My young daughter had dolls like most young girls, she had her first doll when she was one year old, as she grew year by year she was given more dolls for Christmas or her birthdays. One day she asked for a Sindy doll, this she got for her birthday, sometimes Father Christmas came with one. Then Pippa came into the shops my daughter had two of these. For a few years she enjoyed their playfulness, as she got older they just sat on a shelf collecting dust. When she became of the age to leave home, I said I would keep them for her.

This is where I started to collect dolls. I was selling trash and treasure of the time, also I bought dolls from church fairs. My late mother gave me lots of dolls from her charity shop, hers were the international sort plus a few Palitoy, It was a friend who first told me their names, pointing to a doll she referred to it as a Chiltern twelve inches with golden hair, through this friend I began to learn about them, taking care to wash also to clean their hair and dressing them, My husband put a few shelves up in the dining room, so I could put some of my dolls there. The dolls grew into large amounts that they filled my Great Aunt’s top of her drawers, then spilled onto the sideboard. They were everywhere, they crept into my lounge on the stairs and my craft room till that became full. My husband bought me many dolls, even my grand-daughter was good with them. When little she knew not to knock them down on the floor, and would come running to tell me if one was down on the carpet where they stood.

My son left home last autumn, so his room was turned into a doll room by my husband. After a few months of decorating and changing its whole structure, it was given to me as my Christmas present from my husband. I was thrilled. It is a restful room with a warm rug and vinyl flooring too. I have a milk stool as a table it has a white tablecloth over it which I have put my daughter’s teaset on, her brother got it for a birthday present. By the window is a table where I can sit to have a drink or write, or just dress my dolls taking my dolls clothes out of their small wardrobe, which used to be my husbands when a young man. On either side of the fire breast are shelves, at the bottom of the old fireplace stands a wardrobe base with a cloth over it, there stands my three year old doll as one of the firms I do not know which, decided to make this model special for three years old.

I have some small dolls made in Hong Kong. They stand at the big dolls feet. By the side of it is a dolls pram with a 1940s tiny doll given to me by my daughter’s Brown Owl, it was hers as a gift. I have had many dolls like this, also usually very old ones too, my international dolls from all the world are mostly plastic. I have some straw type ones then I also have what are called pot dolls too, one is mine with its original clothes.

Dolls are made in many different ways, Chad Valley Nora Wellings are made in a velvet type of material, but you can get the ordinary type cloth doll to porcelain dolls usually heads, hands and half legs, some come with meal stuffing, others come with woollen stuffing like my mothers, also the kid bodies too, I only have one.

Now after a long time, I have a room, sorting sizes into boxes, one for the Sindys also Barbies, one to keep their underwear. At the window I have draped the curtains in the Victorian way. I only belong to one club now; it is a small book with lots of stories plus patterns and other things. The lady, whose club I belong to has had to retire due to ill health, still looking out for some dolls that are unusual, be they small, tiny, or medium.

This is my story of my dolls and how I started.

                                           Story by  Anne Knight           

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