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The Godey Lady Doll with 15 dress patterns and 22 scale drawings of Miniature Furnitures
The Godey Lady Doll with 15 dress patterns and 22 scale drawings of Miniature Furnitures Author:Charlotte Eldridge Although this is chiefly a how-to-do-it book, it is also a charming contribution to the popular hobby of doll making. The inspiration for these particular dolls in Godey's Lady's Book which, under the direction of the renowned Sarah Josepha Hale, became the arbiter of American women's fashions and of their customs and morals, during the mid-19t... more »h century. It was even called the "Victorian Bible of the Parlor."
Thanks to a severe illness, Charlotte Eldridge stumbled into doll making and got the happy idea of creating dolls that reproduce the Godey fashions of a century ago. While resting at home, and largely to amuse her little daughter, she started making the Godey Dolls, using whatever materials came to hand, even to the purloining of one of her husband's favorite ties as part of a doll's dress. The first Godey Lady Dolls attracted wide attention; doll buyers began to appear on the scene; magazines buzzed with articles about the new dolls and their creator. Mrs. Eldridge was dragooned into delivering lectures throughout the country, not only on the dolls but also on the place of women in the general scheme. The interest spread. The Godey Lady Doll was launched on a resounding career.
Now Mrs. Eldridge has written this book about it. She devlotes some slight space to Sara Josepha Hale who accidentally became the first woman fashion editor of America, and to her own amusing exploits as a doll maker. But the book is principally a how-to-do-it manual. The author gives detailed instructions to her fellow doll-hobbyists for the making of Godey Lady Dolls. She tells the reader how to make the soft doll bodies, how to model the face, hands and feet, how to paint the face and hands, how, and with what materials--brocades, laces, ribbons and the like--to concoct the little hoop-skirt dresses. There are exact patterns for the doll bodies and the dresses.
Then the author goes a step further. When she has completed her first Godey Lady Dolls she felt that they would be most effective if displayed against a proper setting. So with infinite patience, and the assistance of her father in the planning, she constructed Lilliputian Victorian drawing rooms and furniture and put her charming figurines in them. And she tells here how these luxurious tiny parlors, with their Victorian versions of Louis Quinze furniture and their heavy damask hangings, can also be made by the reader.
There are a number of reproductions of fashion models from the original Godey's Lady's Book, besides the fifteen meticulously scaled-to-size dress patterns that anyone can follow, and also twenty-two scale drawings of the miniature furniture from which anyone with a little knack at carpentry can create the small sized rooms and furnishings in which to show off the charm and beauty of the dolls themselves.
Altogether, this is something unique in how-to-do-it literature.« less