Find Bebe Vintage Glam Boyshort at Amazon
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Who doesn’t love a beauteous creamy porcelain faced doll dressed in long flowing dresses of so long ago? Today the antiquate dolls available on the market were made by a handful of manufacturers who were from either France or Germany, where the art of doll making was at it is peak in the years amidst 1840 and 1930. During these years there emerged in France a young man by the name of Leon Casimir Bru, the youngest son of a weaver.The young Bru went to work for a dollmaker in Paris… and history started out there. Soon after he begun in the work of doll making, Bru opened his own formulating company. His initial dolls resembled other makers’ creations, but his later ones, 1870 and on, carried a signature mark of Bru as he worked to stand out from the some other makers of the time. Today we have the highly sought after, highly exquisite, highly highpriced Bru dolls, a name each aggregator longs to have in his collection. Also emergent in France at that time, or sometime before Bru, was Francois Jumeau. He married into the business, marrying the niece of a doll maker. When Jumeau’s wife died, he opened his own company, his own porcelain factory, and made the bebe dolls that became so popular in those times and are so usual now… dols that looked like a little girl rather than like an adult woman. The oldfashioned Jumeau today is highly prized for it is delicate, exquisite beauty, which was fabricated among the years of 1972 to 1899. In Germany for the duration of those years the German manufacturers were just as busy. They were probably led by J.D. Kestner who was making dolls as early as 1820. By 1860, after Kestner had passed from physical life and his grandson took over the business. They purchased their own porcelain factory to make porcelain heads. They continued to make dolls until 1938. Armand Marseille was another German maker whose dolls are highly prized by ageold accumulators today. Marseille was one of the biggest and best known porcelain doll head makers. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1856, he emmigrated to Germany with his family ca. 1860 and doll business was going strong by 1886 after he purchased a toy factory and a porcelain factory, constructing 1000 heads a day from 1900 – 1930. All types of dolls were made there; bisque child, baby, lady and reputation dolls with kid leather bodies. As Marseille worked, so did Heinrich Handwerck, who was beginning his career in 1876. In 1902 Kammer and Reinhardt purchased Handwerck out and produced the Handwerck dolls until 1832. The firstborn dolls by Handwerck were designed by Handwerck but formulated by Simon and Halbig and marked by very high quality that continued underneath Kammer and Reinhardt. Ernst Kammer and Franz Reinhardt founded the Kammer and Reinhardt company in 1886 in Waltershausen, Thuringia, Germany. Designers of their own heads, they had them developed by Simon and Halbig as they did not own a porcelain factory. As stated above, they purchased the Handwerck company and then purchased the Simon and Halbig company as well. Ernst Heubach, the son of a weaver, entered the world of doll making when he married the daughter of Armand Marseille in 1919. The two companies, Heubach and Marseille, unified and became the United Porcelain Factory of Koppelsdorf, Germany. The companies went their own ways once more in 1939. The exquisite dolls made so long ago by this handful of French and German doll makers are now searched for by severe gatherers of the time. Seeing the gorgeous faces with the painted or glass eyes looking straight at you with a sense of wisdom that a doll cannot actually have… makes you feel the essence of the doll maker himself has been made a real percentage of each doll.
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