Herman Steiner Infant Doll from the 1920's

The other day I was inspired to visit a local antique store.  Granted, antique stores in Florida are not as intriguing as the ones up north (New England), but it did the job.  It inspired me to unpack a doll wrapped in layers of cloth and begin the research process.  I am most intrigued by rusty tools, mechanical items, and silver plated spoons and trivets with engravings, however this doll is a "hand-me-down" with a certain amount of sentimental value.

And the search began, turning to no other greater source than "Google".  As expected there was a vast amount of information on "Vintage dolls from Germany" and the name that was getting the most attention was Johann Daniel Kestner Jr.  So automatically I assumed that's the doll I had.

A little personal background on this doll.  This doll was my mother's, Ruth Ware's, that was handed down by my grandmother, Edna Ware.  Neither are around anymore to share their stories, but I can only imagine that they played with this doll so lovingly, because at this point and time I consider it to be in decent shape.  Apparently when I was really little, I was playing with it, and my new mother, Louise, took it away for safe keeping and gave it to my grandmother.  The wisdom of parents, they did the right thing, because there is no way this would have survived.  I was definitely rough on toys.  About 3 years ago, my grandmother gave it to me and today, I have begun my research.

It turns out, after Googling a few more keywords, and arrowing through pages and pages of images, that a German doll maker by the name of Herman Steiner is the creator of my doll.  Although JDK Jr. was primarily responsible for starting the doll making era back in 1816, Steiner became well known for his production of infant dolls, which was the doll of choice in the 1920's.

Steiner used the same materials as JDK, paper-mache/wood fiber composite, paint and wax, used molds, and even made his markings similar to JKD.  JKD had become famous for his "My Dream Baby" Bisque Armand Marseille Baby.  (Armand Marseille also a doll creator who mainly just produced the heads).  Several of JKD's models had the composite appendages and then were attached to a fabric stuffed body.

Steiner's models had a total of 15 different molds.  My doll is mold number 245.  Steiner called it the "Bye-Lo-Baby".  It appears from what limited photographs there are of this doll (only one or two) that mold number 245 was a completely composite jointed body, meaning no cloth body is keeping it's appendages together.  Steiner's markings, if you look at the baby's back head detail picture, looked like this )S(  I love his signature, the ) (  stood for "H" Herman and it closed in the "S" for Steiner.  Pretty Cool huh!

The other unique attribute of this baby doll is the eyes.  They are made of glass, and painted on the glass eyeballs is the skin tone, so that when you lie the baby down on it's back, the eyes appear closed.  Now for the sake of making the doll not look too creepy, I photoshopped out some of the red ink that existed in the corner of the eyes.

I hope someday to get this baby restored.  I feel like I have got to find the right restorer though.  I am just absolutely fascinated by the fact that the doll is still intact.  Actually, believe it or not, the gown that the baby doll is wearing, although not original to the doll, is still from the 1900's era.  I have seen it on the Marseille doll that someone is currently selling on Ebay.  That's one place this doll will never be!