Name: Harriet Tubman
Made by and When: Gloria Y. Rone, 2021
Material: Polymer clay
Marks: Signed and dated by the artist
Heights: 9-1/2, 12, and 14 inches
Hair, Eyes, Mouth: Sculpted headscarves made of polymer clay cover their heads, sculpted and painted facial features, closed mouths
Clothes: 9-1/2-inch Harriet: The standing, shortest Harriet is made of polymer clay. The dress is also made of polymer clay with a cloth handmade coat; holds a clay gun.
12-inch Harriet: The sitting Harriet has a sculpted polymer clay head wrap and wears a handmade dress and coat; holds a handmade gun and bag.
14-inch Harriet: Wears a handmade deep green dress and a grungy brown coat; carries a shotgun which is also made of clay and a lantern.
All three have hangtags that read, Harriet Tubman.
Other: Born Araminter Ross c. March 1822, and “known as the ‘Moses of her people,’ Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a ‘conductor’ of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military” (womenshistory.org). Harriet Tubman died on March 10, 1919.
These three hand-sculpted dolls are all one-of-a-kind. Made as a tribute to Tubman’s work risking her life to free hundreds of enslaved Black Americans and her other humanitarian efforts, each was given a primitive appearance to look aged. Read more about the woman, Harriet Tubman, here.
Gallery (Photographs courtesy of Gloria Y. Rone)
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These dolls are absolutely sensational! The likeness, particularly of the 12″ doll, is spot on, and the intricate details of the face and facial expressions are extraordinary! I am very grateful to artist Gloria Rone for sharing her remarkable art with us and I am especially pleased that she chose Harriet Tubman as her subject. There are very few people – male or female – throughout this world’s history who have demonstrated as much courage, genius, perseverance, dedication, and leadership as Harriet Tubman. Her extraordinary, diverse catalogue of knowledge spanned a vast array of disciplines and skills ranging from geography, botany, wildlife, animal behavior and psychology, to astronomy, herbology, climatology and human psychology, thus justifiably deeming her equally (if not more) proficient and intellectually well-versed as any leading scholar or intellectual contemporary of her time. (Despite the leading consensus among academians that Ms. Tubman was illiterate all through her life, recent inquiry uncovered evidence suggesting that she had indeed accumulated some degree of basic reading and writing skills at some point by her final years, as indicated by long forgotten journals she kept towards the end of her life, which had been stowed away in a Yale University archives basement for decades.)
Thank you for writing this outstanding article and sharing with us the brilliant work of Gloria Rone.
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Thank you so much, Ms. Walker, for your glowing review of Ms. Rone’s Harriet Tubman dolls. She does have a keen ability to sculpt very realistic faces that breathe life into dolls. It is very important for our heroines like Harriet Tubman to be remembered for their heroism and dedicated battles against human bondage.
Thank you for also sharing that Harriet Tubman achieved basic reading and writing skills during her lifetime. This is why we need to research our history and continue to share our stories. It would be detrimental to our progress as a society if we allow individuals who are descendants of enslavers to rewrite history in order to absolve their ancestors of their wrongdoings against enslaved Africans. Such an action will only serve to create further division among us.
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