Monday, January 25, 2010

A question from one of our blog readers

Hi everyone: We have been asked the question below by one of our kind followers of our blog.........


"Could you share some of your research info? Your dolls are wonderful! There is so little info in print about the history of these ladies, but a lot of misinformation!"

We really appreciate the wonderful praise and compliments so much from everyone but I felt I needed to publically address why this question cannot be answered on our blog, and why no techniques and undressed dolls will appear here. I even hesitate to put such detailed photos of any of our dolls and dresses up but how else will the fans of our work get to see it.

To answer our readers question:

We have spent years of research on 17th and 18th century English wooden dolls, including quite a bit of time over a 3 year period in England handled quite a few of the rarest examples. There is not much we do not know or can't answer about these dolls. We have worked for years perfecting our dolls to be the only historically accurate museum quality reproductions made by anyone today with their quality, accuracy and patinas so I am afraid we do not openly share our techniques or knowledge we have learned so far but its for a good reason.

One reason is that there have been very underhanded people out there who have tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to copy our work and get a quick and free ride on our success, and have even harassed and tried their best to pump a couple of or best friends to try to get as much information out of them about how we make our dolls, our techniques and research. We even found out that one of the people on our long time mailing list was forwarding every photo we e-mailed to her, to this underhanded person. Lucky for us, our friends are very loyal to us and cannot stomach this kind of behavior.

The second reason is that we will be writing a book on 17th and 18th century English wooden dolls one day in the future which will finally mean a book with only the most accurate and correct information on English woodens of the 17th and 18th century which will prove a lot of info out there in books to be totally incorrect. A perfect example of this misinformation out there is all references to how the late 17th century English wooden dolls were carved and turned...........I am afraid they are all totally wrong! We know this because we have one here.
There will be so much information in our book that will prove wrong a lot of what has been written.

Again, thanks to everyone for all your wonderful comments and praise. It makes what we do even more fulfilling for us.
(I love the one saying we must be time traveling doll makers from the past ;o)

Best Wishes: The Old Pretenders

2 comments:

  1. I missed this post when it came out, I have been far too busy... I am totally THRILLED at the prospect of a book written by yourselves, that will be fabulous. My reference collection will not be complete until your book is published, and I have purchased one of the first copies! x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just discovered your wonderful blog. I've carved some dolls of my own designs but have always loved these "odd beauties". Sign me up for a copy of your book when you finally write it!

    ReplyDelete