"I belong to a race, the sole purpose of whose existence is to give pleasure to others. None will deny the goodness of such an end and I flatter myself that we amply fulfill it".

From: "The Doll and her Friends" A children's book published in Boston in 1852.

Encapsulated in this quotation is the notion that dolls possess characters of their own. They seem to incorporate an almost magical streak of immortality and their origin, like that of the human race, is enshrouded in the midst of antiquity. With each new archaeological expedition, we are bound to find some new piece of evidence enabling us to trace the evolution of the doll. Greco-Roman dolls of great antiquity survive, battered but with the same inherent potentialities they possessed six thousand years ago. It is this combination of past history and inherent personality which has given dolls their ability to fascinate every one of us.

Nowhere is this quality more in evidence than at a doll exhibition. The entire "behind the illusion network" is on display for all to see. It is an industry which is so successful that during the 1970's in America there were 225 million dolls, the majority of which were owned by adults! One sees displayed in an Aladdin's cave of multiples the wondrous mechanisms of doll immortality. Unlike their creators, dolls have the option of interchangeable limbs and torsos - a guarantee of perpetual existence. By creating an image of a human being at exactly the chosen age, one can capture infancy, childhood and adolescence for all time. Today, for an outlay of $4,000 - $15,000, the West German artist Annette Himstedt will create from photographs a superb image of your child in doll form. (There is, to my mind, a potential remake of "A Portrait of Dorian Gray" in that concept ... with a doll replica of oneself in the attic instead of a painting!

Dolls can and will take over the whole house - and not simply during the witching hours when "nanny is asleep". Life goes on unceasingly in dolls houses; their open walls revealing the domestic minutiae and psychodramas of an eventful Lilliputian existence. They demand, by their very presence, every miniscule item of clothing and furniture. No luxury is too great for a doll's wardrobe or house, and the creation of these tiny items has become an area of special interest to many collectors. A doll's House possesses an hypnotic charm for us as we gaze, satisfied voyeurs, on these static, posed creatures, sitting or standing stiffly in their scaled-down mansions acting out their roles frozen in time.... something is always about to happen in a Doll's House. Our faces alight with curiosity and wonderment, we lumbering giants peer intently on their world of delicate sensibilities.

Dating back to 4000 BC is the oldest known doll in existence. Composed of strips of linen stuffed with papyrus, it manages to bravely combine something of the mystery of the Egyptian mummy with the engaging personality of a "gingerbread boy". There is, however, a fine line of demarcation between what is a doll and that which is a ritual representation or God image and it is often difficult to decide the difference. These idols or fetishes of ancient times were believed to hold mysterious life and thus their significance was attributed to their divine power long before they became playthings for children. Although ancient Troy and Crete were famous for their advanced civilization, the relics of images found there are generally thought to have been idols rather than toys for children. However, at Athens, 500 BC, dolls were an integral part of childhood and some of them had a truly realistic appeal. Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of specialist shops devoted solely to the sale of these objects. Beautiful Greco-Roman dolls exist in carved ivory, as well as clay, bone, wood, linen rags and stone.

In Strange Survivals, S. Baring Gould, a writer of the nineteenth century, described a white marble sarcophagus which occupies the centre of one of the rooms in the basement of the Capitoline Museum in Rome. "The sarcophagus contains the bones and dust of a little girl, and by her side is the child's wooden doll, precisely like the dolls made and sold today. In the catacombs of St. Agnes one end of a passage is given up to the objects found in the tombs of the early Christians, and among these are some very similar dolls taken out of the graves of the Christian children". From these early ancestors our present day dolls have descended to become the treasured favourites of our own childhoods.

For over 500 years dolls and dollmaking have been a strong commercial business. Old engravings show German dollmakers at work on delightful examples of the art as far back as the fourteenth century. In a relatively short period assembly lines were created to keep up with the demand and the individual doll became the product of a number of craftspeople with specialized skills who were responsible for particular parts of the doll.

Clay dolls were shipped throughout Europe and by the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the crude wooden dolls of Austria and Germany, with their jointed arms and legs, were quite common in England. At this time, it became the custom in France to send miniature mannikin dolls to leading European cities to show the latest fashions. Ships carrying these fashion dolls were allowed to pass even during war, when all other cargoes were considered contraband.

Despite the strong commercial thrust to the industry, the connection with earlier ritualistic images remained. Amongst the oldest dolls appearing in important collections are those from Christian nativity groups. Whether of sophisticated or peasant origin, their faces, stance and particularly the characteristic outturning of the palms of their hands imbues them with an aspect of spiritual intensity which is strongly iconographic. These small images from the past have often survived the world's catastrophes more successfully than many of our mightiest monuments.

By the seventeenth century dolls had become an inextricable part of the world of fashion and manners and their manufacture became increasingly sophisticated. Adults demanded a more refined and realistic finish and as a result, the perfect "Lady Doll" emerged: her humble features were now chiselled in plaster, seductive glass eyes mirroring her creator's soul, and human hair effecting this subtle metamorphosis from object into being. Magnificently outfitted in the elaborate fashions of the times, court dolls of the seventeenth and eighteenth century reached such heights of splendour that leading artists throughout Europe were commissioned to make designs specifically for dolls. Kings and aristocrats gave lavishly jewelled dolls as gifts and, as we have noted, they were frequently used to make definitive statements about style at a particular court. An invaluable sociological and aesthetic record of their times, fabulous charges have been made for their purchase. To acquire one of these dolls today, one would have to be well placed on the Zodiac or have a limitless bank balance - those in existence are already in museums or important private collections.

From these magnificent dolls, artists and craftspeople were inspired to make the "common doll" as beautiful as possible. The Paris Doll in particular served to establish an extraordinary group of peripheral industries which specialized in the production of every conceivable fashion accessory. By 1870 the Paris Doll could be outfitted with a wardrobe of one hundred different garments including tiny shoes, gloves and bonnets all immaculately handcrafted to scale. Every step in the manufacture of these dolls was completed by an expert - from the creation of the glass eyes to painting the features on their faces. At contemporary Doll Exhibitions this aspect of the industry is most impressive to the newcomer who is unexpectedly confronted with hundreds of tiny kid shoes and constellations of disembodied glass eyes staring fixedly, like the spawn of some absent cyclops. Perhaps this is the most surprising thing about doll collecting today, the dazzling variety of dolls, doll's houses and specialists who can make and dress reproduction dolls with meticulous attention to detail. And so we are introduced to the modern world of Doll Collecting where the doll is not a plaything but an opportunity for adults to indulge again in the fantasies of childhood - when she is bestowed with a particular personality and charm to satisfy our imagination.

To stimulate and nurture any area of collecting, to prevent it from becoming the pastime of a selected few, it is necessary that opportunities still exist to acquire the objects of one's desire - this is admirably illustrated with the world of Dolls. Collectable dolls must not appear too frequently, but often enough to sustain that desire in a state of tense optimism - hence we have one of the major reasons for nineteenth century dolls being the "backbone of modern collecting". Many doll collections, even major ones, start accidentally - the nucleus being a few dolls surviving the collective childhoods of two or three generations of one's family. These links with the past which somehow still evoke emotions within us from our own childhoods are magnetic in their appeal, and the collector soon finds himself besotted with their acquisition.

Dolls are frequently categorized according to the predominant material used in their construction - wood, wax, bisque or parian, rubber, celluloid, rag or plastic. The most perfectly lifelike dolls are often in the china or bisque groups, with the delicately dull surface of the bisque doll resembling the bloom of a beautiful human complexion. The French sought to make the bisque doll the finest doll in the world, and in the opinion of many doll collectors it was. Certainly the creation of the bisque doll involved many hours of painstaking skill and attention to detail by the skilled artisans whose job it was to transform the lifeless white forms into the exquisite creatures we treasure today. With deft touches of the brush using the purest of tints, the faces assumed the expression and almost the reality of life. These dolls were then dressed in silks and taffetas, with individually crafted bonnets and accessories to become the pride of some little girl and they have since become the inspiration for the countless reproduction dolls which are being created today by the many talented doll manufacturers who have resurrected this specialized art.

Although the "true to reality" bisques have an undeniable attraction, all the materials have their own individual charm. China dolls manufactured between the 1800's and World War One are almost entirely German in origin and amongst the most common found in antique shops today. Some dolls, however, are made of less resilient substances. Wax was used as a modelling material before the Golden Age of Greece and it was in this medium that the British outranked the French, needing only the addition of German glass eyes to create the most perfect Lady Dolls with kid bodies and human hair inserted strand by strand to achieve a natural coiffure. However, due to wax's sensitivity to heat, it was never really a viable commercial proposition. The leather dolls of Frank E. Darrow, an American manufacturer who worked during the latter half of the nineteenth century, met their nemesis in the form of dreaded doll-eating rats whose penchant for rawhide meals in unusual shapes overwhelmed their "ratty" sensitivities!

For my own part, I love dolls which have seen better days. They have a Chaplinesque quality of humour and pathos, a kind of bravery of countenance seen only in British wartime movies and they need love in a way that perfect dolls do not.