$2,000
Sold
sold
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Description
12" (30 cm.) Black cotton sateen doll with flat-dimensional face having varnished finish with oil-painted features,large outlined brown eyes with white eye dots,defined nose,brows and lips,stitch- jointing at shoulders and hips,antique costume. Condition: generally excellent. Marks: Witherspoon Rag Doll. Pat. Applied For New Orleans (paper label on back torso). Comments: Maud Witherspoon Rag Doll Manufacturing Company was founded in New Orleans about 1900; the Witherspoon family had ancestral ties to both the Confederate Army and civil rights advocates,and family ancestors were once owners of the Ellington Plantation in St. Charles Parish,Louisiana. Maud Witherspoon founded the doll company in order to support her widowed mother and younger sister (Cora Witherspoon,a noted American stage and film actress whose career spanned 1905-1954). Articles about Maud appeared in 1902 Troy Daily News and 1901 Indiana Weekly which described her as a "gentle fragile girl thrown on her own resources who...noting the craze for all things Southern" determined to manufacture the very cloth dolls that she had made for pleasure while "still a mere chit of a girl" growing up in the French quarter. Value Points: rare doll with original paper label,intriguing history.