Swivel Head Dolls. A Swivel Head is a variation of the Shoulder Head. It has a head and shoulder plate but the neck area is divided. The neck of the head ends in a ball shape which fits into a cup cast into the neck area and plate. The two pieces are usually held together by a metal bar which runs from the head down into the body. The cup is usually lined with kid to prevent rubbing and scuff marks on the neck end of the head and to ensure a smooth movement. Reference: Understanding Dolls by Caroline G Goodfellow.

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The Jumeau company first emerged as a partnership between Louis-Desire Belton and Pierre-François Jumeau in Paris in the early 1840s. In 1844, Belton and Jumeau presented their dolls at the Paris Exposition (at which they received an honorable mention), but by 1846 Belton’s name was no longer associated with the dolls, and Jumeau was trading in his own right. A bronze medal in the 1849 Paris Exposition followed, as did an appearance at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, at which the company was awarded a First Place Medal. Through much of this period, the firm sold only their own dolls to wholesalers, although during the 1850s and 1860s, the company moved into selling wax dolls imported from Britain.

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The Rag Book Co introduced a revolutionary concept in children’s books by making them out of cloth. The success of the cloth books led Mr Dean to producing rag dolls on sheets of cloth. They were patented in 1908 and carried Dean’s famous trade-mark, designed by Stanley Berkley, of an English terrier and an English bulldog having a tug-of-war with a rag book, along with the slogan ‘Wear Ever – Tear Never’. The patent was for a cloth cut-out doll made with six pieces, two for the front, two for the back and two for the feet, which could be painted or printed on calico,linen or other materials. The made-up doll, labelled ‘Dean’s Rag Knockabout Toy Sheet. Washable and Hygienic. Reference: The Collector’s Guide to British Dolls Since 1920.

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From the earliest of times, poor children would play with bundles of rags tied with string to form a crude head and body. Wealthy children would have played with more elaborate cloth dolls made of superior fabrics.

Many early cloth dolls have not survived due to their short life spans. Once dirty or damaged many would have been discarded. Most surviving rag dolls date from after the last quarter of the 19th century.

Commercially-made fabric dolls began to be produced in larger numbers during the 19th century. Madam Montanari, a notable wax doll maker, is recorded as winning a prize for a cloth doll at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.

In the first half of the 20th century, cloth dolls became very popular, sometimes with papier mâché heads, but more often with faces made from pressed felt or stiffened buckram. Companies including Chad Valley, Dean’s Rag Book Co and Norah Wellings produced thousands of fabric dolls. Although they were lovely dolls, the drawbacks were that they couldn’t be washed and moths liked them so they slowly disintegrated.

In Italy, fabric was used to make expensive ornamental dolls primarily intended for adults. Lenci pioneered the art doll during the 1920’s These elaborately dressed dolls epitomize 1920’s elegance.

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Raphael Tuck & Sons was a business started by Raphael Tuck and his wife in Bishopsgate in the City of London on October 1866. Tuck’s paper dolls normally have a printed mark on the back of the doll.

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The majority of china / parian dolls were German and were exported in large numbers from the early 1800’s up until World War I.

Colors of china head dolls

The most common china head dolls are white. Creamy white are finer and the rarest ones are made from a pink china, which is really a delicate flesh colour known as pink lustre.

The white and cream colour dolls often have homemade bodies as well as professionally made bodies of cloth or kid. Some have china arms and legs but some of the very fine ones have kid arms and legs, with the fingers and toes indicated by stitching. The larger ones may have kid hands with fingers which are separate and distinct.

China Doll Shoes

The shoes are an excellent way to help identify the age. Flat soled shoes are more likely to date before 1850 whereas shoes which have a definite heel would be after 1850.

Identifying age of doll from the head

Dolls heads which were made prior to 1860 were not marked and records are often lost. After 1860 it is possible to identify some heads even if they are unmarked by comparing them with later identical doll heads which do have marks. Hair styles are also an indication of age but it should be noted that old molds were often used.

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Armand Marseille was born in St Petersburg in 1856 but emigrated later with his family to Thuringia in Germany

In 1885, Armand Marseille bought the porcelain factory of Liebermann & Wegescher in Koppelsdorf. It was here where he began manufacturing bisque doll heads.

The factory became one of the largest German manufacturers of bisque doll heads. The most popular heads were those made from the mould number 390.

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Some of the most famous Chad Valley dolls were the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs set of the 1930’s and later the Mabel Lucie Atwell dolls.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney. The British Chad Valley toy company was one of several who were licenced to make Disney merchandise and the set of Snow White and the dwarfs proved to be extremely popular. Reference: Victoria and Albert Museum

Chad Valley dolls varied in quality from mediocre cloth dolls with printed clothes and faces to fine dolls with hand-painted faces, wigs and glass eyes.

In 1938 Chad Valley received a Royal Warrant as ‘Toymakers to H.M. The Queen’. When Princess Elizabeth acceeded to the throne in 1952 the warrant was changed to read ‘Toymakers to H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’.

In addition to soft dolls, Chad Valley also made other toys including GWR jigsaw puzzles.

The company moved away from manufacturing toys in the Second World War. Instead they produced goods to help the war effort such as wooden instrument cases, cases for the barrels of anti-aicraft guns, hospital beds and electrical coils and starters.

In the 1950’s, Chad Valley had become a well respected toy brand. The company was one of the UK’s leading toymakers for most of the 20th century, by 1960 it was operating seven factories and employing over 1,000 people. In the 1970s however it closed several factories and cuts were made in staffing and production, 1975 saw only two factories remaining. The company was taken over by Palitoy in 1978.

The brand name was bought by Woolworths in 1988 and remained in use until that company’s closure due to insolvency. Home Retail Group, the parent company of retailers Homebase and Argos, purchased the brand for £5 million on 20 January 2009. The Chad Valley brand is now available exclusively at Argos.

References: British Dolls of the 1950s (British Collectable Toys Series), Antique Trader Doll Makers & Marks: A Guide for Identification

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