Germany
Circa 1900
Bisque, textile, and feather
Height 7 inches (17.8 cm) each
Provenance: Paul Kahn, San Francisco, California
Two small bisque headed dolls with jointed limbs, both with dark set eyes, painted lashes and lips, and dark mohair wigs, one cut in a bob and the other dressed high off the face. The first wears a feather cape of pale yellow and cream tied at the throat with a ribbon, over an orange wrapped garment, with a tall orange fabric helmet crested front to back in the shape of a mahiole. The second wears a full skirt of split fiber with a matching band at the shoulders, an orange bodice, and two thick lei of twisted fiber at the neck, with a further band at one wrist.
The costumes are trade goods rather than Hawaiian made, produced to dress imported German dolls for sale to visitors, and the feather cape and crested helmet are a simplified rendering of the ʻahu ʻula and mahiole worn by aliʻi. Dolls of this kind were sold in the islands in the decades around 1900, when German bisque dominated the doll trade worldwide and local outfitting turned a generic doll into a souvenir of place.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Germany
Circa 1900
Bisque, textile, and feather
Height 7 inches (17.8 cm) each
Provenance: Paul Kahn, San Francisco, California
Two small bisque headed dolls with jointed limbs, both with dark set eyes, painted lashes and lips, and dark mohair wigs, one cut in a bob and the other dressed high off the face. The first wears a feather cape of pale yellow and cream tied at the throat with a ribbon, over an orange wrapped garment, with a tall orange fabric helmet crested front to back in the shape of a mahiole. The second wears a full skirt of split fiber with a matching band at the shoulders, an orange bodice, and two thick lei of twisted fiber at the neck, with a further band at one wrist.
The costumes are trade goods rather than Hawaiian made, produced to dress imported German dolls for sale to visitors, and the feather cape and crested helmet are a simplified rendering of the ʻahu ʻula and mahiole worn by aliʻi. Dolls of this kind were sold in the islands in the decades around 1900, when German bisque dominated the doll trade worldwide and local outfitting turned a generic doll into a souvenir of place.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
