Name: Ruby Bridges
Made by and When: Debra Dixon-Paver, February 2022
Material: Porcelain with a wooden desk
Marks: Unmarked
Height: 4 inches
Hair, Eyes, Mouth: Black hair styled in two pigtails accented with white ribbons, brown-painted eyes, open mouth with painted teeth
Clothes/Accessories: White cotton dress, white socks, white Mary-Jane-style shoes; holds a ruler and two books. The wooden desk was made by the artist’s husband.
Other: Fashioned after 6-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges, the first African American child to enroll in a Louisiana elementary school in 1960, the doll is full-body porcelain in 1:12 dollhouse size, poured from a Parker-Levi mold called Becky. The child, Ruby Bridges was escorted to school by U.S. Marshals as depicted in the 1963 painting, “The Problem We All Life With” by Norman Rockwell.
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