News From the Director

I hope this newsletter finds you all well and filled with joy. July was whirlwind of a month, but what a wonderful whirlwind it was!

I was so blessed to be able to attend the NAME and UFDC national conventions - see the photos & videos in this newsletter!

It was truly an honor to be able to present programs and share the museum with attendees at both events. I had a great time connecting with old friends and making new connections.

The fall is quickly approaching, and we have a packed calendar for the rest of the year. Join us for our annual fall luncheon, doll club, or a miniature program!

I continue to be grateful for each and every one of YOU - our wonderful community of collectors and friends who continue to support our museum.

With love,

Beth M. Nance

Founder and Executive Director

Event Recap:

2026 UFDC Convention

We enjoyed the 77th annual UFDC (United Federation of Doll Clubs) convention in New Orleans July 28 to August 1.

Highlights included Beth's presentation on Schoenhut with our special friend Freida, quality time with our Region 8 friends, seeing Robert Tonner and Marcia Friend of Facets Boutique, and seeing beautiful doll displays - particularly Betsy McCall by Carol Noel and a special appearance by our 2026 doll luncheon guest Sandra Wright Justiss.

Designs above by Vince Nowell, a Louisiana doll costumer who grew his love for fashion dolls when he received his first Barbie at age 4. By age 12, he was learning to sew with his mom. His passion gravitated towards mid-century retro style, elegance, and structural precision.

He joined the Gene Marshall design team and designed the 1998 UFDC Gene doll convention outfit.

Vince designed for 16" Tonner dolls, and then joined the design team for the Virtual Doll Convention to continue producing Grace fashion designs.

His Facebook Group is Vincent Nowell Designs.

Don't miss this display of Vargas wax dolls, a New Orleans original:

Event Recap:

2026 NAME Convention

Beth and Sir Spencer attended the 2026 NAME (National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts) convention, held in LaQuinta, CA, from July 23 to 26, 2026 with a "California Dreaming" theme.

Our Sir Spencer paper doll (by Diana Vining) got a chance to participate in all the fun!



Beth gave a special presentation on The Secret Heiress and the Gilded Age Legacy: The Enigma of Hugette Clark - and returned with a treasure for the museum!

These sweet little dolls were handmade, maker unknown. Pictured with Beth is Joanne Huagen, who got the dolls from a dear friend and made this adorable room box to feature them all in.

Museum Moment:

Festive Parade Mural

The talented Cherrathee Hager put together a patriotic parade mural at the museum - bright, festive, and fantastic - just in time for July 4.

Museum Moment:

Dolls with Stories

Special thanks to Carol Cameron, UFDC President, for giving a special presentation to our Golden Dolls Club about the "Dolls with Stories" in her collection, including this illuminating piece of doll history from the turn of the century.

New Arrivals:

Super Saturday Sale

Our Super Saturday monthly sales are bursting at the seams with new additions for the fall! Join us on October 10, November 14, and December 12.

America 250 Spotlight:

Red, White & Barbie

Rodney put together a lovely display honoring military service with Barbie and her coterie representing branches of the military.

And a rotating display update brings the stars and stripes to life with sparkling red, white, and blue gowns.

NC History Spotlight:

The Sad Rag Doll

This simple rag doll has a deep and fascinating connection to Rowan County, NC.

When World War II was winding down and the Allied forces occupied Germany, a young soldier from Rowan County was part of the team that went through a German village to clear it out. The German people had fled and the town was empty but the soldiers checked each building. 

The young soldier entered a classroom and discovered a cloth doll on the floor. 



He knew a doll collector back home, so he tucked the crudely made doll into his jacket and eventually brought it to Jesse Edwards, a longtime collector in Salisbury, NC.

She wrote the story of the doll in her journal and many years later, when her doll collection was given to the museum in 2011, the accompanying diary told the story.

  

The doll is made of rough cloth and we cannot know its full story for sure. However, the doll is a male doll, so we guess that the owner was a little boy and perhaps his mother or grandmother made the doll from scraps of cloth and leftover thread. The feet and hands are tied together and the body is loosely stuffed with course material.  

During the war years, expensive toys were rare. This doll may have meant more to the owner than any high-priced toy. 

Miniature Magic:

Gardner Pub House

A special visitor dropped by the museum in July: Ellen Cadeaux Gardner of Greer, SC, artist behind the Gardner Pub House miniature.

Ellen started the house in 1991 with a Greenleaf Harrison kit. She had a unique vision: a Tudor-style house that was a converted public house/inn. She imagined a fictional backstory for the house and its residents.

We got a tour of the interior and exterior from Ellen herself! See video below.

We are so grateful and excited for the Gardner Pub House to join our extensive collection of spectacular dollhouses and miniatures here at the museum!

Collection Spotlight:

Sasha Dolls

The annual Sasha Doll Festival took place in New Hampshire in July! These lovely Sasha dolls are on loan to the museum from Theresa Pitner.

Collection Spotlight:

Childhood Playthings

Our museum is full of celebrations of childhood that spark nostalgia and joy in visitors - whether they grew up with these classics or are encountering them for the first time.

Did you grow up with Raggedy Ann, Playmobil, Chicken Skittles, Fisher-Price, Pickup Stix, Happy Family or Sunshine Family dolls? What about Pebbles?

Collection Spotlight:

Muffy VanderBear

Do you remember Muffy Vanderbear? Muffy is a well-to-do and highly fashionable teddy who has a full closet, shoes, accessories, pets, and friends. 

This lovely exhibit of Muffy's accoutrements, friends, and world travels was put together by volunteer Addie Walsh, who celebrated a birthday in July.

Special Donation:

PK Shillaber Doll

At first glance, this looks like an antique wooden doll made in the Grodnertal tradition. However, as Kathy Gregg discovered, in an article called “Hepzibah‘s Milkmaids: The Dolls of the House of the Seven Gables in the winter 2015 edition of DOLL NEWS Magazine, UFDC explains the origins of this particular doll:

The House of the Seven Gables, located in Salem, Massachusetts, was built in 1667 for a Salem sea captain. It is an historic building that still stands today and is open for tours. At one time, it was a quaint shop filled with handmade items that welcomed every visitor.

In the 1930s, Miss Helen PK Shillaber created fine wooden miniatures in the style of colonial furniture to sell in the shop. She later began to carve distinctive wooden dolls, recognizable by the long carved curl that hangs free on each side of the face.

This is where the doll pictured came from sometime during the 40-plus-year career of the artist.

PK Shillaber created her dolls from the 1930s until the 1980s. It is estimated that she carved 5,000 dolls.

Most likely, the dolls were dressed by volunteers.

Our doll has a printed cotton dress, linen slip, and linen bloomers. The slip and bloomers are decorated with tiny rickrack trim.

She has the signature tiny mouth and handpainted face with a pronounced chin and the side curls carved on each side of the head.

We extend our sincere thanks to Nancy C Moore for parting with this treasure and including the paperwork to go with it and to Kathy for her support of the museum and its mission in preserving exceptional works like this one for the whole world to enjoy. 

Celebrating the Season:

June & July Holidays

June 25 was Kewpie Day!

Artist Rose O'Neill claimed that the idea of Kewpies came to her in a dream. These chubby elfin cherubs were, according to O'Neill, modeled on her baby brother. 

According to O'Neill, Kewpie is the baby form of cupid. Its purpose is to do good deeds in a humorous way, instilling humans with love and brightening their existence with laughter.

The Kewpies began as decorations for love stories published in Ladies Home Journal. The magazine’s editor suggested that O'Neill tighten up the drawings, develop the characters, and add stories in verse for young readers. 

The first Kewpie story appeared in 1909. It was titled "The Kewpies and the Airplane" and showed the little creatures investigating the new mechanical wonder of the age.

More stories followed...and their popularity exploded.

Children enchanted by the verses and the drawings wrote in asking if there was a Kewpie they could actually hold.

O'Neill sculpted the first Kewpie herself. She visited doll factories throughout the United States and Europe before selecting a manufacturer in Germany. George Borgfeldt secured the rights to distribute Kewpies in America and, in a nice bit of well-timed publicity, Women's Home Companion carried a story about how the Kewpies turned into dolls.

The Kewpie craze became so big that 30 German factories were kept busy manufacturing the dolls. By 1913, about 5 million Kewpies had been sold. 

World War I put an end to the German connection, but even warfare didn't keep the Kewpies out of the stores. Factories in Japan, including some that were unauthorized by O'Neill, took advantage of the opportunity and launched thousands of Kewpies into the American market.

After the war ended, O'Neill delegated the manufacturer of her Kewpies to Joseph Kallus, a young sculptor. Kallus, with O'Neill's permission, had helped design Kewpie figurines for German manufacturers when he was only 17 years old. In 1916, he had founded the Rex Doll Company to produce composition Kewpies when supplies from overseas were halted during the war. 

Later, Kallus’s Kewpies were plastic, then vinyl. Kallus kept Kewpies alive until the early 1980s.

During WWI, soldiers marched off to war with tiny Kewpies in their pockets. The dolls were reminders of loved ones and were good luck tokens.

A special congratulations to Dee Bee Gee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for reaching their goal on June 29: curating 1,000 Black dolls at virtualblackdollmuseum.com!

Their collection officially reached 1,012 in June, including antique, vintage, modern, and OOAK. Their website and email list are wonderful ways to explore the richness of Black doll history. 

We celebrated Robert Tonner's birthday on July 14. In recognizing the impact and variety of Tonner dolls, the word that comes to mind is ingenuity.

Robert has collaborated with diverse brands and IPs, given one of his core characters “chronic ennui” instead of Barbie’s pink-frosted zest for life, and pushed the boundaries with doll size, time period, age, gender, and fashion.

Tonner dolls are not just stationary in time and space. They are living moments, often representing a unique point of view and an unfolding story, whether that story takes place in the distant future, our present, or the past.

Robert was instantly hooked by Barbie’s marketing and first commercial, so it’s no surprise that his own dolls move with the times and remain fresh, eye-catching, and fashion forward in 2026, including through ongoing new releases with Virtual Doll Convention.

July 22 would have been the birthday of designer Oscar de la Renta. Barbie has collaborated multiple times with the fashion house, including for outfit fashion packs and full dolls like this 1998 Oscar de la Renta Barbie in the museum's collection.

Trains, Toys & Trucks:

Matchbox Cars

July 10 was Collector Car Appreciation Day.

Diecast cars have been around almost as long as Henry Ford’s original Model T. Jack Odell built his first brass Matchbox model in 1954.

It was small enough for his daughter to bring to school in a matchbox, so the name stuck!

The next year, Odell’s company, Lesney Products, debuted four Matchbox models: the Steamroller, the Muir Hill Site Dump Truck, the Cement Mixer, and the Massey Harris Tractor. The British company exported its vehicles to the rest of the world, and the line began to expand.

Designers took detailed photographs of real models, even obtaining some of the original blueprints. As a result, they could create models with high levels of detail packed into a small scale.

The early models did not feature windows or interiors. Instead, they were made entirely of metal and were often about 2” (5 cm) in length. 

During the early years, the series was marketed and distributed by Moko. In 1959, Lesney bought out Moko’s shares in the joint enterprise. Matchbox cars soon became the world standard in die-cast autos, giving kids an affordable car with real-life details.

In 1960, Lesney exported 70 million tiny vehicles.

Matchbox’s models changed from year to year, but its basic line always contained 75 cars. 

New cars were introduced, old ones were retired, but the ‘Matchbox 75’ was one of the toy world’s constants.

A formula for high quality, impressive detail, and affordable prices set Matchbox apart from their competitors when they debuted and fueled such an enduring success that still today some people continue to call miniature cars, no matter the maker, a “Matchbox”.

The ‘Models of Yesteryear’ range, first introduced in 1956, gave kids a chance to play with old-time cars and other vehicles while future lines like the ‘King Size’ and ‘World Class’ models expanded the Matchbox garage even further. 

By 1968, Matchbox was the biggest-selling brand of small die-cast model cars worldwide–so popular that Mattel launched its rival Hot Wheels the same year. 

This led to kids trading in the British product for the flashier American muscle cars. 

Lesney countered the release of Hot Wheels with the Superfast line of cars and upped its advertising campaign. The company also diversified the designs by introducing a line of fantasy cars and producing Disney-themed vehicles. 

Despite these efforts, in June 1982, Matchbox’s high cost of manufacturing in England drove Lesney into bankruptcy. Universal Internal Ltd. acquired the product and formed Matchbox International. They moved production to Asia. 

Like many toy companies of the 20th century, they eventually became part of the Mattel family of toys. 

Last Look:

Absorbing Antiques

Do you have a favorite case or display at the museum that you are often drawn back to when you visit?

This antique doll display pulls the eye with rare finds, variety, exceptional doll fashions, and a variety of materials and time periods.

Museum Memberships

This membership list was last updated on July 31, 2026.

Your annual membership provides critical funding for our maintenance, acquisitions, and programming. To see the different levels of membership we offer and sign up, click here.

You can pay your dues by mailing in a check, or you can pay online.

Thank You! 

Thanks to you, our mission continues to preserve history, enrich the community, and spread joy.

Reply to this email if you’d like to connect with a member of our staff, volunteer, share feedback, or make a suggestion. We love hearing from you!