So many dolls!!

OK, I have gone through all the dolls.

I have chosen just a tick over 100.

And while that is a bit more than my goal, some of them will sit down and don't need a dollstand, so it's all going to be fine.

We have so many wonderful dolls! Here's a sneak peek at what will be included:

• Madame Alexander Snow White, Cinderella, and all the characters from The Sound of Music
• Apple face dolls
• 19th century French fashion dolls
• tiny miniature dolls
• a Shirley Temple doll
• the Dionne Quintuplets (as babies AND as toddlers)
  
• 20th century icons: Cabbage Patch Kids, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Chatty Baby
• AND LOTS MORE!

I'm excited to have reached this hurdle in the process. It is always such a challenge to choose from our collection, because we have so many wonderful artifacts!

I decided not to include "international dolls," because we have so many of those, and I can envision an exhibit featuring them sometime in the future. That really cut down on the number I had to go through.

I think out of all the exhibits I've done here, the hardest one to make selections for was Through the Looking Glass: Highlights from the Glass & China Collections. We have so many pieces! And every single one of them was super fragile. But I'm proud to say, throughout the whole installation and de-installation, I never broke a thing!

There were a few fragile dolls, but mostly those were marked as such, so I knew what I was unwrapping.

Next, I will be researching the dolls to see what our records say about them. And I will be doing some research about doll history in general. I got two wonderful books: Made to Play House by Miriam Formanek-Brunell and Children at Play by Howard P. Chudacoff that I will be reading over the next few weeks. I also got a few doll collector's encyclopedias to help me identify some of the dolls.

This weekend I am excited for the balloon festival! Chris and I go every year, but the past few years the weather hasn't cooperated. It looks good for tonight, so I hope we see lots of balloons! A few went off this morning and we saw them on our way to work. I'm looking forward to seeing more this weekend!