A Doll for an Arm

After receiving the beautiful hand sewn dresses from Betty A., I telephoned her to offer my personal thanks.  During our conversion, Betty shared that she enjoyed my post on Mama Dolls and marveled about the variety I own.

During our discussion of these dolls, I asked Betty if she was able to answer the question I posed in the post regarding the 27-inch transitional mama doll that is featured at the end:  Can you tell what she's missing? 

As shown more clearly here, the doll is missing her right arm.   She arrived to me with one arm over a dozen years ago.  My plan had been to find a replacement for her but I never put forth the effort.

Betty shared that she has the exact same doll, "but it's white," she said and offered to send it to me to use for parts.  "You'll have to paint the arm," she said in her soft-spoken voice.  "Are you sure?" I asked.  "She's in storage and I'm not doing anything with her" is what she said to convince me to accept the doll.  I assumed the doll was in disrepair and was only good for parts.  To save on postage, I urged Betty to remove the right arm and just send that to me.  She politely declined stating she wanted to leave the disassembling to me.

Mama doll received from Betty A. to use for parts.

After the doll arrived, I understood her dilemma.  Had she removed the doll's arm, she would have damaged a near perfect doll!  With the exception of a few minor crazed areas and her hair needing to be reset, there is practically nothing wrong with this doll, and I won't be the one to remove an arm from a near perfect doll either.  Once again I called Betty to thank her for her extreme generosity.

After naming the doll, Jane, I decided the two will be "sisters under the skin."  Twins from different mothers (or perhaps different fathers!).

Jane, the would-be arm donor, and her one-armed twin.

Instead of removing Jane's arm, I decided to take a stab at making a mold of her right arm.

My first bright idea was to wrap Jane's arm in foil paper to create the mold.  I did this but decided that was not the best approach.

Plan A:  The foil wrapped arm.

I removed the foil paper, Saran wrapped the arm, and covered that with paper tape.  The plan was to next apply glue over the entire surface of the paper-taped arm, allow that to harden before slitting it along the under surface of the hardened mold to remove it, and hopefully not damage Jane's arm in the process.  The "hopefully" part worried me so I axed the glue application idea.

Plan B, Step 1:  Saran-wrapped arm

Paper tape has been applied over Jane's Saran-wrapped arm in the above image, step 2 of plan B.

Instead of glue I decided to cover the plastic and paper tape-wrapped arm with some of Husband's polymer clay (if he still had enough, I thought).  I asked.  He did and suggested that I just sculpt the arm with the clay.  "You don't need to put it [the clay] over the doll's arm.   You can just sculpt it."  (Easy for him to say and easier for him to do, I thought.)

So I said, "Show me" before proceeding to gingerly cut the Saran wrap and paper tape from Jane's arm with a pair of scissors.

Saran wrap and paper tape removed from Jane's arm.

(This is her arm, I thought... if his sculpting doesn't work, I'll add a step 3 to plan B -- stuff this with Polyfil, paper-tape the cut edges, paper mache it, shape the fingers, and paint it to create the arm.)

So far, here's the arm Husband sculpted with polymer clay.

Plan C:  Doll's right arm visually sculpted using polymer clay.

It appears I will not have to add a step 3 to plan B!  The sculpted arm looks pretty darn good, almost identical to Jane's right arm.  I helped with the smoothing, but Husband did the sculpting.  After he smooths it out, rounds off the upper portion and flattens the under surface that will attach to the doll's body, I will bake it in a glass dish at at 275 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes or until it hardens.  I can handle painting it to match my doll's complexion, but I'll solicit his help once again to attach it to the body.

I'll post a followup after Lynn (I just named my one-armed doll) has two arms.


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Mama Dolls

Circa 1940s-1950s Mama Dolls

Whether or not they are mothers, most females are natural-born nurturers.  Beginning in infancy, being cared for and witnessing a mother or guardian care for younger children aids in the development of a child's instinctive desire to nurture.  In young children, this instinct is also developed through role and doll play.  Today's baby dolls and their predecessors, specifically mama dolls, have been used by children to mimic the mothering role.



The vintage picture of Miss Edna Earl Gaston and Friend (the friend being the mama-type doll which was either a studio prop or the young Miss Gaston's personal doll) inspired this post about mama dolls.

Mama dolls became quite popular in America during the 1920s.  The initial mama dolls were made of composition with cloth bodies that contained a voice box which made the sound "ma-ma" when the doll's body was tilted forward or backward.  Their voice boxes, also known as criers, are located either in the front or back of their torsos.  When found today, most mama dolls' voice boxes are mute. 

Mama dolls were made in a variety of sizes as babies and toddlers well into the early 1950s.  Composition, hard plastic, and stuffed latex/Magic Skin were paired with cloth, or a combination of all these materials, to produce the final versions of mama dolls. 

As a child, I remember playing with baby dolls.  While these were not the original mama dolls, they served to develop my nurturing skills through doll play.  I recall making sock dresses for American Character's Tiny Tears (and incurring a skin-incorporated stitch injury to my thigh during one such doll clothes-sewing event).   Pretending to rock Ideal's Thumbelina to sleep after turning the wooden knob in her back, which made her rock on her own, was done to mimic my father's cradling of me in his arms and rocking me from side to side as he sang, "go to sleep little baby... go to sleep little baaaaa-aaaa-by...." 

(Okay, admittedly, men have the ability to nurture, too.)

After my adult interest in modern dolls was nearly exhausted, I began adding vintage black dolls to my collection in the late 1990s/early 2000s.  As a result, I own a few unique examples of black mama dolls that I imagine helped several little girls and big girls before me develop and continue their innate nurturing skills.

On this Mother's Day weekend, I decided to share a few images and brief descriptions of early mama dolls from my personal collection. 

These are the same dolls shown in the first image above.  The flanking dolls are both from the late 1940s-early 1950s.  Their heads are hard plastic with brown sleep eyes.  The arms and legs are stuffed latex.  The larger one is 25 inches.  The other measures 24 inches and is the only one with a working crier.  The 1940s doll in the center measures 29 inches and has a composition head with brown tin eyes, stuffed latex arms and legs, and cloth body.  She came to me professionally restored (repainted face and new wig.)  As I indicated in Black Dolls a Comprehensive Guide...    

Because of some lighter brown-to-tan areas in the creases of the doll’s legs and feet and the uneven darkening of the Magic Skin limbs, it is possible that this doll was originally a white Magic Skin doll whose limbs darkened and the face and body later painted/replaced to match the darkened limbs.

(The Magic Skin material used on all dolls usually darkens with age; this includes white dolls which can transform from their original pink/white color to various shades of brown to black.)

26-inch composition girl and 23-inch (rare) composition boy, circa 1940s and 1920s-1930s.  Based on the boy's metal eyes, he is the older of the two.  Both have voice boxes which can be felt in the front (the girl) and the back (the boy) of their cloth torsos.  These dolls are attributed to W. B. Abbott's line of Sun Tan dolls.   A close-up of this pair follows:

Close-up of composition mama dolls, described above 

Not all mama dolls were babies.  These two are nice examples of toddler dolls that have ma-ma voice boxes.  They are 21-1/2 and 27-inches tall, respectively, circa 1940s-1950s.  Both dolls have hard plastic heads and breast plates, cloth bodies, and composition arms and legs.  Due to their mixed media construct, these dolls are also considered transitional dolls.  As doll media transitioned from one popular material to the next innovative medium, some doll makers  incorporated the new with the old, combining previous parts and materials until these were exhausted.

Transitional mama dolls, close-up; the doll on the right is missing something.  Can you tell what she's missing?

Happy Mother's Day to mothers, grandmothers, and doll lovers whose dolls serve as inanimate children.

Related Links:
Mama Dolls
Oh Such Eyes
Transitional Doll Clean-up (and answer to question posed above)


A white Magic Skin doll's restoration

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Circa 1925 Photo of Girl With Doll

Internet photo of Miss Edna Gaston and doll -- first found on Flickr.

This lovely little girl is identified as Miss Edna Earl Gaston and friend (doll in carriage).  The doll appears to be a brown composition Mama doll. The Horsman doll company is known to have produced similar dolls along with other early American doll companies. 

Along with the photo when found on Flickr, was the following text:

On back of photo: Sept. 25, 1925 -- "To Uncle John from Edna Earl Gaston.”

A later annotation indicates that “Uncle John” was John Clark, a “founder and Senior Warden of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and an organizer of their parochial school for blacks.

Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina postcards in the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I continue to wonder if the doll belonged to little Miss Gaston or if it was a studio prop.

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