Collecting Costume Dolls

by Jenneke JR.

 I got my first costume doll from my father. I was very little by then. I guess, I was 4 or 5 years old at that time. It was a girl from Zeeland here in Holland. She was very nice, but obvious I was too young by then, because I ruined her completely. Undressed her and her arms and legs were out of control. When I grew older, I tried to reconstruct her again with the help of my mother. It costed her many hours of hard work to rebuild her so that the doll at least looked like her old self again, but finally she succeeded.

After this first doll, I received some other ones. In the beginning not only "real" costume dolls, but also dolls in special costumes which you got for free if you bought a product like soap just like they did in the past with keyrings. Of course, I loved them as well and put them away in my collection, but it wasn’t till I was 10/1s1 years old before my real interest for collecting costume dolls started.

I started then too with cutting out some pictures and stories of any magazine or newspaper that wrote something about costume dolls or people who wear costumes in real life. And I received some postcards from time to time with costume dolls on it for my collection from family and friends who went to foreign countries.

We also went to some special Costume Museum in Holland and abroad when I grow older. One of the highlights was visiting the "Openlucht Museum" in Arnhem where you can find some farm houses people lived in the past here in Holland and they have a special exhibition of costumes. There I got the opportunity to see most of the costumes people wear over the years in Holland. I never realized there were so many different costumes in our country. We bought a book there and that really helped me to locate most of the costumes. Shortly after that, I even made a big map of Holland with all the places on it they were still wearing these costumes. Unfortunately, during the years these places became smaller and smaller.

On one of my trips to Scheveningen (near Den Haag on the sea) I discovered a souvenirshop on the boulevard that sold a lot of different Dutch costume dolls. Obvious they were made by the same "fabric", but I couldn’t locate that "fabric". It took me years before I realized that these dolls weren’t made in a fabric but that they were totally handmade by someone who lived in Amstelveen near Amsterdam! No wonder I couldn’t find the "fabric" before!

I wrote to the lady who made them and received an order form back. She even sold dolls in different sizes, but I decided to concentrate myself on the size from which I had more dolls already. By the end of the 70’s, my father and I even paid the lady in Amstelveen a visit to see how she made the dolls. That was a real experience. Of course, we also bought two Dutch costume dolls she made in her shop. To my regret I heard some years ago that the lady died and that she had nobody to continue her work so the shop was sold.

During the 80’s, when we didn’t go on a holiday anymore, my costume doll collection didn’t grow much and these days it almost stopped at all. I’m really running out of space to show them all in my room and to combine them with my other collections like my plush animal collection or my big Don Johnson collection, but I’m sure I’ll add some other doll(s) to my collection from time to time in the near future.

Note: The three photos above are photos of Jenneke JR’s Costume Doll Collection in 1979.