In his afterword to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley recalled how touched—and amazed—Malcolm was when he, Haley, bought a pair of large Negro walking dolls as gifts for Malcolm’s two older daughters, not long before the former Black Muslim leader was killed in New York. Vintage black dolls are as collectible today as they were amazing to Malcolm X in 1964, and their appeal transcends race and reaches to most antique doll collectors.
Time was when these dolls carried negative connotations, for black people and for other people discomfited by some of their origins, such as a once-typical Southern folk doll garbed in asexual “Mammy” clothing, hands and feet usually made from pure black cloth, and usually featuring a large nut for the head and face. Atlanta Antique Gallery notes that many antique black dolls—formerly tucked away like guilty secrets, to use the gallery’s words—have become cherished by collectors (estimated to be seventy percent African-Americans) for their historical evocations, even though, as the gallery notes, there remain black memorabilia collectors, who find them still offensive enough to buy them up just to keep them out of reach.
Over time, however, more realistic-looking and less stereotypical-looking dolls depicting black children became more prevalent. These dolls, too, are seen as telling stories of African-American life before and after the dissipation of Jim Crow as well as carrying sheer playtime value for children equal to dolls depicting other ethnicities.
One major problem with collecting vintage black dolls is that the older they are, according to many collectors, the less likely they are to have been found in mint condition. Restoring dolls often reduces their collectible value, and this is true of African-American dolls as well as other dolls—unless the restoration was done with the original doll-making techniques.
An antique black bisque-made Topsy doll, Japanese-made, was listed recently online for $108.99. Made between 1900 and the 1930s, this doll was clothed in a diaper-like safety-pinned burlap, with three pink-strand ribbons tied into her multiple-pigtailed hair and showing few if any nicks or pricks or paint dimmings. The doll resembles the once-familiar Golliwog Kewpie style common among black baby dolls of the period.
A similar Topsy-like doll, this one a fully-clothed baby doll made in the same period, and with the same three pink-strand hair ribbons and the resemblance to the Golliwog-Kewpie style, but distinguished by more realistic facial features and lacking the demeaning pickaninny facial features, was offered for sale at $199.
On the higher end, however, was the United Federation of Doll Clubs’ National Doll Convention of 2008 in Las Vegas. At this convention, rare antique black dolls were a major attraction, and an 1882 Jumeau black baby doll—in a strawberry red with white lace trim party dress, a white bonnet, in rich ebony face and hand paint—traded hands for $18,000.
Tags: antique dolls, black dolls, black dolls for sale, dolls for sale, vintage black doll, vintage black dolls, Vintage Dolls, vintage dolls for sale
US $19.99
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