Evening star., 1940-12-22
BY JESSIE FAINT EVANS.

4
Dolls, now associated with the
Christmas season and Santa Claus
visits, as well as with children's
birthdays the world around, are
among the Oldest of toys.
During the last 10 years. in the
United States in particular, the col
lection of dolls as a hobby among
grownups has assumed considerable
proportions. Doll displays are in
creasing among associations which
work for the interests of young peo-
pie and the general education of the
public at large.
Among scientific groups dolls are
not regarded as mere playthings, but
as items of significance in holding
the mirror up to the customs and
races of peoples.
Museums Have Collections.
Notable collections of dolls in the
Smithsonian Institution, the Brook
lyn Museum. Essex Institute at Sa-
lem, Mass; Toledo Museum, Penn
sylvania Museum, the Children's Mu-
seums in Boston and in Detroit,
Antiquarian Society of Plymouth,
Mass, and elsewhere indicate the
emphasis put upon them from a
historical basis.
Primitive man, we now know,
once carved tiny images or doll-like
representations to ward off the
forces which might do him evil.
From tombs musty with the dust
of bygone centuries archeologists
have unearthed in ancient Egypt,
from beside the mummified forms of
little girls, rag dolls stuffed with
papyrus Others are carved from
limestone.
Greece Gave Jointed Doll.
Greece Is given credit for the first
jointed doll. Like the Egyptian and
Grecian children, the Roman young
.sters had their dolls and a similar
custom prevailed of burying their
favorite dolls with them
In accord with the martial spirit
which always prevails in the FASH
ioning of soldier dolls during times
of military activity in all countries,
the toy soldier doll evidently was
favorite with Roman children. Many
still preserved in the Italian mu-
seums represent the legions of
Caesar.
In parts of our own Southern
mountains today, women and chill
dren fashion dolls out of corn stalks.
These are eagerly sought by coll
lectors. American archeologists
also tell us Iroquois Indian women
made corn stalk dolls for their
young.
One of the writer's early child
hood memories centers around see
ing her father dispatch to the Ma
tional Museum in Washington from
Fort Hall, Ross Forks Indian Res
ervation. Idaho, duplicate of an
Indian papoose or doll in its deer
skin. bead embroidered case. Another
memory goes back to seeing Chip
pewa Indian childs parents bury
their little daughters doll with
her favorite blanket in the burial
frame.
Create Own Dolls.
No mother needs to read a book
OIL psychology to learn that
child who doesn't have doll, even
the least imaginative among them,
will create one of its own devising.
The genius of the French dress
makers demonstrated itself in the
18th century, when they sent forth
dolls clothed in exact reproductions
of current fashions to the courts
of Europe and across the Atlantic
to America.
In France. dolls later became the
playthings of kings and queens and
Of their courtiers and their ladies.
Louis XIII had large collection
OF dolls, with doll houses for them,
and Louis XIV owned many with
movable heads, arms and legs.
Jewellers took up the fad and made
them in all sorts of designs on en-
amel, wood and ivory as we'll as in
gold and silver filagree.
Many doll lovers remember the
Queen Victoria collection of dolls in
the South Kensington Museum in
London, many of which she dressed
herself. In her childish hand
writing is catalogue entitled List
of My Dolls
Dolls have been fashioned from
many materials. When papier-
mache was discovered in 1910, it
became possible, however, to make
doll faces resemble those of human
beings much more closely than had
been the case before.
Thus began what might be called
the modern era of doll making. In