Cathy Porter will share her love of paper dolls at a special paper doll party at the Story Lady Doll & Toy Museum, 131 N. Broadway Ave., at 1 p.m. Saturday.

“The Joy of Paper Dolls” will include an activity in which everyone will get to make a paper doll. The program is for those ages 2 to 92.

Those attending should also bring a toy or paper doll for “show and tell.”

Treats will be served. The event is free for all children and Doll Museum members and $2 for all others.

Porter said she’s always been interested in clothes. Her parents gave her two life-sized baby dolls when she was small and she loved to dress them in the baby clothes her little brothers had outgrown.

“As I got older, I often helped my mother dress those same little brothers for school or church. I loved to play dress-up with the cast-off skirts, shoes and hats Mom gave me. Mom and Grandma made clothes for us, and I loved watching them cut and sew, wondering how they could take a flat piece of cloth and turn it into something we could wear,” she recalled.

When she was about 7, her mother and grandmother taught her to sew, and she spent hours making doll clothes out of felt and fabric scraps.

But best of all, she had paper dolls. Some were old and some were new. “They came with their own clothes, which was wonderful, but there were never enough,” Porter said.
Paper dolls have been in existence almost as long as paper. Japanese paper figures date back as early as 900 A.D.

A cross between a puppet and a paper doll was used to satirize nobility of France in the mid-1700s, and the Chinese, Japanese, Polish, German and Swiss cultures all had their own forms of paper art people.

In the mid-1700s, the European fashion centers of Vienna, Berlin, London and Paris offered paper dolls with costumes. These dolls were hand-painted until the late 1800s, when the first manufactured paper doll appeared-S&J Fuller in London’s Little Fannie.

Dolls were made in the likeness of royalty, celebrities and comic book characters. They were used in magazines to sell household products, in children’s magazines, teachers’ magazines, and newspapers.

The popularity of paper dolls peaked from 1930 to 1950. Paper dolls still thrive today, exhibiting today’s fashion, personalities and cultural practices. In most cases, the dolls factually represent the clothing, accessories and practices of the times they illustrate and are therefore valuable research tools.

— Information from the University of Texas
She was always seeing new clothes and costumes in books, magazines and on television. “So I drew, colored and cut out my own creations. All I needed was one doll, paper, scissors and some crayons or colored pencils, and I could make anything I wanted,” Porter recalled. “The first ones I made weren’t that good, but, with practice, they got better and better.”

She learned to sew clothes for herself, something she still does today. She stopped playing with paper dolls as she got older.

“When my first niece was small, I was delighted to learn that Mom had given her my paper dolls and she loved playing with them, too,” Porter said. “I had an excuse to play with them again. She also loved to draw, color and cut, so we played together making all kinds of fancy costumes.”

Now all of her nieces love paper dolls. “I have given them Dover dolls for their birthdays and Christmas for years. I bought duplicates to keep at my house, starting a collection of my own. The ones at my house don’t get cut out, we just look at them and talk about what we like and don’t like, inspiring us to make our own,” she said.

Their interests have expanded into the study of historic costumes. “We look at portraits and art from various places, in which many kinds of clothes are depicted. We watch the Emmy and Academy Award red carpet shows on TV to see the gowns. We love ‘Project Runway,’ where designers compete to design the best clothes. We look at fashion magazines,” Porter said.

Her collection covers all these areas: historic costume of kings and queens as well as ordinary people; clothes from other countries; movie costumes and award show gowns; and clothes made by famous designers.

“I’m happy to share my collection with anyone who wants to come to the Story Lady Doll & Toy Museum on Saturday,” Porter said.