Throwback Thursday review: Armand Marseille 560a

I'm the one and only RagingMoon1987, and...you're not???  Sigh, after awhile one starts to run out of smart-aleck ways to open a post.  Anyway, the purchase of today's doll dates back a month and a half to the second of August, which was a rather dark night indeed.  That was the night Grandma died and I desperately needed a pick-me-up, so with "Amaryllis" blaring in the background I reeled in this little poppet, my first antique bisque doll.  I've chosen to name her "Hattie," an appropriately old-fashioned name for an old-fashioned doll.

Hattie is a 1910 Armand Marseille 560a with a life history that I can only guess about.  For example, neither I nor Vintage Addie (Hattie's Etsy seller) know what caused this...

...or THIS...

...but it must've been quite a mishap!  Addie conjectures that Hattie was dropped on her head at one point, and to me that seems like the most rational explanation.  How this doll survived to be repaired is anyone's guess since we all probably know what porcelain is like when it breaks, but survive she did.  Most of the affordable bisque dolls on Etsy have problems like this, but I don't mind much.  It just gives them more of a story.  Besides...have y'all seen the asking prices for a doll like this in perfect shape???  Yikes!

Now, guess what time it is?  It's digression time!!!  With a name like "Marseille" one might think that Hattie would be a French doll.  Indeed, the French made some VERY nice dolls during the heyday of bisque poppets (Bleuette, whom I love, is French), but Hattie is not French.  Armand Marseille was based out of Thuringia, which happens to be the state of Germany that my father's people come from.  Many great doll companies of the Victorian and Edwardian periods were based in Thuringia, with Armand Marseille being just one.  Anyway, the company's namesake Armand Marseille was born in 1856 (he was Russian, if y'all can believe that), and his crew began production of doll heads in 1885.  At their peak Armand Marseille was producing over a thousand dolls a day, with my little Hattie being one of these many dolls.  Another of these thousand-a-day dolls was a young lady with red hair and brown eyes, whom I nicknamed "Heather."  I've spoken of "Heather" a couple of times in the past, but for the sake of reference here she is again.

"Heather" is one of the ones that sadly got away.  She cost way more than I could ever have afforded, and the store that kept her has since closed.  I don't know where "Heather" ended up after that, but to misquote the Magnificent Moodies, I know she's out there somewhere...or one like her is out there somewhere, take your pick.  Heather was in a cabinet with at least twenty other bisque dolls that were mostly of German origin and I wish I could've gotten her, but it just wasn't meant to be...not yet, anyway.  I might find her again; the store might reopen and she might be there, or she might be at some junk shop in Kennett where the proprietor of the store said she was moving.  I'm not betting on it, but it's possible that "Heather" might become Heather, without quotation marks.  She cost about the same as your average Volks Super Dollfie, which is high but not as high as some of the prices online.

Another tangent (this one is not so brief):  most of the bisque dolls in the shop where Heather resided were German, belonging to companies like Kestner, Simon and Halbig, and Kammer and Reinhardt.  I do remember seeing exactly one French doll, a little blonde Steiner girl that was about the same size as a Yo-SD.  LOL, I remember now that I felt a lot of empathy for that little Steiner, as she looked like she knew she was out of place among so many larger German dolls.  Like "Heather," the Steiner was expensive, but not quite as expensive due to her smaller size.  I might have been able to afford her if I'd scrimped a bit (or a lot), but the shop closed and that was that.  But I often wonder why there were so many German dolls and so few French dolls in that store.  Some collectors tend to prefer one over the other for some reason or another, so maybe that's why.  As Venus A. Dodge puts it in her book Making Old-Fashioned Dolls,

An odd kind of snobbery exists among some collectors whereby they regard all French dolls as superior to German and will pay twice as much for a poor-quality Jumeau than for a fine-quality Armand Marseilles.

It would probably be safe to assume that there are others that feel the opposite is true, either because they prefer the simpler German aesthetic or due to some other factor.  I won't ever be able to confirm or disprove that these dolls all came from someone who favored German dolls over French ones, or even if they're all from the same person, but it's fun to speculate.  As to me, myself...well, I'll admit to having a slight preference towards German dolls like Hattie since I'm of German decent myself.  I'm particularly fond of Simon and Halbig dolls with their sweet little faces, but I am by no means a "German dolls only" type.  Bleuette, as I mentioned above, is French, and I adore her.  Indeed, I doubt even the most hardcore German doll fan could resist this cute little face.  I can't help wondering if the Steiner doll I saw at that store was a Bleuette, by the way.  She was the right size, but as far as I know Bleuette was never produced by Steiner.  If my memory serves me correctly, Bleuette was a child of Jumeau.

Now, back to Miss Hattie here.  As I said above she dates from 1910 and would thus be around 108 years old.  She's not quite as old as my china doll Eva, whom I estimate to be around 128 years of age (give or take), but she's old enough.  Hattie is about seven inches from head to toe, way smaller than my Horsman doll Anita and roughly the same size as Red, my little Ashton-Drake boy.  I also threw in Rosie, a little water baby that I randomly bought at Wal-Mart.

Here's a closer look at how Hattie compares with Red and Rosie.  She fits in pretty well, though none of them could ever share clothes.

Just for giggles, here's how Eva's head compares in size to Hattie's whole little dollyself.  Hattie has a bigger head than Eva does, even though Eva is supposed to be the adult doll.

The library has this gargantuan coffee table book entitled simply The Doll, and it is full to bursting with pictures of mostly antique dolls from various parts of the world.  One photograph shows a brown eyed, brown-haired bisque doll and a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired china doll (both German), and the caption describes the pair as "the difference between a cloudy day and one resplendent with sunlight."  Said description provides a good idea of the contrast between matte, slightly rough bisque and glistening, slippery-smooth china, though Hattie's expression is much more cheerful than that of the bisque doll in the book, and Eva's coloring isn't as sunshiney as that of the china doll in the book.  The book goes on to elaborate a bit about the pair's personalities, how they grew to be close friends, and how their interactions with their French shelfmates were polite but lacking in warmth.  As with the two dolls in the book, Hattie and Eva look like they could easily become great friends as they've both been through a lot and they both speak the same native tongue.  As one last tidbit, I'm looking forward to having Eva whole again.  I have everything I need either located or in my possession except for stuffing.  Since sawdust was the stuffing of choice for china dolls, I'll have to grub up something like that.  And no, pencil sharpener shavings won't work!

With yet another tangent behind us, Armand Marseille released several character dolls like Floradora and Queen Louise, but "Heather" and Hattie are both "dolly face" dolls (or so I thought).  To prevent yet another tangent I'll just provide a link to the definitions of "dolly face" and "character doll."  "Heather" has a dimple in her chin that makes me think she MIGHT be a Queen Louise, but having never looked at her neck I can't tell for certain.  Hattie is a dolly face as far as I know, though her face does have a bit more personality than those of other dolly face dolls.  Her face reminds me a little of Kestner's Hilda, in fact, which is good because I adore Hilda (EDIT, 9/26/18:  the 560a is indeed considered a character face).  But first things first.  Like most (but not all) well-behaved bisque dolls, Hattie wears a wig.  Since Hattie is a baby it would've been more acceptable for her to go wigless, but she's got her wig in place...sort of.  It's in pretty rough shape.

With this wig I'm boldly going where I've never gone before, at least as a dolly lover.  Vintage Addie thinks this hair is human hair, and I have to say that I agree with this opinion.  It's not frizzy enough to be mohair or wool, it's not curly like a karakul wig would be, and it's definitely not synthetic.  It's glued in place, and the glue shows here and there.  I'm not sure if it was glued in place at the factory or after Hattie got broken.  The wig cap is pretty thick.  I think it may be made of canvas but there's no way for me to be certain about that.

When I palpate the top of Hattie's wig I can tell that she has an open-top head.  Sometimes these dolls had heads that were all one piece with a solid headcap, but more often they were open at the top, allowing most likely for ease in placing the eyes and teeth.  Usually the opening is covered by an item called a pate (pronounced "PAYT" not to be confused with the foodstuff which is pronounced "pa-TAY"), but as far as I can tell Hattie has no pate.  The top of her head feels too soft for that, and indeed when I lifted the back of her wig I could see a little bit into Hattie's head.  To quote Frank Zappa, she's got a whole bunch of nothing in there.  Okay, I take that back, because the eyes and the knots that hold the doll together are in there.  That would mean that Hattie has more going for her than Zappa's clueless valley girl, which is pretty sad when one stops to think about it.  Unfortunately I was unable to get a good photo of the inside of the head, for reasons soon to be revealed.

If I were feeling very, VERY bold I'd peel off Hattie's wig and make a pate (it can be done with a Styrofoam ball), but I don't fancy monkeying with this head much in the shape that it's in, and frankly I don't fancy monkeying with the wig either.  The cap is starting to tear and crumble and lose hair.

I could probably find another wig if this current one gets annihilated, but I don't want to annihilate the current wig.  It's not every day one finds a doll with human hair anymore, and I want to keep this wig in one piece as long as I can.  The tear does allow me to get a good look at Hattie's markings, though.  Not all bisque dolls are marked but Hattie lucked out, with her marking making it loud and clear that she is an Armand Marseille.

As is often the case with my pictures this one bites whale bubbles, and in all honesty I have no idea if I'm reading it correctly when I see it.  In short the marking confirms that Hattie is an Armand Marseille doll, and the number on the back of her neck reads "560a," which may be some sort of reference to the doll's size and the mold used.  I dunno; I'm still a noob when it comes to bisque dolls, but I know it all has to mean something.  I think it's a reference to the mold number, as dolls in many sizes are marked "560a," and they all bear at least a passing resemblance to my little Hattie.

Before I go to the face, these bisque dolls usually have halfway decent ears, and Hattie...well, actually these ears are better than halfway decent.  They're pretty nice ears, in fact, especially for one so small.

The line running behind Hattie's right ear is another huge crack.  Poor little gal really had an accident!  However, I can see why someone went to all the trouble to put her back together, as she has a delightful little expression.

One of the things I love the most about these old bisque dolls are their eyes, and Hattie's eyes are no exception.  Her eyes are a lovely shade of blue, and they're so little!  Her eyebrows are multi-stroke brows in a light shade of brown, and her lashes are painted in the style typical of both French and German bisque dolls.

I suspect that that left eye had to be put back in place given the amount of glue that's showing around the edges.  I don't like the way that looks (it looks a bit too much like an infection), but I'd rather have a gob of glue in the corner of Hattie's eye than a loose eye rattling around inside her head.  Plus, it's straight.  Not everyone goes to such pains to make sure inset eyes are straight, particularly if the person setting the eyes is an amateur repairman, so seeing these eyes straight pleases me. 

The rest of Hattie's face is smeared with glue and thus looks very dirty.  I may have to find a way to remedy that, as it detracts from her sweet little expression.  Anyway, Hattie's lips are painted in an orange-rose shade and has two little inset teeth visible inside an open mouth.

Not terribly unlike the mouth we saw on Grandma's old Shirley Temple doll.  Like Shirley, Hattie has a lot of dust and crud inside that mouth that I haven't dared try to clean out, so this area looks worse than it is in real life.  If I ever get adventurous with a cotton swab I may try to clean the inside of this head so that Hattie doesn't look like she's chewing on something she shouldn't.  Except for the cracks and the smears of glue this head looks okay.  My compliments to Armand Marseille for being able to set such tiny eyes in straight, and for getting a halfway decent paint job on such a small head.

That brings us to the body now.  Luckily Hattie isn't all-bisque like some of these small dolls were, or she'd have been a goner for sure in that mystery mishap.  Her little body is made of a material that I've spoken of in the past, composition.

This was quite common back in the day, as the majority of bisque dolls (or at least the ones I've seen) have bodies made of stuffed kid, wood, or compo, with cloth also making appearances on the smaller dolls.  Only the smallest ones were all-bisque, and before bisque dolls fell out of style altogether they showed up with cardboard bodies, but most of the ones I've personally seen have strung compo bodies with joints aplenty.  For some reason some companies thought that having a compo body meant the doll was unbreakable and thus the label "bebes incassables" ("unbreakable babies") often appeared on the French dolls.  Uh...yeah.  Again quoting Venus A. Dodge,

Despite the claims that the dolls were unbreakable...bisque heads are very fragile, and of what use was the sturdy composition body once it had lost its head?

Little Hattie proves that accidents did happen, and further confirmation is found if one looks into the history of the Alexander Doll and Toy Company.  When Beatrice Alexander was a little girl she witnessed plenty of broken dolls (her father worked at a doll hospital), and this inspired her to make her own dolls in materials that wouldn't break.  Thus why we have Madame Alexander dolls today, and thus why even the most expensive ones (Cissy) are made of hard plastic rather than porcelain or resin.  Now that I've pounded that nail into the wood, Hattie is the size that all-bisque dolls sometimes came in, but her body is definitely compo.  It's very lightweight, and it's not as smooth as the composition of my other dolls.  Her dimpled little knees retain a bit of their old shine, but that's it.

Her little hands and feet show some wear, further attesting to Hattie's life as a much-loved plaything.

The small of her back has a little hole, as well as the pencil-drawn number "1910."  There are also some other smaller holes, which I hope are not boreholes from small insects.

If one wanted to nitpick one could say that some of these turn-of-the-century bisque dolls are early ball-jointed dolls, as their bodies are usually have multiple strung ball joints and come apart at said joints if the internal string comes undone.  However, Hattie is a small doll AND a baby doll, and thus she does not have very many joints.  She is loosely strung at the hips and neck, but her arms unfortunately came off when I removed her jacket.  They were only attached with bits of rubber band anyway.

I'll be able to repair this, so no biggie.  I'll need some tiny eye hooks, some sort of clay or paste to hold the hooks in, and some elastic.  In the meantime though I'll just pull Hattie's jacket extra tight.  That sounds like a crap solution, but in truth it works quite well.  When strung her arms have some basic back-and-forth movement, and her legs have this same motion, though not enough to photograph.  Hattie's neck is ball-jointed (formally called a "socket head"), and if I'm super-careful I can turn or tip her head.

I try not to do this too much, though.

A lot of times these old bisque dolls come sans clothes, but Hattie lucked out.  She is simply but warmly dressed in a cap, a sweater, and a skirt, all in earth tones.

The cap is my favorite part of the outfit, and it's unfortunately also the most fragile.  The material has a few holes from age.

After I'm done taking pictures it's going right back on Hattie's head and it's staying put.  Anyway, the material is printed with a checkered pattern in two shades of tan, and a darker brown floral pattern over the top of that.

Those blossoms remind me a little of open cotton bolls, but I doubt that's what they're supposed to be.  They're probably peonies or lotuses or something like that.  Trimming the front edge of this cap is a row of picoting, also in a shade of tan.  Given Hattie's age, these might be handmade picots.

Hattie's sweater is a simple one, made of this nice, thick woven material.

It has a little bit of trim around the neck, but not much else.

Here's what the interior looks like; it's lined with some sort of knit fabric that keeps the woven stuff from ravelling.  It does its job so well that hems weren't really needed.

The hems are done, nevertheless, with tiny, even stitches.  I assume that this was machine-done given the consistency of the stitch size, but it may have just been one very skilled little kid or mama working by hand.

This is a nice little piece of doll clothing, but it does have one flaw.  The back has no snaps or buttons or anything of that sort.  It's held shut with a straight pin, and while this method is not my favorite method of fastening clothes it does allow me to adjust the fit of the sweater.

Lastly, this skirt.  The skirt is made of tan, brown, and dark blue plaid woven fabric, and it's probably the crudest piece of Hattie's outfit.

The back seam is held together with big loose stitches, and the top is coming undone.  Easy fix.

The top is also not well-fitted, and I have to fold it over and pin it to get it to stay up.  Once it IS in place though, it tends to stay put.

Overall this outfit (or at least parts of it) suggest that someone, maybe Hattie's first young owner (?), was bound and determined to dress her dolly and didn't care if it was 100% perfect.  Neither should I, really; Vintage Addie said that the clothes were tattered, but the only tatter I see is that hole in the hat.  This is an outfit that I could easily picture a real turn-of-the-century baby wearing, particularly in the wintertime.  In addition to looking warm and cozy, the clothes add a certain amount of cuddle factor to Hattie's otherwise stiff body.  I admit that I rather like holding this little doll, though as fragile as she is I have to force myself not to.  The only thing missing in my eyes is a diaper, and that will be easy to cobble together with a small piece of cloth and either a straight pin or a safety pin...that is, if I can find my small safety pins!!!  Yes, Hattie is wearing a safety pin on her skirt, but I didn't supply that, and it's being used to hold the skirt up so I can't use it for a diaper.  I used to wear small safety pins on my blue jeans, but I took them off after they became a symbol of raving liberalism and...well, I don't know where the hell I put them!  <sings off-key>  I know they're out there somewhere...somewhere, somewhere...

...ahem, where was I?  Oh yes, I was just about to wrap things up.  What's hot about Hattie and what's not.  Spoiler:  most of the bad stuff is not the fault of the doll or the maker...or the current owner!

BAD
*First and foremost, the head is smashed.  It's been repaired, but I'm hesitant to do much with this doll in terms of restoration work due to those cracks.
*Glue got all over her face during the repair work!  That makes her poor little face look filthy.
*Wig is falling apart, and I'm not sure how to fix this either.  Doll wigs in this size and style are hard to come by.
*Arms fell off when I disrobed the doll (that one IS an easy fix).
*Clothes are a little on the crude side, though she IS dressed and she looks pretty darn cozy!

GOOD
*Delightful little smile!  I can see why some little kid loved this doll.
*Beautiful eyes.  I love bisque doll eyes anyway, but I love these eyes A LOT.
*Fully dressed.  Not all bisque dolls I run into are dressed, but Hattie has a full outfit.
*Arms can be repaired, and I look forward to doing so.
*Ill fit of the skirt can be mended as well.
*She makes a wonderful little companion for my other small baby dolls, and for my larger dolls as well.  I didn't show this, but Hattie fits wonderfully into the lap of one of my MSD dolls.

Oh, if only this little doll could talk!  Imagine the stories she'd have for us!  Hattie will never be a priceless collectable, but she's still got plenty of charm and despite her damage I'm pretty darn pleased to have her around.  I love how she smiles in spite of the hardships she's endured, and I can see why she was much loved in her past life as a plaything.  I look forward to getting her arms fastened back onto her body, and I have plans to sew her some new clothes as well.  Given the poor condition of the wig some nice new hats are a must for Miss Hattie.  Hmmm...hats for Hattie!!!  Might make a good title for a future blog post.  Now if only I could find a Simon and Halbig doll in the same size...IF they came in such a small size!

Speaking of Simon and Halbig, time for a tangent.  My search for a decent Simon and Halbig has helped me put together a possible explanation for the abundance of German dolls in my erstwhile favorite flea market.  German dolls were cheaper than French dolls in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and as a result there simply appears to be more of them.  Etsy is crawling with them, for example, and to my shock a lot of them are quite affordable, with some costing about as much as a small Bobobie...or less.  Granted, in order to be affordable these dolls are almost obligated to be fixer-uppers, and so it is with the girls on my wish list.  One has her eyes jammed shut, one is minus her arms and a wig, the third has her legs detached and is missing a wig, and the fourth is also wigless and has her eyes detached.  Having seen the condition that Hattie's wig is in, I think I know why these dolls are all bald!  Luckily for Hattie and the other dolls wigs are easy to find, but I'm not so sure about arms.  Anyway, they're all German, and by sheer coincidence three of the four happen to be Armand Marseille dolls (the exception is the young lady without arms, who was made by Ernst Heubach).  However, dolls in good condition can be found for a reasonable price if one looks hard enough, like this young lady who looks to me like a supersized version of my Hattie.  Indeed, she costs less than even the cheapest of my ball-jointed dolls.  Ironically, the only German dolls that I have found with prices that are out of my reach...are all Simon and Halbig dolls.  The cheapest one I found was six hundred bucks.

No matter, really.  I do like Simon and Halbig dolls, but having one is not an absolute must.  At the beginning of the year I didn't have an antique bisque doll at all, and now I have Hattie so I really have no room to complain.  She will reside on the shelf in my bedroom with Eva and Johnny and Alistair, and a handful of other dolls that I didn't want to box up like Momoko and Jaylin.  Hattie should be happy there.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987

UPDATE, 9/27/18:  I forgot to compare Hattie to one of my favorite small babies, Suzy Cute.  Here they are.

When the two are seated Hattie looks like the larger doll, but when the two are laid out things change.

Hattie and Suzy look like they might be able to share clothes (except for hats), but until I get Hattie's arms reattached that'll have to wait.  When that happens I'll put another addendum in.

UPDATE, 10/2/18:  Remember above when I said Hattie needed a diaper?  Well, who needs a diaper when you can have awesome knitted pantaloons instead?  Y'all see the cuffs peeking out from under Hattie's skirt?

Another Etsy find, from a store called Doll Universe.  The proprietor intended these for dolls like Momoko and Pullip, while I was hoping they'd fit Usaggie.  No dice as the drawers proved too long for Usaggie's stubby legs, but the knitting stretches nicely and fits Hattie's tubby little waist with no fuss.  Granted, these pantaloons are a little too long for Hattie too, but it's hard to tell when she's wearing her full-length skirt.  Now I don't have to worry about Hattie's nether region being flashed to the world when I seat her (that was a problem beforehand).  Now all this doll needs are some booties and she'll be ready for winter...which sadly isn't too far off.