Welcome!

Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon
Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon by George Stuart.
Welcome to my site about dolls of English History. This blog is one of a group of journals about dolls depicting characters from history in different geographic regions. English dolls are particularly dear to me because my paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Maidstone, England, a small Kent borough that lies 30 miles southeast of London. Last year, my sister and I had the thrill of visiting England for the first time and visited the church where our grandparents were married. In addition to a tour of Maidstone, we, of course, made all the usual tourist rounds including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Leeds Castle, Warwick Castle, Windsor Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, York, Bath, St. Albans, Stonehenge, Oxford, Madame Tussaud's, the Tower of London, the British Museum, Picadilly Circus, the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Ingtham Mote. If you wish to see pictures of our trip and read my impressions of this "incredible journey" check out my Incredible Journey blog.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Queen Elizabeth I by Russian Dolls of St. Petersburg, Russia


Queen Elizabeth I
Originally uploaded by mharrsch.
This version of Elizabeth came all the way from St. Petersburg, Russia. She is the typical Russian-style porcelain cone doll. I felt sorry for a vendor on Ebay when I read negative feedback from a buyer who was unfamiliar with the typical construction of Russian porcelain dolls. The buyer complained that the dolls have no feet. So, the buyer lambasted the vendor for not revealing that they are essentially half dolls. I don't mind at all since I am much more interested in the detailed costume than legs and feet that you will never see. The dolls stands approximately 9" high. Here, Elizabeth is presented in a typical black and white gown, her favorite colors.

Queen Elizabeth I by Nelli Cronin


Queen Elizabeth I
Originally uploaded by mharrsch.
This is a beautifully detailed OOAK doll by Nelli Cronin. Nelli is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia but she married a Brit and is now living in London. She faithfully recreated the white powdered face of Elizabeth who, like many ladies of the 16th century, used powdered lead to make themselves appear pale and delicate. Unfortunately, scholars speculate that this use of lead may have accounted for the severe deterioration in Elizabeth's beauty as she aged.

Queen Elizabeth I by Barbara Beccio




Queen Elizabeth I by Barbara Beccio

Queen Elizabeth I
Candy Spelling Fantasy Doll
by Barbara Beccio
Originally uploaded by mharrsch.

American doll artist Barbara Beccio designed this Candy Spelling series doll for Madame Alexander in 1995. Her beautifully detailed costume reflects Barbara's Masters of Fine Art in costume and lighting design from New York University where she garnered the Seidman Award for Excellence in Design.



She had previously been nominated In 1994 for the Dolls Award of Excellence for "Jacqueline" one of Effanbee's collection of Victorian dolls called "The Ladies of Elegance . (I have several of these as well in my collection and they are quite stunning!)

"Her costuming also garnered another nomination for a Dolls of Excellence Award for "Amethyst", produced by Kingstate. A recreation of a Dewees Cochran American Child doll outfit won a Dolls of Excellence Award for Effanbee Doll Company and was featured as one of the Dolls for the Classic American Dolls Commemorative Stamps. She also designs Doll clothes for Ashton-Drake Galleries, as well as re-creating gowns for their Princess Diana Series." - The Hospice Mask Project

Doll Artist Valerie Clausen's Elizabeth I

Doll artist Valerie Clausen of Rhiannon's Dolls created this lavishly adorned portrait of Elizabeth I with a Yield House head, arms, and legs. The ornate costume is her own design based on her research of Elizabeth's famous wardrobe.

"However remarkable for the rich display of jewels was the court of Henry VIII, that of ELIZABETH, who inherited her royal father's passion for these precious ornaments, was still more extravagant. In her youth she had entertained, or more probably affected, a distaste for jewellery. "The king, her father," says Dr. Aylmer, "left her rich clothes and jewels, and I know it to be true that in seven years after his death, she never, in all that time, looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will, and that there never came gold or stone in her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness, and then she so wore that all men might see that her body carried that which her heart misliked."

This abnegation of vanity and ostentation was, however, whether feigned or not, but of short duration, for she soon outshone every sovereign in Christendom by the profusion and rarity of the jewels with which she was literally covered. Bacon gives some reason for this at the risk of his gallantry, for the court adulations to the last were on her grace and "fair" countenance. "She imagined," says Bacon, "that the people who are much influenced by externals would be diverted by the glitter of her jewels from noticing the decay of her personal attractions." If such were the queen's thoughts as age wore upon her, they are but the same feminine notions that generally prevail throughout time, in most countries...No Queen of England has ever been represented with such a blaze of jewels as Elizabeth. Horace Walpole, speaking of her portraits, says:--"There is not one that can be called beautiful. The profusion of ornaments with which they are loaded are marks of her continual fondness for dress, while they entirely exclude all grace, and leave no more room for a painter's genius than if he had been employed to copy an Indian idol, totally composed of hands and necklaces. A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff, a vaster fardingale, and a bushel of pearls, are features by which everybody knows at once the picture of Elizabeth."

Elizabeth seems to have had a passion for pearls. The now faded waxwork effigy preserved in West-minster Abbey (and which lay on her coffin, arrayed in royal robes, at her funeral, and caused, as Stowe states, "such a general sighing, groaning, and weeping, as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man") exhibits large, round, Roman pearls in the stomacher; a carcanet of large round pearls, etc., about her throat; her neck ornamented with long strings of pearls; her high-heeled shoe-bows having in the centre large pearl medallions. Her earrings are circular pearl and ruby medallions, with large pear-shaped pearl pendants. This, of course, represents her as she dressed towards the close of her life. In the Tollemache collection at Ham House is a miniature of her, however, when about twenty, which shows the same taste as existing at that age. She is there depicted in a black dress, trimmed with a double row of pearls. Her point-lace ruffles are looped with pearls, etc. Her head-dress is decorated in front with a jewel set with pearls, from which three pear-shaped pearls depend. And, finally, she has large pearl-tassel earrings." - JJKent, Inc.