Queen Anne's dolls

A jointed body and carved face decorated with stylized eyebrows and brightly rouged cheeks characterize the "Queen Anne" style dolls. English woodcarvers and craftsmen began making these dolls in the 1600s which continued through the 1840s. Affordable only to affluent families, the vast majority of Queen Anne dolls where owned by women, who dressed them in the fashions of the time.

The dolls painted almond shaped eyes, changed to glass and porcelain in later years and limbs came to be made of fabric or leather. Some reports note that fewer than thirty 17th century Queen Anne dolls have survived.
Collectors call the wood dolls from England from the 18th and early 19th centuries "Queen Anne" dolls, which is somewhat confusing, since Queen Anne's reign ended in 1714! These dolls, in good to excellent condition, are extremely rare, and cost from about $1,500 for an early 19th century doll, to over $40,000 for dolls made in the late 17th century (very few have survived-less than 30 by some reports).

The object of the day: Gabriel the Archangel (c1820)

Gabriel the Archangel 

(Spain c. 1820)

Dimensions:
15 inch high (38.10 cm)

Description / Expertise
A 19th century representation of Gabriel the Archangel with silk and metal thread garments, the angels head of carved ivory with back-painted glass eyes and human hair, the hands also of carved ivory. Gabriel's wings and book have details punched into the metal and he wears a metal visor. The feet are of carved and painted wood.

Price
GBP1950.00 (Pound Sterling)

The Bisque dolls

Bisque dolls ,with heads made from unglazed, tinted porcelain, are among the most elaborate and valuable of all collector’s dolls. The finest French bisques, made by leading makers such as Jumeau, Bru, Gaultier and Steiner, were expensive status symbols even when first made, and remained very much the province of pampered children from the most affluent homes.

The earliest French Bisques resembled fashionable ladies and came equipped with wardrobes of elaborate clothes, based on fashion plates of the day.

The teddy's story

The history of the teddy bear is a lovely story from President Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a captive bear to Morris Michtom and his wife creating what is now accepted as the first of the modern Teddys’ Bear.

The history of what we know today as the Teddy Bear begins in Germany, in late October 1902, where Richard Steiff, a toy designer working for the family firm in Giengen, in search of ideas for new toys and went to see a touring American circus. Among the performing animals he saw there was a troupe of bears. They sparked off his ideas and he saw the possibility of making a bear toy jointed in a similar way to the dolls that they produced.

He put his thoughts down on paper for his aunt, Margarete Steiff, born in 1847 and who had founded the firm in 1880. She liked the idea and Richard set to work on visiting zoo’s to sketch bears.