooms at the lake house including the room i usually sleep in upstairs. the shelves were built for my dad's collection of ball jars, but then my mom had a very nice thought: why don't we display your favorite dolls, nana's dolls and mamoo's dolls on the shelves in your room and give them a new home... outside of the storage boxes. and so, over christmas i went through the many boxes of dolls and picked out my favorites to be displayed.


this wonderful guy belonged to my nana... and i love that he is tagged, b/c really... this doll is uber un-p.c.


this is the tag that is around the doll's foot from above. apparently my mamoo had gone to the exotic land of georgia and brought back a cotton picking doll! omg, can you imagine?! i have no idea what year this doll would be... but you also have to remember both my mamoo and nana grew up in muncie, in. where you ask? that's right, small town east of indy.


the doll in the middle is from my collection while the other two were found among the dolls from my nana's collection.