Chinese Carved Bone Portrait Doll with Original Costume and Ephemera

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19" (48 cm.) Carved bone head with elaborately-sculpted hair captured with carved hair combs, carved ears with pierced ear lobes, defined eye sockets and lips, on original armature body of bamboo, applied silk shoes with posing rods at base, carved bone hands with individual fingers. Condition: generally excellent. Comments: Chinese, mid-1800s, the doll is believed to represent the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). Value Points: wearing original (frail) embroidered silk costume with butterfly motif, and presented along with a large scroll depicting the Empress and a cloth-covered album of various early photographs of the royal family. Ex-collection Shirley Buchholz.