The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-30
The London Doll Trade.

the variations or pubic taste, ike any other Take the case of dolls, for in- stance. The Dutch doll is as dead as Queen Anne. Her square wooden body, rudely carved legs and arms, enormous head with patch of tow on the skull and three strokes of red paint for eyes and lips, is now quite prehistoric. Only in the back streets of the town Is she to be seen, adorning the shop windows in naked innocence; and then she is no fresh importation, but job lot from an ancient and unsalable stock. Thougn she is practically given away with packet of sweets, mo Well-regulated child takes delight in clothing her
 She belongs to a past age, and in the nurseries of the well-to-do is only to be found-aninus legs and arms-in the museum where the dolls of great-grand- mothers are preserved. She has been driven from the market by the over whelming invasion of German and French dolls.
 The majority of the dolls one sees in the shops are made in Germany" The German gives a larger doll for the money than any other maker His doll is less elegant than that of the French man. She has the moon-faced lowell ness of the German peasant-girl, a plumpness of figure and a thickness of calf distinctly Teutonic. Her hair, as rule, is fiaxen; her eyes are blue, her lips full, and her cheeks puffed and pen dulous. Whether she stands six inches 6,, faa i,, hai iorbf ssb ic Tho sal doll. Her head may be as large as an apple or as small as a cherry, but the features and expression are the same
 She is uniformly overfed, whatever be her proportions and she is simply re- production, in various sizes, of one eter- nal and monotonous type. To see her
 by the hundred with her hair tied up in light-blue ribbons and her we'll stuffed figure draped in the chemise in which she is put on the market, is to
 wonder why some one does not break through convention and make fortune
 by turning out dolls with aquiline noses and a Greek profile. The French
 dolls come next in point of numbers in
 the English market. They are less obese than their German competitors.
 They are smarter in look and bearing. They express something of the yivaci ty of the French temperament, and their hair is of glorious Parisian gold
 and occasionally of bronze. They run
 in all sizes, of course; and in the mak- ing of them there are many motions and mysteries. There are dolls that open and shut their eyes; dolls that cry
 and dolls that remain dumb under any
 pressure; dolls with legs of china; dolls encased in kid and sewn up by many
 seams; and dolls which are mere bun
 dies of cotton cloth and stuffing, with
 wax heads and shoulders and compost
 tion feet
 In make and in attributes-such as eye-shutting, walking, ability to stand
 upright and to emit sounds between
 a squeal and a grunt-the German doll
 maker seems to be on level with the French. The difference is apparent in
 a certain elegance and piquancy on the part of the French doll. She suggests the Boulevard, while the German pro- duct tells of the farn1yard and the dai-
 ry. As for the English doll, she still finds a market, but she is mot in it., | with her German cousin. Her chief
 glory is in her apparel. She is not of fered for sale in an undergarment, but | comes on the scene booted, halted and cloaked, the better to hide her rag stuffed form and to tone down the l roughness of her composition face-- which is mere mask stuck on hat covered ball of rags. She has no tricks. She cannot use her eyes like the French | doll, or give a demonstrating groan like | the German, and if she is put on her 1 feet she will fall down flat. Nor is she sold for next to nothing. Her manu- lecturers do not seem to care whether l they make her or not; and as they put a good price on her, the German and | French dolls leave her tagging in the market-place, while they go out into | the world of children to be clothed and petted until their hair falls off and their faces melt. That same hair. by the way, is made in England. We export it | to the German doll makers, and yet we cannot or do not make the dolls our l selves.-St. James Gazette