EUROPA - OLD TOYS - PORCELAIN DOLL

PORCELAIN DOLL

Even in the oldest graves of ancient civilizations toys were found, especially dolls. They had various functions from which we today most clearly recognise two: a wish of adults to be left in peace and a way to accommodate children to the roles and obligations in life. There is a classic division on “male” and “female” toys – those for boys who had to learn how to fight in wars and those for girls who had to know all domestic work and skills. Sometimes the adults would seize for toys, i.e. dolls for other, them understandable purposes. The dolls were also the mannequins of past centuries who travelled through courts, wearing models of luxurious clothing which then rich noble women would choose and order. Or, they used to - in relaxed art-déco positions and clothing - decorate the boudoirs and were therefore called „boudoir dolls“. Golden age of dolls is still the late 19th and the early 20th century. Numerous factories in Europe were producing their porcelain heads and their wooden, leather or composite bodies … in millions. It is thus known, if we can believe the incredible fact from literature, that the factory Armand Marseille in Köppelsdorf was producing three millions heads per year – quite probable is, however, the fact that children were able to destroy that quantity. Therefore real porcelain dolls are indeed rare and highly valued collectors’ objects, whereof those most beautiful, mainly of French origin – Jumeau, Bru, SFBJ – reach very high prices. The dolls of this „golden time“, as concerns their shaping, pass all the way from the high idealisation of historicism and Art Nouveau to the total expressionist realism. They have big eyes, brown or blue, small mouth, shut or more often open, with several visible white small teeth, very carefully tailored clothing corresponding to the fashion of that time; later, there appeared also realistic, casted, wrinkled new-borns; especially interesting is the repertoire of fanciful factory marks by which the birth of the doll can be precisely dated and located. In our country most often found are German or Austrian dolls, especially those with the mark Armand Marseille. Of the kind is also this doll depicted on the stamp of Croatian Post. Its irresistible beauty is emphasised by the national costume it wears. It is small, old, richly embroidered, and in all details real folk costume from the region of Posavina – it could be said that this clothing is the tribute to the doll; the doll is honoured with this relict of disappearing world– a skilled and almost religious hand believed that the stitched flowers and laces would remain much better preserved on the doll than on a living being. What is actually what draws us toward these old toys, what melts us that much, what induces such nostalgia? Our immaturity which qualifies us in the best possible way, as those who have not lost the ability to dream awake? In a toy a child conquers the future; an adult in the same toy sees all his/her futures that did not come true, all that could have come true and all that still can be dreamed about. That small piece of dream is what the Croatian Post stamp offers. Željka Čorak