Alma in Red

Name:  Alma in Red

Made by and When:  Nancy Latham, 1989

Material:  Brown cloth, stockinette-covered sculpted face, and pellets in the cloth torso

Marks: On the Back: #0146 (handwritten); (stamped on the lower back) Wistful / Children; (hang tag, inside left) Alma in Red / #06 / DOTY AWARD NOMINEE; (hang tag, inside right) Wistful / Children / 1989; (hang tag, back) 0146

Height: 23 inches (the doll’s doll is 9 inches.)

Hair, Eyes, Mouth: The dark brown wig was formerly styled in pigtails and plaits, now restyled in three pigtails with side-twisted bangs. Each pigtail and the end of the twisted bangs are adorned with a cranberry ribbon. The eyes are painted. The closed mouth is unpainted.

Clothes: Dressed in a muslin two-piece undergarment of top and pants that button together and a cranberry and off-white tiny division-sign-printed dress with attached off-white sleeves and an off-white ribbon accent at the collar. Off-white cotton socks and burgundy Winnie the Pooh faux leather T-strap shoes complete the outfit. Sewn to Alma’s right hand is a brown cloth doll with painted features, black yarn pigtails that frame the sides and top of the head that wears only an off-white lace collar.

Other: Born in Havana, Cuba in 1946, Nancy Latham came to the US in 1962. She began making dolls in 1989. Alma in Red is from Latham’s original 1989 Wistful Children series. According to the hang tag, Alma in Red is from a limited edition of 10 and is doll #6 in the edition. The appearance of Latham’s Wistful Children dolls evolved throughout the years becoming more wistful and fantasy-like in later years.

Gallery

_________

Your comments are valued. Donations aid the initiative to preserve Black-doll history. 

If you subscribe to DeeBeeGee’s Virtual Black Doll Museum™ by email, click the post title in the email, which links to the website to view all text and associated media. Please “like” and share this installation with your social media contacts. Add your email address to the subscribe or sign-up field in the footer or right sidebar.

Published by DeeBeeGee

Doll collector, historian, co-founder of the first e-zine devoted to collecting black dolls; author of black-doll reference books, doll blogs, and doll magazine articles.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: