Dolls have been a child’s first toy for thousands of years, and for good reason. A soft to the touch doll, squishy, warm and heavy in your arms. A friendly face with a relaxed and sweet expression, a kindred spirit of your very own. What could be better? These dolls are stuffed with pure clean wool, which retains a child’s body warmth, making them the perfect snuggle companion day or night.
Waldorf dolls were originally made with very simple and soft expressions or none at all so as to not get in the way of the child’s imagination. Today they are still made like that by some doll-makers but I have developed a more detailed look to their faces through extensive needle felting.
I wanted my dolls to become co-conspirators in play with a child, ready for any kind of mischief, and from what I’ve seen at my home, they’ve held up their end of the bargain quite well!
There is nothing quite like a doll to a child boy or girl and it is a pleasure and honour to be able to create these treasured companions.
“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
-Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
I have created my dolls to withstand years of creative and imaginative play, to be fully immersible in the wild and wonderful world of childhood and to come out on the other side of it all in one piece and very Real indeed.
