Bride doll

This bride doll was made in Germany between 1891and 1910, partly by the famous dollmakers Simon and Halbig in the Thūringen region of Central Germany. While Simon and Halbig were renowned for their production of porcelain heads, they did not produce completed dolls. The head would have been sent to another factory, probably within Germany, to be finished with leather body parts.

This doll's face is made of bisque porcelain, tinted with a matte finish to create a realistic skin tone, as opposed to china porcelain which characteristically has a high gloss finish. She is what is known as a ‘dolly-faced’ doll, because of her relatively expressionless face, which contrasts with later ‘character-faced’ dolls.

Although today they are almost exclusively collector’s items, most bisque dolls were originally intended for children. But up until the mid-1800s, these dolls were almost always made to resemble adult women. They were intended to be played with by children of affluent families, and to be dressed up in contemporary adult fashion. This particular doll is dressed in typical wedding fashion of the early 1900s.

The demand for bisque head dolls declined dramatically during World War I. However, the moulds used to create them continued to be used to make dolls from less expensive materials.