A One Hundred Year Old Doll House

I took photos of this antique doll house in my kitchen garden. It once belonged to my mother-in-law and I will now pass it down to my younger daughter this Christmas. There are many handmade furnishings that were especially designed for it. I will include these along with measurements and templates in future articles.

Above is the side view of this 100 year old antique doll house.

The doll house has four rooms of equal size.

The roof of the doll house as seen from above.

The furnishings are mostly handcrafted. Above is an old-fashioned Welsh

cupboard, with miniature copper posts and brass candlesticks.

A hand-carved bed, tiny mattress, coverlet, and two tiny rose needlepoint

pillows provide a cozy place for small dolls to sleep.

A close up shot of the walls and curtains inside the doll house.

The doll house has two side entrances with windows.

The second entrance distinguished by red curtains and an

ornate red and blue print wall paper.

A dresser, movable vanity mirror, wash basin with a pitcher,

a fancy brass crib and a small plastic baby all accompanied this doll

house when my mother-in-law first purchased it.

A small child must have sculpted this bathtub and baby from homemade clay.

This Kitchen table and chair and cupboard also was hand crafted by

the doll house’s former owner. The mouth blown glass oil lamp was one if

the few tiny decorative objects to accompany the furnishings.

Unlike many modern doll houses, this antique version was designed

to be displayed with it’s back against a wall; it has a plain simple cabinet back.

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100 Year Old Welsh Cupboard for A Doll

This is a Welsh Cupboard for a doll. It sat on my mother-in-law’s rustic, old, mantle for many years. It is one hundred years old. It was made by a farmer for his child. I thought that my visitors might like to reproduce it.

The cupboard is precisely 20 1/8 inches tall and 11 inches wide. There is also some old dove-tailed joints at the top. The width of the narrow top board is 4 1/4 inches by 11 inches.

Apparently it was built to be quite durable; the boards used on it are solid and more than 1/2 an inch thick.

Here the doors are open. I will try to give as many detailed views as possible. I know that some of you may wish to duplicate this piece.

The doors have old hindges and the inside of the cupboard is left unstained. The upper two shelves are exactly 9 1/2 inches tall from the top of the whole cupboard to the top of the lower cabinet. These two halves are built as one solid piece. In a real Welsh cupboard the upper half could be removed from the lower. The interior of the cupboard measures 7 3/4 inches tall.

The old shelves were salvaged from some other project. The nails on the edge of the interior shelves have older square head nails in them. The doors measure 7 5/8 inches tall by 4 7/8 inches wide.

There is a scalloped pattern around the base of the doll cupboard. Here is the wider scalloped, front piece.

Here is the narrow scalloped piece on the side of the cupboard. The back side is plain.

This small tin pot was always kept with the cupboard.

This is the bottom of the tin doll pot.

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• Vintage Kitchen Play Set

Old-Fashioned School Desk for A Doll

A good neighbor built this small school desk for my dolls long ago in his woodworking shop. Even though Mr. George passed away more than fifteen years ago, his gift still reminds me of his kind-hearted nature.

Old-fashioned school desk as seen from behind. This is a miniature of the kind of desks once used in American classrooms.

A second side view of the doll desk.

The doll desk as viewed from above. The groove at the top of the desk is for a pencil or piece of chalk. This would prevent writing tools from rolling around and dropping on to the floor.

One of my many painted canvas dolls sits quietly waiting for class to begin.

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A Pale Yellow Doll Cradle

I purchased this old, pale, yellow doll cradle in a garage sale for $1.50! Some of our readers are interested in building doll furniture so I thought I might include pictures of pieces from my own collection to give you ideas.

My mother-in-law gave to me a small doll blanket that my husband had played with when he was a little boy. He carried it about with his bunny, Lewis. He was only two and it was the sweetest thing for a mother to keep. I just couldn’t imagine such a rugged, athletic man to have such a possession!

I made a doll mattress from an old baby sheet for the cradle. This one, above, turned out a little too small, so I made a second from old ticking.

A picture of the assembled cradle with bedding from a side view.

The yellow cradle as seen from above, with a happy baby doll.

A vinyl baby belonging to my youngest daughter.

A corner shot for those of you drawing up doll furniture to design your own woodworking plans. I hope this gives you plenty of ideas!

More Doll Quilts:

• A Star Quilt Block For a Doll Quilt

Faceless And Beautiful

Betty Jane’s Amish and Mennonite Dolls.

Amish dolls are a type of rag doll and a popular form of American folk art, which originated as children’s toys among the Old Order Amish people. While some Amish dolls have faces, the best-known ones do not, possibly for religious or social reasons.

There are several accounts of the origins of faceless dolls used by Amish children. One account says that a young Amish girl was given a rag doll with a face for Christmas. Her father became upset and cut the head off the doll. He reportedly said “Only God can make people.” He then replaced the head with a stuffed stocking that did not have a face. The little girl played happily with the doll for many years. Some Amish children have wrapped blankets around small logs and pretended they were dolls. A sociological study from 2007 says that the dolls are left faceless because “all are alike in the eyes of God”, and that the lack of facial features agrees with the Bible’s commandment against graven images.

Most Amish doll makers were anonymous. An exception was Lizzie Lapp (1860–1932) of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who sold her dolls under her own name.

An Amish doll is best described as a plain rag doll usually lacking physical features of a face or hair. It is also thought that a face on a doll makes it appear more worldly, which is not considered acceptable among the Amish. Not all Amish dolls, however, are faceless. Clothing on Amish dolls is similar to that worn by Amish children. Both girl and boy dolls are common; Amish children do not have a lot of toys, so both boys and girls play with the dolls. Fabrics are all solid colored. The doll body is commonly made from white or cream fabric, such as unbleached muslin, since the materials traditionally used to make the dolls are remnants from clothing made for family members. The stuffing was traditionally rags, but usage of cotton, or in modern days polyester batting, is also common.

The dolls themselves may be sewn by hand or machine. Machine sewing in the Amish community is generally done by using a foot-operated treadle sewing machine.On older Amish dolls, it is not uncommon to see several layers of cloth on the head or body of one doll. When a doll became too dirty or badly worn, the head as well as its arms and legs would be completely covered with fresh cloth.

Antique Amish dolls made for and used by Amish children are highly collectible and can sell for upwards of US $1,000. However, reproductions made to deceive have proliferated, depressing the market.

Wide interest in collecting Amish crafts began in the 1930s, and in 1939, Cornelius Weygandt, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, described his collection of Amish and Mennonite dolls, praising the “painstaking fidelity” of their costumes. National advertisements for Amish dolls appeared in House & Garden magazine in 1941. These dolls, however, had faces.  As tourism increased over the decades, faceless dolls have frequently appeared in souvenir shops near Amish communities. In 1955, John A. Hostetler, an expert on Amish society, described the marketing of dolls to tourists as an aspect of the commercialization of Amish culture.

Jennifer displays her mother’s old dolls in an antique high chair.

About The Amish:

• The Amish & Photographs
• Who art the Amish and what do they believe?
• Amish Life FAQ’s
• Textile Arts: Amish Quilts

Links To Photographs of Amish Dolls:

• The Amish Doll
• Antique Amish Dolls
• Early Amish Doll
• Old Pennsylvania Amish Rag Doll
• Primitive Amish Doll Patterns
• Century-Old Amish Doll
• Amish dolls made from paper mache’ by the English
• Amish dolls at Li’l Country Store
• Amish rag babies
• Lancaster County Amish Rag Dolls
• faceless dolls at “Prim Dolls of Calico”

Designing historically accurate Mennonite, Quaker, and Amish clothing:

• Quaker Jane

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