Are You a
Plangonologist?
If you don’t know the word, plangonologist means
someone who collects dolls.
Janet Wees
Joyce, a retired Calgary teacher, is
one. Enamoured of dolls from her
childhood, she began to collect them in
her twenties. When she and her sister
were five years old, they received a Baby
Bubbles doll as a gift. Those dolls had
wooden heads and bodies, with mohair
hair. As with other little girls of the time,
dolls became their playmates and teachers
of the world around them. Dolls stimulated their
imaginations and developed cognitive skills that
would be important as they got older, for example, in
dramatizing (both women became actresses as adults), speech and motor
skills (both women taught language arts in their careers as teachers), social
and emotional skills.
As Joyce reached adulthood, she
saw her first antique doll in a
window display of the now-closed
June Dyson Antiques store, and she
was hooked. In the mid-seventies
an inheritance enabled her to
begin purchasing the old-fashioned
dolls she loved, and June Dyson’s
became the store where Joyce
purchased most of her dolls. They
were put on display in her home
and were named individually,
by what Joyce perceived as their
interior character based on their
external appearances. Eventually
the dolls had their own room in the
family home.
Her favourite doll was Cordelia,
that first antique doll seen in June
Dyson’s window in Calgary. The
doll represented a time around
1910 and was made by Simon
& Halbig, well-known pre-First
World War European doll makers.
So, what makes people
collect dolls? What is the appeal?
They are tiny creatures with
expressions that make us happy.
Their clothes may take us back
to earlier times or help us look
at modern fashion. A doll might
be full of memories, either from
being an antique item one’s
grandparent owned, a prize won
during childhood, or a gift from
someone special. Our imaginations
live through dolls; we can live
their lives, wear their clothes, live
in their eras. They can keep us
company when we are lonely, and
we can live vicariously through
whatever adventures we bestow
upon them. And if we are lucky,
there may be some monetary
value attached to collectors’ items
inherited from family members or
found in antique stores.
Dolls as we know them have
been around since before 2000
BC (in Japan), but there is
archaeological proof that dolls
Top: Dolls, dolls and more dolls.
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