I couldn't resist taking this little doll home, when I saw her in a local charity shop for £5.00 yesterday.
I remember my mum having a box of similar dolls, her favourite one being a black doll, which she put too close to the open fire one day and the dolls head cracked. She has been a big hit with my girls who are taking extra special care of her, and I am finding her in various spots around the house at the moment snuggly wrapped in a blanket or snuggled in amongst other toys! I am having a hard job confining her to my sewing room.
We have named her Madeleine because she reminded the us of similar toys that were taken to the Bagpuss shop. Oh how I loved Bagpuss when I was little and I can always remember the start of it, the little mice, the rag doll, all of it.
Each programme would begin the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily
who owned a shop.
However, it did not sell anything; instead, Emily
would find lost and broken things and display them in the window of the
shop, so their owners could one day come and collect them. She would
leave the object in front of her favourite stuffed toy — the large,
saggy, pink and white striped cat named Bagpuss. She would then recite
a verse:
“ |
Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing |
” |
When Emily had left, Bagpuss would wake up.
The programme shifted from sepia to colour film, and various toys in the shop would also come to life: Gabriel the toad and a rag doll called Madeleine. The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle, while the mice carved on the side of the "mouse organ" (a small mechanical pipe organ which played rolls of music) woke up and scurried around, singing in high-pitched voices.
The toys would discuss what the new object was; someone (usually
Madeleine) would tell a story related to the object,often with a song, which
would be accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo
and then the mice, singing in high pitched squeaky harmony as they
worked, would mend the broken object. The newly mended thing would then
be put in the shop window, so that whoever had lost it would see it as
they went past, and could come in and claim it. Then Bagpuss would
start yawning again, and as he fell asleep the colour faded to sepia
and they all became toys again.
“ |
And when Bagpuss was asleep,
All his friends were asleep.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was just an old wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat,
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams,
But Emily loved him |
” |
I thought it was so magical.
Anyhoo - Madeliene has a porcelain head and is filled with wood shavings in her body and soft stuffing in her arms (one of which looks like it has been part eaten by moths). The lady in the shop said she was made around 1940s/50s. I don't have much knowledge about dolls though... I would love to know some more about her - if you know anything about dolls I would love to hear from you.
Have a great weekend everyone, whatever you do xxx