Alabama Baby Boy and Martha Chase Girl

Name: Alabama Baby Boy and Martha Chase Girl Reproduction Shoulder Head Dolls

Made by and When: Designer Guild Collection, 1998

Material: Porcelain heads and shoulder plates; painted and stiffened cloth arms, legs, and feet; stuffed cloth bodies, acrylic eyes, paint, cotton fabric

The boy’s lower back is marked: MRS. S.S. SMITH / Manufacturer and Dealer / The Alabama Indestructible Doll / ROANOKE, ALA. / 22-1/2” doll= / PAT. NOV. 9, 1912 / THE ELLA SMITH DOLL CO. + No. 2.

The girl’s lower left buttocks is stamped: CHASE / STOCKINET DOLL inside a circular image of a doll’s face / TRADE MARK

Each doll has a hang tag that displays the US Postal Service (USPS) stamp of the doll it replicates on the front and the doll’s name on the back.

Heights: The boy is 21 inches tall, and the girl is 22 inches tall.

Hair, Eyes, Mouths: (Boy) Painted black hair, brown inset acrylic eyes, a closed mouth with mauve lip color, and dimpled cheeks. (Girl) Short, looped black yarn hair is accented with a large white satin ribbon, brown inset acrylic eyes, a closed mouth with mauve lip color, and mauve-painted nostrils. Both dolls have painted eyelids added by the curator.

Clothes/Extras: (Boy) Dressed in a white cotton shirt with an oversized collar, a white cotton undershirt, and white pants, he wears a red cotton tie and a white tam. (Girl) Bright yellow windowpane-print cotton dress with a white lace-trimmed round collar, and she wears white lace-trimmed pantalettes. Each doll has red-painted fingernails and toenails, bare feet, a certificate of authenticity, a hang tag, a “Dolly Daily Special Edition” announcement of the Ella Smith doll, and a care sheet.

Other: The United States Postal Service (USPS) issued an “Alabama Baby”/Martha Chase doll stamp in 1997 as part of their Classic American Dolls stamps. On the “Alabama Baby”/Martha Chase stamp, the Chase doll is the girl doll in a yellow dress seen on the first stamp in the first row of the sheet of stamps at the previous link. The girl doll is described by the USPS as “an all-cloth doll made between 1890-1925.” The USPS stamp also features an image of an original Indestructible Alabama Baby Boy by Ella Smith, made from 1900 to 1925.

In 1998, The Designer Guild Collection partnered with the United States Postal Service and the Home Shopping Network (HSN) to produce and release The Classic American Doll Series. The series included replicas of the original Martha Chase Stockinet girl doll and Ella Smith’s 1900 to 1925 Indestructible Alabama Baby Boy, as seen on the USPS postage stamp. These replicated dolls are in this installation.

The boy’s certificate of authenticity includes a brief biography of Ella Smith and indicates she “may be the best known American doll artist of the late 1800s and early 1900s…” Likewise, the girl doll’s certificate of authenticity includes a brief biography of Martha Chase, who “lived and worked in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Her classic dolls were made in the late 1800s using stiffened fabric painted with oil paint…”

Gallery

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