Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: About.com Doll Collecting and Long Gone Dolls by T...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: About.com Doll Collecting and Long Gone Dolls by T...: A brief post to remind all my followers and readers that I love you and welcome comments. You can also read me on About.com Doll Collecting...

Historical Doll Art by Debbie Ritter

Profile of doll artist Debbie Ritter, Uneek Doll Designs at Etsy.com I met Debbie after finding one of her dolls featured on a blog about Lady Jane Grey. I couldn’t wait to buy the doll, and soon bought others, including the portrait of writer Barbara Pym, featured on my blog Miss Barbara Pym meets Miss Charlotte Bronte. Debbie is a transplanted Hoosier to Alabama as of summer 2013 with four grown children and one grandchild. She has been married 25 years. Besides making dolls, her interests include reading, walking, art work, and cooking (when she has time!) Debbie is a born artist, and as she says of herself; “I grew up with a pencil in hand and carried paper everywhere I went- got in trouble a few times with teachers for drawing on my homework, and art was my best subject in school.” Debbie does not collect dolls per se, but likes to create them as a favorite art form. A doll house kit first inspired her miniature creations: “I got inspired to create my art dolls when my husband was given a dollhouse kit by my mom, who despaired of my father ever putting it together. Being the tooling engineer that he was, he put it together and I decided to make some dolls to go in it out of clothespins. She loved it so I continued and I made up my own technique and developed it over time.” I can really relate to Debbie over dollhouses and the need to populate them. My dad was an electrical engineer who built one fantastic dollhouse for me from scratch, and another from a kit. He is an electrical engineer, and it seemed to take forever. He didn’t electrify my houses, and when I asked him why, Dad answered, “We’re Victorian.” Debbie’s dollhouse adventures began a chain of thinking; she decided to combine her love of classic literature, history, and the observation of ordinary people into creating her art work. Debbie finds people in general inspiring because if you study someone long enough, you will see some features that stand out. It is those features challenge her. She started selling her creations when by chance a lady waiting on her at the craft store mentioned Etsy. Debbie wrote the word down and forgot about it for 2 months, then decided to take the plunge to see what would happen. The rest is history and she has been doing well at it ever since. The artist’s work has been featured at “The Today Show” where the crew gave Susan Boyle a replica of herself that Debbie had made during a live interview between Boyle Meredith Viera. . Debbie’s work has also been featured in Vanity Fair online, The Art Doll Quarterly, Doll Collector Magazine, New York Magazine, -Show Time series on television, -Mystery Scene Magazine, New York Magazine, CI Living in Champaign Illinois, and my blogs Dr.Es’s Doll Museum, Dr. E’s Greening Tips for the Common Person, An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory, and Memoir; Writing your Life Story. She can be reached through me or her Etsy store, uneekdolldesigns.etsy.com

Close and closer to the big 10K

Just 21 More!!!

To my Readers; An announcement and About.com Doll Collecting

To all my dear friends and readers, please note that I am the new doll collecting guide for About.com; this does not mean I am abandoning you. On the contrary, I will keep up all my blogs as regularly as time allows. If I am a little slow while I get acclimated to About, which has its own blog, please do not give up on me. My blog readers are my second family, and my blogs my second home. As far as other topics, the current Readers Digest has many good articles on food for health and green living. This week's Radish talks about natural food cures and farms that hold country weddings. More on these later. I have started seeding plants and potting soil in my office where I am winterizing several plants; so far, there are some celery seeds coming up. I'll keep you posted. Our cat Miss Bangles has learned to turn on the electric keyboard, and to play easy listening music from its recording library. She is a cool cat indeed. Watch for more this spring, and Happy Valentine's Day!

An Excellent Woman, not so far from Barbara Pym's Ideal

We are about 57 viewers short of reaching 10,000. Thank you! I was pondering my other blog on Barbara Pym and Charlotte, pymbronte.blogspot.com, when it came to me that Erzebet was an Excellent Woman, too, of the type addressed and sort of sneered at by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and defined by John Donne, who originally coined the term. See, "The Subversion of Romance in the Novels of Barbara Pym," [using AP citation style]. Erzebet was well bred and educated, and as her letters who, concerned herself with running her 37+ estates and properties and addressing family issues and illnesses. If she didn't make tea in a crisis, she knew how to handle them and confront those who caused her problems, like Miss Clovis, the excellent "dog haired" character in many of Pym's novels. Erzebet did not speak peasant dialect, but was truly the Chatelaine, especially after Ferenc died. She was vulnerable when widowed, as many woman left alone are, and were, even in Pym's gentle books, or in the cozy novels of Miss Read, lone women are an eccentric problem to be taken care of. Pym's best friend, mystery writer Hazel Holt, even has an occasional spinster killed off. What do we do with those pesky, strong but rigidly correct excellent women like Erzebet, who do their domestic engineer/management chores too well? Like Rapunzel and Anne Boleyn [who also had gorgeous hair] we lock them up in a Tower.

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Susan Glaspell

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Susan Glaspell: Here is a photo of my lovely friend, PR, who is dressed as Susan Glaspell for a talk she gave about the beloved author. She did a fantastic...

2008 Bathory, and Grief

I lost my mother suddenly 6 years ago on this day. We had no warning, and she just left us. It was always the three of us, my mom, me, and my dad, in succession, our two little dogs. It is cliché to say she was my best friend, but I think she was. We had terrible disagreements, but we were also frighteningly alike. She encouraged everything I did, and bought me graphic novels of Anne Rice's books, and voodoo dolls from Marie Leveau's house of Voodoo in New Orleans. When I was writing my dissertation, she dint flinch about buying me The Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom and other Writings. Bathory was released in 2008. It is the fairest, and perhaps, most sympathetic film about Erzebet. My mother supported my research about her, too. She helped me sew the dress for the mixed media collage I did for her in a 9th grade health report [I got an A]. For that project, she also helped me make a black wig from my vampire costume, and she took me to the library and helped with the small change to make Xerox copies of pictures for posters and props. It was my mom who gave me my first cope of Edgar Allan Poe's complete works. She was fond of him, though she didn't like horror in general. When she was a graduate student, she and her friend set out to find his house one night. They walked in the dark to Skid Row before they came upon it. Because of her, I love Halloween. She helped me to decorate the picture window, often with cutouts we made, and she sewed most of my costumes, including a fantastic black tunic with appliqued cats that served as a witch outfit, vampire outfit, and Morgan le Fey outfit for a Medieval Banquet. She loved books, and never threw one away. I don't, either. She took me to library sales and stocked up on all kinds of references for my reports in school, which were really hand compiled books on various subjects, and she let me use her typewriter to type up my paper on Macbeth in 10th grade. My mother loved Sappho, and the piano. She loved Christmas, and wrapping presents, and she was a great cook, though she'd rather go out. She was often lonely, and she suffered terrible grief when her baby brother was killed at 30, when her other brother died at only 52, when she lost her parents. She was their golden child in many ways, and she had been separated from them for awhile, living in Europe with my dad. She taught Spanish, but also French, Latin, and History. She showed me how to knit, and needlepoint, and taught me to love collage. I remember a field of daisies we did for Kindergarten, with ribbons, and pretty wrapping paper. She made an Easter tree for me out of a twig, and we made egg ornaments together and dyed them. I frustrated her in my home ec projects, but she helped me make a terrific little Hollie Hobby Apron. She forgave people easily, even when they hurt her, but she was fierce if you crossed her. She could play the part of the innocent little old lady deceptively, but I saw her pounce on people who were rude and disrespectful to her with no compunction. Good for her. She had academic honor after fellowship after honor society, but was modest. She didn't want me to marry, especially in the controversial situation I found myself in, but she came around. My dad never did. She was proud of me, and loved me. we went out driving to look at pretty houses, and she would pick me up after school from the babysitter's for adventures. We went to Marie's Party Shop for craft supplies, to Woolworth's for goldfish,, to Mr. Quick and later McDonalds for cokes and burgers. Sometimes, she had a snack with her, strawberry Shasta and cream cheese and chive dip with chips, in the car. She took me to swimming lessons, taking a cab when we didn't have two cars. She intercede for me with bullies and nasty teachers. She went with me to antique shows, though she hated old things, and then would go there and to doll shows on her own when I was in school. It broke my heart to see her cry, though I could be stubborn and never told her. I loved her clothes, and her gold charms, and her subtle make up. I always borrowed them, and wore her wedding shoes often for special days. She never complained, but shared everything with me. She loved me and my dad, but her talents could have taken her further, and I think she was often frustrated. She was fair, and could have compassion even for an Andrea Yates or a Susan Smith. She suffered under the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists in World War II, and American child stuck in Europe on a vacation that was only supposed to be for the summer, but lasted for 8 years. She never complained, or blamed anyone. She had a lot of courage, and was there to choose coffins for her brothers and her parents when no one else could stand to do it. Then, she only had me to try to do what she wanted, at a funeral that was never suppose to happen on a cold, snowy day. Now, I am a grown woman, with a family of her own. My husband is a wonderful man, and I am grateful to have my dad, my friends, those left from my extended family. Yet, I often feel so lonely, and so isolated. I go the cemetery and stand at her grave, and feel some sort of connection, that this world can't be conclusion, as Emily Dickinson wrote. I am with her when I see the dolls we restored; when she died I found unfinished crocheted doll clothes with her things. I hear her when I try to make her recipes. It isn't the same. I can never accept that I won't see her again. Sometimes, I think of Erzebet, alone in the tower. Denied her children, her husband and parents dead, no one to talk to accept her jailor. If nothing else, that alone prompts me to look more into her story. Besides, I know my mom would have approved.