$9,500
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sold
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Description
21" (53 cm.) Each is constructed of firmly-stuffed tightly-woven muslin with stitched-on head, and having slightly-rounded shape of nose tip and chin, stitch-jointing at shoulders, elbows, and hips, stitch-defined fingers with separate thumbs, painted curls around the face, painted brown outlined eyes, defined nose, coral-shaded lips with center accent. One doll is wearing ann antique baby gown and bonnet, and the other a dotted Swiss dress with bretelles and ruffled sleeves, ruffled bonnet, undergarments, stockings, and shoes. Condition: very good, some facial fading and light spotting. Comments: made by Roxana Cole, mid-1880s, the folk cloth doll artist of Ripley, Mississippi and, later, Conway, Arkansas. Although few dolls of Roxana Cole are known to exist, it documented that she shipped commissioned dolls over the United States according to an April 22, 1898 retrospective article in the Boston Daily Advertiser; five of these dolls are at the Wenham Museum in Massachusetts. According to family tradition, many of the dolls were given to Cole family members, which came to include the Johnston branch, into which Estelle married and was gifted the dolls for her collection. These dolls that have remained in the Cole/Johnston families for their entire history. Estelle Johnston wrote of the dolls in an August 1970 article in Doll News (copy of that magazine included), and later in an article entitled "Heirlooms of the Heart" appearing in Dolls, The Collector's Magazine in November, 1994. Included with the pair of dolls is a full-size pieced quilt also made by Roxane Cole, and various research documents including a copy of a letter written by Roxana Cole to Cousin Blanche in November 1862 telling of the "grim horrors" of the Civil War as it came to "our quiet isolated little town". Value Points: among the least-seldom-found dolls made by 19th century American women entrepreneurs, this pair is enhanced by Cole/Johnston family history and related ephemera.