In response to play dolls, women of the Victorian era demanded elegant and sophisticated figures.

By Constance King

Dolls became child-friendly in the early 20th century, with designers working to create toys that resembled actual children and that exuded a sense of warmth and familiarity. Realistically tinted bisque, progressive clothes, and sensible shoes were combined to create dolls that appealed to parents who were eager for reform, eager to cast away the long skirts and regimented behavior of the Victorian period. Marion Kaulitz, with her reform movement in dolls, and Kämmer and Reinhardt, with its characters modeled on actual children, set in train a style, whose influence is still felt today in the work of artists, who are struggling to portray those elusive moments of infancy.

In every period, a few dolls were produced for adult taste and for display in reception rooms: the wooden ladies that exhibited current fashions in the 18th century, the pedlars and the elegant automata of the mid Victorian years. Possibly in response to the new dolls that were so obviously intended for children, women began to demand figures that were elegant and sophisticated and were exclusively designed for adult taste. Because of the growing interest in antiques in the 1890s, exclusive boutiques and specialist makers created figures in historical styles, even costuming them in original fabrics and passimenterie.

Because Georgian furniture and costume were so admired, lady dolls were costumed retrospectively and sometimes provided with brocade decorated sedan chairs, with completely modern linings and beveled edge glass mirrors. Occasionally, the heads of the “antique” dolls were made of wax or composition, though in many instances standard bisque or porcelain shoulder heads were utilized. There is a strong suspicion that the carved wooden, so-called “French revolutionary,” dolls, with the amusingly carved genitals, derived from this period and were costumed in earlier fabrics. In response to a revived interest in antiques, Henri d’Allemagne and his group of doll and toy collecting friends were enthusing over and researching 18th century items in particular and arranging some beguiling displays for the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Medieval-style dresses were favored by ladies of both the William Morris group and the Aesthetic Movement, so that in the 1890s even doll makers were creating shoulder heads in the style, with upswept hair and a retrospective modeling of the faces, so that some resemble figures of the medieval saints. Firms such as Nymphenburg and Heubach, Kämpfe and Sontag were to create pale porcelain heads in this idiom, while there is a suggestion that some of the Meissen-style heads that appear much earlier were produced in the 1890s and intended for an adult, rather than a child, market.

The most beautiful of the glazed porcelains are those made at the Nymphenburg factory near Munich, which was founded in 1747. It is thought that no dolls’ heads were made before 1901, when the Bavarian Arts and Crafts Society celebrated its 50th anniversary with a sale of craft pieces designed and made by its members. One enterprising enthusiast decided to reproduce a medieval-style lady doll from molds taken from a church figure with a high, medieval-style forehead. These early dolls are easily recognizable because the quality of the porcelain used was far superior to that of the commercial doll makers and the hands, with well-defined nails, were especially delicate. Obviously shoulder heads, lower arms, and legs were all sold separately so that dolls could be assembled at home either as figures with conventional limbs or as pincushions or box lids. Today, the most expensive are those still complete with their porcelain arms and, even more rarely, the well-modeled lower legs with brown sandals.

Gabriel von Seidl, who organized the 1901 Bavarian celebrations, is said by Lydia Richter to have purchased around 50 doll sets from the Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Nymphenburg and then commissioned fabric bodies from the arts and crafts firm Steinicken and Lohr. The complete dolls were then costumed by the society ladies of Munich, who competed to turn out the most extravagantly costumed and exquisitely sewn ensembles. Contemporary photographs reveal a use of antique braids and silks to create many 18th century-style costumes, with characteristic, heavily stiffened or padded skirts. Early lace and embroidered silks were used for the costumes made for the 1901 celebrations, while the molded doll’s hair styles were often covered by a pompadour-style white wig, decorated with beads and flowers. This style of costume continued to be imitated well into the mid-20th century, with “crinoline-style” Georgian ladies still appearing on toilet tables in World War II.

Nymphenburg heads can be identified because of the incised crosshatched shield found on the inside of the shoulder plate, while those more recently made have a green cross-hatched shield stamp and an “A.” Though the dolls with painted sandals, such as those displayed at the Sonneberg Museum, are the most desirable, it is obvious that many people simply purchased shoulder heads and assembled the dolls on homemade bodies. I have found several on old padded pincushion-type bases, while others come to light on lampshades, which form an ideal base for an 18th century-style skirt. The hands are spectacularly well made, with every nail carefully defined.

The 1901 celebrations popularized the Nymphenburg ladies and the factory continued to produce them until the 1914–1918 War put a stop to such frivolities. Even within the medieval-style heads that seem virtually identical in modeling, there are some variations: some have very pale tinting to the porcelain, which gives a softer look, while others are completely white. Despite differences in decoration, the basic quality and modeling are superb, as would be expected of a factory with such a long tradition of excellence. Another doll is recorded as procured in 1908 for the Munich Association of Arts, which was again costumed by society ladies, though it is probable that the same heads were used. The Colemans comment on a 1913 guide to the toy industry, which mentioned that heads from Nymphenburg and Passau were used as decorative dolls.
It is hard to date the Nymphenburg heads precisely, as they were all costumed retrospectively, often in antique fabrics, though they are important in the history of dolls as one of the first porcelains made exclusively for the discerning artistic adult market.

A few other German factories in the 1890s had experimented with fine quality glazed porcelain heads. Heubach, Kämpfe and Sontag of Wallendorf, a factory founded in 1763, made tinted shoulder heads with a downward gazing, serene expression. These are marked “Germany” with an incised “W” and have a flat bow modeled at the top of the brush-stroked hair. At first glance, they seem later than the Nymphenburgs because of their stronger coloring, but, judging from the mark, seem to predate them by several years. Like the Nymphenburgs, these heads occur on several kinds of bodies, as well as tea cozy covers and large pincushions. These heads are usually around 41⁄2 inches tall, much larger than the Nymphenburgs, with the shoulder plate less detailed and more in the manner of conventional 1890s porcelain play dolls.

Of all glazed porcelains, it is those made just a short distance from Nymphenburg at Passau in Bavaria that offer the widest choice. The firm of Dressel Kister was founded in 1840 and by 1902 employed some 300 people. The firm had exhibited at international exhibitions from the 1870s but seems to have introduced its inspiring selection of lady shoulder heads in the 1890s. All the heads are strongly modeled, no matter how small, and all can be recognized by the painting of the darker lines on the basic hair color to define the varied styles. Dark grey or black or brown or pale grey, brown lines on ash tones, and grey lines on white were all used to create dolls that, like the Nymphenburgs, stand out from the ordinary. In the 1890s, some shoulder heads as large as 41⁄2 inches were made, though the majority are much smaller, some in virtual “pincushion” sizes.

The fashion for decorating powder bowls, sewing companions, nightdress cases, and pincushions seems to have enjoyed a revival of interest around 1910 and it is to this period that we look for a variety of interesting examples. Firms such as Limbach; Kloster Veilsdorf; Goebel; Kestner; and Hertl, Schwab and Co. all produced glazed porcelain “fancy” dolls, though the shoulder heads must have been made in fairly small numbers as examples are so rare. Dressel Kister continued to make the most interesting and innovative heads, including ladies with Grecian-style hair, some in pure pompadour style and rarer examples with cropped hair. Decorated with applied flowers and ribbons, the coiffures are detailed, with a complexity that called for the most skilled workers, as feathers, hats, bonnets, and long, flowing hair were modeled, as well as some very rare two-faced models.

After the Munich Exhibition of 1908 and Berlin in 1909, the fashion for costuming porcelain-headed figures seems to have spread to the middle classes and even into the schools, though the time expended on these creations was often criticized in the press. No doubt Henri D’Allemagne and his group of friends, who worked so hard at reconstructing antique scenes, were also dismissed as dilettantes, though such grumbles do not seem to have disturbed the thousands who spent hours in creating sewing companions, powder bowl lids, nightdress cases, and telephone covers. As these were fashionable into the 1930s, they form an interesting collecting area, as they document the changing clothes, hairstyles, and the popular fabrics and trimmings of each decade. As the cheaper half dolls supplanted the traditional shoulder heads from this sector of the market, there was an inevitable decline in quality, as the fashion for making up the figures passed from the artistic intellectuals and society ladies to the general public.

Though the most elegantly costumed fashion dolls of the pre-1914 era were produced with wax heads by Lafitte Désirat, others with porcelain heads were produced. A 1914 page from the Galluba and Hofmann Porcelain factory at Ilmenau, founded in 1891, showed a series of fashionable ladies. In 1910, they had issued their “Monte Carlo Genre” dolls, costumed in frocks and fancy dress inspired by the Monte Carlo Carnival of Flowers. The Galluba and Hofmanns were sold either fixed to a porcelain stand or to a more conventional gift box. They later described the series as “Vienna-style fashion dolls.” Despite the various quoted catalog references, examples are extremely rare, so the mentions are more tantalizing than informative. It is interesting to note that Hugo Galluba, one of the founding members of the firm, had been apprenticed to the Dressel Kister factory at Passau and was probably still working under the influence of that innovative concern.

Though firms such as Hertl, Schwab and Co.; A.W. Kister; Goebel; Limbach; and Kloster Veilsdorf all appear to have made shoulder heads alongside their more frequently found half figures, examples are elusive and most collectors wishing to represent this curiously retrospective movement in the history of dolls have to rely on examples from the Nymphenburg or the Passau factories. The illustrated smiling lady with the fan-decorated headband is evidence that great rarities still appear. She has incised marks very similar to those found on bisque ladies made by Gebrüder Heubach and a body in the style of those used by that firm. Did Heubach experiment with a few glazed porcelain heads in the years just before the 1914–1918 War, or was there another firm using similar marks and similar bodies?

Porcelain shoulder heads made around 1900 are curiosities because they exhibit a harking back to the materials and doll making styles of a much earlier period, yet are unmistakably of their own age, with its own preoccupation with antiques, high fashion, and feminine allure. Even the Nymphenburg lady, based on an 18th century church figure, was invested with a cool, somewhat self-assured smile, far from the innocence of the original.