American Doll and Toy Museum: Honoring Vets and Dolls!

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A Museum's Progress

So, I’m back!  Trying to keep up, but setting up the museum takes all I’ve got these days.  It is a small, but temporary space, a chance for us to begin while we pursue a larger building for our permanent home.

My friends have stepped up in unimaginable ways, from Michele, who made the building available, to Diane, her business partner who has helped with supplies, and costumes, and doll accessories, to Dick and Nancy who have offered their help in so many ways. 

Gloria, Caroline, Clara, Jill, Marie, Kathy, and Nancy S., and everyone else who has donated dolls to us, to the Friedken family for the little trike, and to everyone at Good Will, Salvation Army, Erin at Rescued, Dennis of The Treasure Chest, and our many friends in the antique and thrift community who have helped me, and given me encouragement and advice.  I wish my Mom and Dad were here, and my doll friends now gone, Mary Hillier, Stephanie Hammonds, Mikki Brantley, and so many more wonderful writers and doll artists, my friend and pen pal, R. Lane Herron who currently writes for Doll Castle News, and so many others.

Believe in your passion, follow it, and you will be happy.  Success is measured not by monetary gain, but by true happiness.  It has taken me my entire life to get here; I started collecting when I was three, and I never met a doll, or toy, I didn’t like.  I studied, my folks helped me travel, my Dad carried home dolls from all over the world, even one given to me from executives of Mitsubishi.    My mother made them, repaired them, dressed them, and put up with old things, which she really didn’t like.  At least, not at first; she changed her mind later.  My husband, Dino, has been a huge help, my editor, my best friend, my navigator in this journey. Our friend Greg, gone too soon, believed in me, and Mark, our other friend, contributed a lot.

I’ve had antique adventures with my friends Rosie, Lori, Nancy T, Danyelle, and more.  My Aunt Rosie and Uncle Tony looked everywhere for old dolls for me, and Rosie made them in her ceramics studio for me.  My Uncle Tom brought one home each week for me, and my Uncle George cruised Berkley and Lost Gatos looking for stores that sold dolls. My grandma’s collection of international dolls inspired my collection; two of them began it.  She also dressed dolls, sometimes over night.  Doll nudity offended her.

We hope to open November 30, 2019, Small Business Saturday; for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to something, and the sun is shining again.  Thank you to all who read me blogs and postings, and to those who have bought and read my books.

Thinking outside the Doll House, A Memoir, will be out soon.  You can read my entire doll story there.  Thank you, and I love you all!

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Doll Museum to Open Dec. 1

After a lifetime of planning, it has finally happened!  more details will follow as the doll drama unfolds, but The American Doll & Toy Museum will open the first week of December!  This will be a smaller version of our collection because of space limitations, but there will be representative dolls from prehistory to the present, and a nice selection of doll houses, miniatures, toys and related objects.

Many of you also follow our main doll museum blog, Dr. E's Doll Museum, and you know that I am Dr. E and this is our unofficial name.  I started a new Facebook Page called American Doll

In and Toy Museum, and will follow up with a Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media accounts to spread the word.

We'll have a small book shop selling doll related objects, vintage paper airplanes, licensed merchandise books, and perhaps some small antiques from the shop behind us. We also have a GoFundMe Page for donations.  https://www.gofundme.com/manage/ellen039s-campaign-for-american-doll-and-toy-museum

There will be special events and give a ways.  We'll celebrate each season and holiday, too. There will be rotating displays of all kinds.

I plan on have a doll trinket to give to each visitor as a memento.

Many of you have seen  the displays of my dolls at various museums. I've collected since age 3, and have been planning this museum since grade school.  We will join a small neighbor hood near one of my alma maters called College Hill, which hosts other events and houses several antique stores, a cafe, a hometown bar and grill, a hometown barber shop, sports apparel shop and more.  We will be contributing to small business and to our community.

We welcome everyone; we aren't just for doll collectors and dealers, and we hope by embracing the general public, that we will also encourage young collectors.

Below are some of our citizens, and there is a YouTube video with more.

Doll Museum Video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_TLGmyLKIw&t=158s

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Write On!

In my musings, I realized today how many time’s I’ve heard that signs of dementia include writing notes and keeping notebooks.  It’s said smugly and matter of factly, often by people who should know better, including but not limited to family, psychologists, other elderly afraid of getting dementia, care causers, and health care providers, witch doctors, know it alls, nay sayers of all types, and chronic cranks. 

Well, I’m not a senior, but I guess I’m there, along with Barbara Pym, Anne Rice, Leonardo da Vinci, and many, many others. Bill Gates must be barmy, too; he paid over $30 million for one of Leonardo’s notebooks several years ago. If I could have afforded it, I would have bought it, too.  I learned to take notes from my mother; she was around thirty at the time of the first tutorial.  I even made notes for this blog posts.

Later, I outlined my notes in graduate school.  I’ve kept journals and notebooks my whole life, and always keep them in my purse.  My piano teachers always wrote notes and lessons in notebooks, and then encouraged, even insisted, that I keep the notebooks.  I did.  

Frida Kahlo, and so many artists keep sketchbooks and notes.  They help with ideas.  My dissertation director, one of the greatest writers and teachers ever, wrote notes on everything, even the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper that she organized in other envelopes.  She never wastes paper, and has all her notes in order.

Composers are always taking notes; a visiting composer I worked with at our own symphony accepted a gift of musical stickers I gave him; he was going to put them on a score.  He was also a dedicated teacher as well as musician.

Anne Rice used to write helpful words on her walls, and I have friends who still write on their hands to remind them to do things.

Hmph.  Dementia must be rampant, not that anyone I’ve met really understands what it is. 

Keep writing, I say.  I’m happy to send a notebook to anyone who needs one, of any age, at any point in their life.

Like the paper mate ad used to say, “Write on, brother, write on!!”

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