Dianes Dolls

About the Business

We specialise in selling antique, vintage collectable dolls and teddy bears, over the years we’ve earned an honest and knowledgeable reputation in the doll and teddy bear world and have often supplied dolls and teddy bears for film sets, theatre props and TV Studios.

We also offer a Re-String Service for your antique and vintage strung dolls along with Doll Supplies where you’ll find our doll re-stringing rates and doll stringing supplies such as elastic cords and forceps.

Business Products

Dolls History

Dolls have been a part of our lives since prehistoric times. Used to depict religious figures or used as playthings, early dolls were probably made from primitive materials such as clay, fur, or wood. None have survived from prehistoric times although a fragment of an alabaster doll with movable arms from the Babylonian period has been recovered.

Dolls constructed of flat pieces of painted wood with hair made of strings of clay or wooden beads have often been found in Egyptian graves dating back to 2000 BC. Egyptian tombs of wealthy families have included pottery dolls leading some to believe that they were highly cherished possessions. Dolls were also buried in Greek and Roman children's graves. Girls from Greece and Rome dedicated their wooden dolls to goddesses after they were too "grown-up" to play with them anymore.

Most dolls that were found in children's tombs were very simple creations, often made from such materials as clay, rags, wood, or bone. Some of the more unique dolls were made of ivory and wax. The main goal was to make the doll as "lifelike" as possible, which lead to the creation of dolls with movable limbs and removable garments and date back to 600 B.C.

Following this era, Europe became a major hub for doll production and were primarily made of wood. Primitive wooden stump dolls from 16th and 17th century England number less than 30 today. The Grodnertal area of Germany produced many wooden peg dolls, a type of doll that has very simple peg joints and resembles a clothespin.

An alternative to wood was developed in the 1800s called Composition. Composition is a collective term for mixtures of pulped wood or paper that were used to make doll heads and bodies. These mixtures were molded under pressure, creating a durable doll that could be mass produced. Manufacturers closely guarded the recipes for their mixtures, sometimes using strange ingredients like ash or eggshells. Papier-mache, a type of composition, was one of the most popular mixtures.

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