Texas Toys and Games Page: 73
This book is part of the collection entitled: Texas Folklore Society Publications and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Press.
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DOLLS
when she presented Mother with the doll. Never was she to
leave the doll outside, not in the sun and not in the rain, but
particularly not in the sun.
Soon the tomboy was beckoning to Mother again, and the
day was too warm and sunny not to take a dip in the creek. Her
beautiful doll with the stunning porcelain face was simply left
on the bank in a sunny spot. After an hour or so of swimming,
Mother returned to find her doll a totally different toy. The
porcelain face had swollen and blistered, and when she picked
the doll up, eyes and hair and face just kind of oozed into one.
Mother still recalls the memory a little wistfully and calls it
Depression porcelain.
A favorite summertime activity was to make shoe box doll-
houses. During the late Twenties and early Thirties, I made one
each summer. Small doors were cut, leaving one edge attached so
that they could swing open. Windows were cut out, sometimes
with strips left or glued back to form panes. Cellophane made
the window glass. From the Sears catalogue, one could use the
slick wallpaper samples for the linoleum floors and other wall-
paper to paper the walls. Bits of cloth were used for window
curtains. Some girls used a box for each separate room. Furni-
ture could be made of smaller boxes.
The paper doll families came from old Sears, Montgomery
Ward, or Chicago mail-order catalogues. There was always a fa-
ther, a mother, a boy, a girl, and a baby, although the baby was
usually large in relation to the rest of the family because there
were no small babies in the catalogue. If you were careful, how-
ever, you could find a baby the right size with all arms and legs
showing! By being especially observant, one could find the same
sizes and poses and cut dresses from some pictures so that the
dolls could have a change of clothing.
After several days, when all was ready, each dollhouse and
doll family lived in a different corner of the room and there was
"visiting."
Older cousins showed us their carefully made clay furniture
with the drawers and designs etched on. We were not allowed to
touch. Can you imagine the hours of time and trials to get clay
solids three-by-three-by-four inches to dry straight and without
cracks? Of course we couldn't touch.
It must have been about 1929 when I received a white
wooden doll bed with a mattress and a beautiful china baby doll
wrapped in a doll blanket made of flannel exactly like my
mother-made nightgown. It had a crocheted edging in yellow to
match some of the nursery-rhyme characters in the print. I
know that Daddy sawed and made the little bed in his barn
workshop on some cold winter afternoons before I came in from
school. At the same time Mama was busy cutting and sewing the
scraps into squares for the blanket before crocheting the yellow
edging. Love makes lovely presents and memories!Shoe Box
Dollhouses
by
Jewel Irwin
Shankles73
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Texas Toys and Games (Book)
Collected information about popular toys and games relevant to the state of Texas, including folk toys, folk games, sports, dances, songs and other recreations. The index of contributors begins on page 245 and the index of toys and games begins on page 249.
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Abernethy, Francis Edward. Texas Toys and Games, book, 1989; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67661/m1/83/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.