Muscles glistening in the sun, the large man sat on a log as he had done for the past several nights and whittled the wooden stick held on his knee. A little girl sat by his side watching the movement of the knife as it whittled away at the wood. Finally carving the mouth, the eyes and around a little pointed nose, he was done. He handed the carved stick to the little girl. Thrilled, she ran into the house to ask her mother for a piece of fabric to make her new doll a dress.
Wooden dolls have been around since the Egyptians. Wood was a convenient and inexpensive material. AF forked twig made a simple doll or one would be whittled for a special little girl. Wood was easily found and use of material to make rag dolls was expensive and not so readily available.
Around the seventeenth century, companies in Europe began manufacturing dolls. Carvers would carve the wood and send it to a different place to be finished. At this time, only the privileged could afford a manufactured doll. The William and Mary wooden dolls were manufactured from 1680 to 1720. They had a one-piece Gesso covered head and torso. Painted with a flesh color and varnished, its arms were attached using bond linen. Human hair or flax was nailed into the head for a wig. It was really a beautiful doll with unique facial expressions, painted almond-shaped eyes, single-stroke brows, well-defined rosy cheeks, and closed mouth. Most dolls made during this time had the same basic form.
It was not until 1810 to 1840 that the basic structure of wood dolls began to change. The head and torso was one piece with a high waist and the manufactures no longer covered the dolls in Gesso. They only painted the areas that showed. Tongue and groove joints held the shoulders onto the body. The nose was a wedge that was inserted in the face. The doll usually had earrings and a closed mouth. By this century, companies were making dolls for little girls and owning them was not just for the wealthy anymore.
After 1900, the dolls were called peg and Dutch Wooden dolls. These were one-piece crudely shaped, and thinly painted. Arms and legs were stick-type and jointed with pegs to the body. The lower part of the legs was painted white with black feet.
A. Schoenut and Co. made wooden dolls from 1872 until 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His all-wooden dolls had spring joints, and holes in the bottom of their feet to fit into stands. These wooden dolls were quite different from their wooden predecessors.
I suspect that even today, a little girl will make a doll out of a stick just as little girls did thousands of years ago. If only these dolls could talk, we would hear stories of traveling across the U.S. in a covered wagon or waiting for days or months in the harbor during the civil war to be unloaded.
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