Elise and Cissette white ballerinas

Back in March, I blogged about my white Elise Ballerina and how to date an Elise Ballerina by the color of her tutu. I also mentioned that I have a white Cissette Ballerina that I believe may be from the same year as my Elise Ballerina (1958). She is definitely from either 1957 or 1958, since her wig has the triple-stitched part.

Here is a picture of the two of them together:

Madame Alexander white ballerinas: Elise and Cissette

I'll blog more about my Cissette Ballerina in a separate post.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Site Under Construction

Don't mind my mess!  This website is temporarily under construction while I change hosts and update the site.  The buy buttons have therefore been disabled temporarily until I get everything fixed.  In the meantime, if you'd like to buy my ebook on how to restring a vintage strung doll, contact me at admin at doll stringing dot com.
Read more

Cleaning mold off of a hard plastic strung doll

Image
I recently blogged about a Nancy Ann Style Show doll we are selling. Dash of Spice is made of painted hard plastic, a type of doll that seems to be rather susceptible to mold problems. Basically, a fine, almost powdery mold grows on the painted surface of the plastic — I'm assuming only on dolls that are stored in humid climates, as Colorado (where we live) is too dry for that type of thing. The mold can be cleaned off but tends to leave pale discolorations where it grew. My mom bought Dash of Spice fairly early in our years of collecting and acquiring dolls. We're not sure if we just didn't notice then, or if it has gotten worse over the years, but when we were getting ready to take her picture we noticed that she had a powdery-like white residue on her clothes. We stripped her, and found splotches of mold on her arms, chest, back, and legs. At the same time, I realized that the doll was filthy: She had a thin shadow of dirt over every bit of exposed plastic. I immediatel
Read more

How to date vintage Madame Alexander Cissette dolls

Image
I've blogged recently about a couple of my Madame Alexander Cissette dolls: my white ballerina , and a redhead with a fancy hairdo that I partially restored . I also mentioned the triple-stitched wig part a couple of times, which dates a Cissette doll to 1957 or 1958. In this post, I want to explain the rest of the ways to date a vintage Cissette doll. When I say "vintage," I mean dolls that were made between 1957 (when the doll was first introduced) and 1963. Cissette's mold was also used for the Portrette dolls, which were made between 1968 and 1973. Madame Alexander still uses the mold in her modern dolls, but the plastic is pretty different than what was used in the 1950s and 1960s. A doll collector who is familiar with both vintage and modern Cissettes should be able to tell the difference pretty easily: The plastic is lighter and cheaper, and the face paint tends to be more gaudy. Cissette dolls all have high-heeled feet and jointed knees, except for the Sleepi
Read more