Is a Porcelain Doll to Look at or Play With?
I don’t know how many times I’ve brought my daughter to my mother’s house only to have her get scolded for trying to play with my mother’s doll collection. My mother has always been the antique collector type of woman and she’s accumulated a room full of porcelain dolls over the years. As I was growing up I would make sure to stay away from the doll room of the house because not only did they scare me with those big unblinking eyes but my mother was like a hawk in protecting them.
“Collectible porcelain dolls are the most precious and valuable dolls” my mother always used to say to me. “They will be worth millions one day as long as you kids don’t break any of them!” Well, they might be worth a fortune right now but she’ll never see any of the money from them because she’ll never sell them. My mother is so in love with her porcelain doll collection that she would probably like to be buried with a few of them.
It just goes to show you, dolls take on meaning to people. Even though these little porcelain girls are just sitting up on the bookcase and in those doll houses collecting dust year after year, my mother feels something for them and will be transported back in time through her memories whenever she goes to look at them. As she tells her granddaughter: “Antique porcelain dolls are for admiring, not for touching.” She has kept that motto for the past thirty years.
If you own porcelain dolls I urge you to let your children play with them. They were made by an artist who specializes in letting little girls have fun and if you’re just using them as show pieces for your guest room, do yourself a favor and just let it go. There is nothing cuter than seeing a little girl wandering around with her favorite porcelain doll tucked under one arm as she wanders out of bed to get a glass of milk.
Porcelain dolls aren’t meant for adults to collect and gawk at, they are made to be played with and loved by a small child. If only there was some way I could convince my mother that her collection of Victorian porcelain dolls should be played with and not just looked at.
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