My new Elise display

Recently I got a new Elise to go with the outfit I had custom-made to look like my vintage 1920s wedding dress. I wanted to put her on display, so I had to move around my dolls around a little. I have more dolls than I can display in my cases, so periodically I move some out of the cases and into storage, and bring up others who haven't been displayed in a while.

Anyway, this is my new display:

The Elise in the champagne-colored dress is my wedding Elise. She was quite an ordeal — I'll blog about that in a future post.

The Elise in the yellow formal gown also has quite a story to her.

In the back row, you can see my white Elise Ballerina peeking through. If you'll remember from my post on how to date an Elise Ballerina, her white tutu means she is from 1958, Elise's second year in production.

In the other corner is another of my favorite Elise dolls: an all-original Elise wearing a blue-checked taffeta dress. I'll also blog about her in a future post.

The doll in the middle of the back row is not Elise, but Active Miss from 1954. She is also deserving of her own blog post.

How to date your early Elise Ballerina

Update: Since the writing of this post, I've found different information about how to date Elise ballerinas.  I will write a new post with the new information soon, and update this post with a link to it.

In an earlier post, I introduced you to my first Elise, a white Elise Ballerina. This post will discuss how I determined what year she was made in (1958).

You can date an early (i.e. hard plastic) Elise Ballerina by the color of her tutu. According to Linda Crowsey's 2008 price guide,

* Yellow tutu = 1957
* White tutu = 1958
* Gold tutu = 1959
* Pink tutu = 1960
* Pink tutu with an upswept hairdo = 1961
* Blue = 1962

The years 1963 and 1964 are a little trickier — no color is specified, only that 1963 ballerinas wore small flowers and 1964 ballerinas wore large flowers. However, I think these Elise Ballerinas have either the newer vinyl Elise head or the vinyl Mary-Bel head, and so are easily distinguished from the earlier Elise dolls.

These Elise dolls also appear to have matching Cissette ballerinas. For instance, a gold Cissette ballerina was made in 1959 to match Elise. I also have a white Cissette ballerina whose wig dates her to 1957 or 1958. I'm assuming it is the latter date, since that would correspond with when Elise wore her white tutu.

The Elise I'd love to have

This mint-in-box 1963 Elise Scarlett O'Hara appeared on eBay about a month ago. Scarlett is one of the Elise dolls I would love to be able to add to my collection, and this doll was a particularly beautiful example. Still in her original box with the original tissue and hangtag, she was about as perfect as a vintage doll can get.

Dream with me, will you?

I restyled Snow White's hair correctly!

I was just looking at an auction on eBay for an almost-all-original 1952 Snow White, and it turns out I restyled Snow White's hair correctly!

Here is the picture of the eBay doll's original hairdo (used with permission from rebeccade):

If you look closely, you can see that the hair is pulled back in a piggy tail on each side, then combined into a single tail in the back. You can also see a little bit of the metal barrette (actually a heavy metal wire that hooks into the piggy tail on each side to hold them up) peeking out from under the pink ribbon.

By the way, the seller notes that the pink ribbon is replaced, but she included the original one in the auction, and they look nearly identical.

I have a picture of my Snow White's hair after I restyled it, from almost the same angle:

As you can see, I got the style right — all I'm missing is the barrette and a pink ribbon!

My Elise Ballerina

Fortunately, not every good deal has to be a project doll. I do love my project dolls, but sometimes I feel equally as strong an attachment to an almost-perfect doll.

In a prior post, I mentioned that Madame Alexander is one of my favorite 1950s doll manufacturers to collect. This is especially true for Elise, the 16-inch pre-Barbie fashion doll that Madame Alexander started making in 1957. She made this type of Elise until the early 1960s, when she changed over to the skinny, flat-chested Elise body.

When I was a kid, my mom sometimes would let my sister and I play with her childhood dolls, all but one of which were Madame Alexander. My favorite of these dolls was a redhead Elise Ballerina wearing a pink costume. As a result of this childhood attachment, when I started collecting vintage dolls one of my first missions was to find an Elise Ballerina.

My Elise Ballerina was a great find, to be sure. I only paid about $125 for her, despite the fact that she is complete and unplayed with: She still has her hair net in her hair, and her toe shoe ribbons are still in the factory bows. Her only flaw is that someone apparently didn't like her flowers, and removed them from her tutu. She is also missing her flowered tiara.

As you can see, she is exquisite and well-deserving of her place among my favorite dolls. In my next post, I'll discuss how to date an early Elise Ballerina.

Wendy Bride project doll

I mentioned in a prior post that I love having "project dolls" to fix up and complete. This Madame Alexander doll is probably my biggest project doll of all time, and is not yet complete.

She is tagged 14-inch "Wendy Bride," and is somewhat of a mystery. The outfit and hairdo are identical to those worn by the Lucy Bride produced in 1949 and 1950, which is pictured on pages 77 and 79 of Patricia Smith's Madame Alexander Collector's Dolls. A lovely color picture can also be found on page 196 of Linda Crowsey's Collector's Encyclopedia of Madame Alexander Dolls 1948 - 1965, though Crowsey doesn't reference her as Lucy. According to Crowsey's 2008 price guide, a 14-inch Lucy Bride books for $1,000 and up in mint condition.

I got the doll for an extraordinarily low price — less than $30, if I remember correctly. This was because she was an amputee — she was missing one lovely suntanned leg.

She had her dress and was otherwise in good condition, though, so I decided to go ahead and buy her as a project doll. It took me about a year, but I finally found a nude, bald 14-inch strung Maggie with the same suntanned complexion. I bought the parts doll, restrung Wendy with the new leg, and resold the parts doll (poor dear) for almost the same price I paid for her.

I am lucky enough that my mom has an all-original Lucy Bride in the 17-inch size. Using her outfit for comparison, I've found my doll the appropriate underwear — a pair of white satin undies with a single square snap in back, authentic Madame Alexander — and shoes — white satin center-snap shoes with a smooth snap, the careful stitching characteristic of Madame Alexander, and fuzzy bottoms.

All I am missing now are her stockings and her veil. I've managed to find the correct stockings for another doll — a Madame Alexander Alice in Wonderland — but I doubt I'll be able to ever find the correct veil.

One of my favorite Gingers

I typically have a handful or more of what I call "project dolls." These are dolls that need something — or a lot of somethings — in order to make them complete.

This Ginger is an example, although I actually started with the outfit and not the doll. From the time I acquired the first piece of the outfit, to the time I finally found a doll to wear it, this project doll took about three years to complete.

Why do it that way? Well, for one thing it's often less expensive, as mint, complete dolls typically command a pretty penny. But my biggest reason is that I enjoy working with my project dolls. It gives me a mission, a list of things to watch for as I browse eBay, and often gives me my doll/shopping "fix" at a lesser price.

The pink dress and bloomers were the first pieces of this outfit that I acquired. That was back when I didn't realize the outfit was supposed to include a pinafore; after I learned that, I found the pinafore (untagged) by recognizing it in a picture of a lot of vintage 8-inch doll clothes. The hat I also found as a lot, and convinced the seller to sell it to me separately.

Finally I found the doll. This can sometimes be the hardest part for me, because I like to look for a really good deal. And that she was: I bought her for only $17, and all I had to do was rebraid her hair (the rubber bands had come out, but the hair was still parted and crimped from the braids, so it was easy to do). I even managed to find vintage pink ribbon that looks like original Ginger hair ribbons!

All said and done, I think I spent about $80 on this doll. It seems like a lot, but it seems to be a sought-after outfit: Pre-recession I saw a Ginger wearing this outfit, incomplete and not in as good condition, sell on eBay for considerably more. Regardless, spending time completing the outfit gave me many more hours of enjoyment than winning a single auction ever could have.

Note: This outfit is also Holiday Series #444, though evidently an earlier version of the other one I have. There is also a later outfit, which is pictured in another of my Ginger catalogues, which is (I think) orange with a white organdy apron and a different hat.