#midcentury dolls

[theriaultsdolls]

Tonight! 50 Forward! Featuring Antique and Collectible Dolls! Wednesday, April 26th at 7PM Eastern. Theriault’s timed auction. It’s a cross between Discovery Day and Ten2Go auctions. It’s only on-line, and everything starts at $50. 205 dolls and toys are included in the auction. It’s a cross between Discovery Day and Ten2Go auctions. It’s only on-line, and everything starts at $50. For more information call 410-224-3655 or email info@theriaults.com. https://www.theriaults.com

[yassssifiedhistory]

I love these

(Pictures from ebay)

[chaoticdesertdweller]

Salem, Oregon c.1957

From the listing:

"Discover the beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright inspired architecture with 1360 Crowley Ave. SE. in Salem, OR. Featured in Sunset Magazine in March 1959, this stunning home boasts a spacious 5126 sq ft interior with 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, dual living areas, and an indoor in-ground swimming pool. Perched on a 1.22 acre lot, the home's unique design features clean lines, large windows, and a low-pitched roof. Enjoy the perfect blend of form and function with this beloved landmark property."

This place gives me serious Valley of the Dolls vibes. 😍

[kitschycollectibles]

❄️ Rushton Ice Baby ❄️

Starting this blog off with a bang, I found something incredible just a few weeks ago! I went to this antique store a bit far off from where I live, and I saw in the display window... a Rushton doll! I was thrilled, I had to go in immediately. To my delight, she was available for me to buy! The price was a bit hefty for an on-the-fly purchase ($125), but I didn't care because finally... I had a Rushton!

She was in excellent condition, and she's still very much well-put together! She still has her original stuffing with the beans (if you know, you know), and the little pink decals of her fluffy one-piece are still firmly in place. I gave her a gentle handwashing and she's all fluffed up and pretty.

There are some dark spots, possibly from the aging of the rubber/vinyl. I tried multiple methods of cleaning it off, assuming it was dirt, but to no avail. Thankfully, this is only very minimal.

She's so cute, though! This little ice baby is an absolute blessing and a treasure of a find. I adore her little expression; the molded face and the painted expression really come together. I'm more than thrilled to have her be the start of my Rushton collection. 💖❄️

[retropopcult]

From a July 1953 photo shoot comes this color transparency, photographed by Charlotte Brooks during the Look magazine assignment "Christmas Toys’.

[vintagery]

Vintage 1950 My © TOY Plush Rubber Face Stuffed Teddy Bear Policemen (eBay)

[midcenturymyrtle]

[dwedgecreations]

#etsy shop:PRECIOUS MOMENTS-Winter Whitney doll #dollstand #doll #preciousmoments #winterwhitney #preciousmomentdoll #pmwinterwhitney #winterseason #strawberryblondhair #birdnest #redhair #greendress #birdeggs #art #gift #midcentury #artdeco #birthday #thanksgiving #porcelaindoll #beautiful #fashion #love #porcelain #ceramic https://etsy.me/3OAEttV https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgf_DrpMUfL/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[scandalousadventures]

Mini TV complete with rabbit ears 📺 It goes so well with my other midcentury dolls

[theriaultsdolls]

50 Forward Online Now! Featuring Antique and Collectible Dolls! Wednesday, January 25th at 7PM Eastern. Theriault’s timed auction. It’s a cross between Discovery Day and Ten2Go auctions. It’s only on-line, and everything starts at $50. 205 dolls and toys are included in the auction. It’s a cross between Discovery Day and Ten2Go auctions. It’s only on-line, and everything starts at $50. For more information call 410-224-3655 or email info@theriaults.com. https://theriaults.proxibid.com https://www.theriaults.com

[arch-obsessed]

Inside the Barbie Dreamhouse, a Fuchsia Fantasy Inspired by Palm Springs

Barbie’s Dreamhouse is no place for the bashful. “There are no walls and no doors,” says Greta Gerwig via email. “Dreamhouses assume that you never have anything you wish was private—there is no place to hide.” That layered domestic metaphor has proved rich fodder for the filmmaker, whose live-action homage to the iconic Mattel doll hits theaters July 21.

To translate this panopticon play world to the screen, Gerwig enlisted production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the London-based team behind such period realms as Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina. The two took inspiration from Palm Springs midcentury modernism, including Richard Neutra’s 1946 Kaufmann House and other icons photographed by Slim Aarons. “Everything about that era was spot-on,” says Greenwood, who strove “to make Barbie real through this unreal world.”

Neither she nor Spencer had ever owned a Barbie before, so they ordered a Dreamhouse off Amazon to study. “The scale was quite strange,” recalls Spencer, explaining how they adjusted its rooms’ quirky proportions to 23 percent smaller than human size for the set. Says Gerwig: “The ceiling is actually quite close to one’s head, and it only takes a few paces to cross the room. It has the odd effect of making the actors seem big in the space but small overall.”

Erected at the Warner Bros. Studios lot outside London, Barbie’s cinematic home reinterprets Neutra’s work as a three-story fuchsia fantasy, with a slide that coils into a kidney-shaped pool. “I wanted to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses,” says Gerwig, alluding to past incarnations like the bohemian 1970s model (outfitted with trompe l’oeil Tiffany lamps) and the 2000 Queen Anne Victorian manse, complete with Philippe Starck lounge chairs. “Why walk down stairs when you can slide into your pool? Why trudge up stairs when you take an elevator that matches your dress?” Her own references ranged from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of pies to Gene Kelly’s tiny painter’s garret in An American in Paris.

For Barbie’s bedroom, the team paired a clamshell headboard upholstered in velvet with a sequined coverlet. Her closet, meanwhile, reveals coordinated outfits in toy-box vitrines. “It’s very definitely a house for a single woman,” says Greenwood, noting that when the first Dreamhouse (a cardboard foldout) was sold in 1962 it was rare for a woman to own her own home. Adds Spencer: “She is the ultimate feminist icon.”

In Barbie, as in previous films like Little Women and Lady Bird, Gerwig set out to realize a whole world. “We were literally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land,” says the director, who aimed for “authentic artificiality” at every opportunity. As a case in point, she cites the use of a hand-painted backdrop rather than CGI to capture the sky and the San Jacinto Mountains. “Everything needed to be tactile, because toys are, above all, things you touch.”

Everything also needed to be pink. “Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount,” Gerwig says. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.” In other words, she continues, she didn’t want to “forget what made me love Barbie when I was a little girl.” Construction, Greenwood notes, caused an international run on the fluorescent shade of Rosco paint. “The world,” she laughs, “ran out of pink.”

[funphumph]

Hi misty-fluff, was just looking thru your site and found the museum displays from s3. Just wondering, can I please do a WCIF of the stuff in the screenshot?

Hi clairsy97, everything in the display cases screenshot, save for the diving helmet planter which in part can be seen on the left-hand side, is either by Maxis or by me. Some of the items I haven't shared yet because I ... uh ... most certainly forgot. 😴

Here's what I can link you to so far:

Maxis' 'Castaway Story' objects (voodoo doll, little diving helmet, idol sculpture, map, makeshift table lamp, arch, wallpaper, flooring)

diving helmet planter

propeller, seashell wall mural

treasure chest, broken pottery, mermaid mural

flower boat

midCentury fish sculpture

little cannon

fish trophies >>>>> If you want the trophies to be compressed, hidden from buy mode and only accessible via the collection file (as I have them in my own game), you can download a corresponding folder here.

Toy ship, whale sculpture, bottle, star fishes, and hanging sword fish are somewhere in my work folders. I will upload them within the next days.

So, I hope I've covered everything. 😏

[marzipanandminutiae]

Why did the early-mid century culture hate the victorians so much? Was it just "my grandparents lived through it so I associate growing up around this stuff with being outdated and yucky" kinda like how I've seen the 1970s-80s regarded? Or was there something else going on there culturally?

I suspect it's partially that, and partially just. How much everything changed aesthetically in a relatively short span of time.

I mean, if you look at the feminine fashion differences between 1860 and 1880, the trim and silhouette obviously differ greatly but the basic composition of the outfit is the same. Same under-layers, same general bodice-and-skirt format for most dresses, same hemlines, same broad expectation for the hair (long, mostly one-length, natural colors) even though the popular styling of women's updos changed.

and then you look at, say, 1905- Edwardian, but that same general outfit format -to 1925.

(Le Costume Moderne, 1905.)

(The Delineator, 1925.)

There had been radical aesthetic shifts over relatively short periods before- see also: 1780 vs. 1800 -but to my knowledge few of them involved changing the composition of outfits so radically. The 1920s saw the beginning of the now-familiar bra and panties model of conventionally feminine undergarments, for example, as opposed to the immediately prior "chemise and drawers, or combinations, and corset" model. In a very real way, that decade seems to me to have introduced the way we wear clothing today. Obviously some things like girdles and slips have mostly fallen by the wayside, but. It's the beginning of a clothing system that seems vastly more familiar to most of us now than what came before. And with that shift came a lack of understanding of how the earlier model actually worked in everyday life. Combined with new strides being made in women's rights compared to the previous status quo, it could be all too easy to see such totally foreign fashions as awkward and oppressive.

Also it was very much a time that emphasized all things new and exciting, as humans are often wont to do. So the past, and all it represented, cut very little ice. Especially the relatively recent past.

I mean, look at Art Deco and Midcentury Modern. They're basically the polar opposite of Victorian styles that emphasize heavy ornamentation, natural materials, maximalist decor, organic lines, historical inspiration, etc. It's not hard to see that someone raised in that environment might look on the very alien houses- and clothing -of the past and recoil a bit.

And yeah, I think there may have been a bit of a Granny Effect going on- something you grew up associating with fusty old people is bound to have less romance than something you've no direct connection to. Indeed, we do see a bit of Colonial Revival architecture popping up in the 1940s-50s U.S., suggesting that it wasn't necessarily the past as a whole that people of the early-mid 1900s objected to.

(Also, you do occasionally get bits of Victorian nostalgia. Often in the form of art depicting earlier times with varying degrees of accuracy, dolls costumed in past styles ditto, movies set in the mid-late 19th century, recommendations about how to make one or two bits of Victorian furniture into "quaint" statement pieces for a room, etc. Still, it's often a general damnation with faint praise.)

So those are my rough thoughts on the subject!

[leirin]

Hey there, new to your blog, and I just wanna say I love your art work and plushes! Also, pleasantly suprised to find someone who's a fan of the Spark Brothers, such an underrated band despite being well-known by popular artists!

If I may, do you mind if I ask what's your inspiration for your art style? I get these 70s/80s vibes from it along with the colorful coziness of ps1 era games.

Thank you so much for checking out my art!

It's a mix of shoujo manga from the Showa period along with advertising art from the midcentury in general (the whole world over), doll and toy design, old picture book and greeting card illustration, etc. and when it comes to painting, mostly the impressionists.

[andthemouseroared]

I am officially at the "playing virtual Barbie dolls with Ashley by seeing how many different cute outfits I can dress her in" stage of my life with RE4make.

I have decided Ashley is far and away the most fashionable of all the protagonists.

She's the only one who can do midcentury European college student, everyday casual, anime waifu, scenester, emo, professional businesswoman girlboss, eGirl, debutante socialite, foreign diplomat, Actual 18th Century Princess, modern punk and 80s wastelander metalhead and rock them all perfectly. A fitting tribute to her influencer faceclaim.

Believe me, you have not lived until you've seen Ashley spinning kick a Ganado's head into the ground fully decked out in an 18th century ballgown.

Now in true Ashley fashion, this is a shitpost that also reveals some important truths about who The Mouse is as a person.

Fashion is something that's really important to me. I do a lot of vintage and indie clothes shopping, and my style is one of my favourite ways to express myself. Like any form of creative expression, a person's fashion sense can tell us a lot about who they are and what they value. For someone as fashion-forward as Ashley, her style being so versatile and freeform (either officially, through mods, or both) can tell us she perhaps has an equally diverse range of interests and skills: It's even canon she can randomly drive a forklift for reasons which very pointedly go completely unexplained.

This isn't like Jill's locksmithing or her occasional thick Los Angeles accent, which in canon do seem like genuine oversights or boring deus ex machina: Ashley being able to operate heavy machinery or being secretly a scene girl seem like deliberate Noodle Incidents on the part of the writers and designers.

So Ashley has hidden depths, and she's also a bit of a troll with an offbeat sense of humour XD

Taken together, this all makes Ashley come across as unusually developed for a video game protagonist of this type for me: She has a lot of seemingly intentionally dropped threads that seem to hint at a wider backstory that isn't going to be told. She's never coming back in another game or movie, but from a fanfic author/RPer's perspective it's one of the things that make her a lot of fun to think about and play with.

I suppose one could argue these are really all just jokes about how Ashley is often seen as a stereotype (the canon content, anyway), but I choose to read them otherwise, if for no other reason than because Ashley's taken enough flak over the past two decades.