Newsletters |
Some of the History of the Wee Peeple Dolls
The first 30 years.... |
Even with slender means, the sentiment of the heart can be expressed.
-The I Ching
uh-oh...
Now, who are these characters?
A Visit from some Old Friends...
Look who's here!
Whaddayaknow! A couple of Original Wee Peeple Dolls!
Phil M. Up (a Vagabond Hobo) and Pierrot with Bauble
You can imagine the conversations these two might have...
but it is that bad Bauble Fellow
who says all those raunchy things in front of the Ladies!
(from the collection of Jay Polsky)
Remember those old tags... back when all the dolls were numbered...
This is what the Wee Peeple Doll Tags looked like in 1984.
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ok, we've started on this path, so... let's take
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Remember these.....?
The Jesters on Sticks!
Made in the early 80's!
These were for the kids... of all ages!
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So... what was going on with
The Wee Peeple Dolls
back in
the early 80's...?
Well, it was a time when the Wee Peeple Dolls
were constructed upwards from children's shoes...
An exciting time when the Dolls began to stand up on their own two feet!
These are the very first Wee Peeple Dolls, made in 1980
(Numbers 1 through 6)
(Look at how big the heads are! yikes!)
The Dollmaker delighted in creating every kind of character she could think of...
but everyone's favorite dolls were
The Portrait Wee Peeple
A Chinese Tailor.
His employees wanted a Portrait Doll made of him
so they stole his shirt, his tie, his pants (well, his whole suit, really),
and his watch, and brought these items, like an offering, to the Dollmaker,
who made the Doll using photographs and his own clothes.
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Portrait of Rick Stacy.
Well, he had to have a costume if he was going to
the Texas Renaissance Festival!
shown here: Rick Stacy smiling along with his Portrait Doll
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Lots of Publicity in the 80's
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in December of 1983 the Wee Peeple were featured in
Texas Highways Magazine
There's a story referencing this page...
see the September 2008 Issue
of the Wee Peeple Newsletter
(The Story is entitled simply: The Dollmaker's True Story)
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1983 and 1984
at the Texas Renaissance Festival...
In 1983 the Wee Peeple were given an "ARBOR AREA"
(sort of like a porch or a pole barn)...
In 1984 the Dollmaker and Rick Stacy built
the Doll Shoppe and the Magick Garden.
Three upright (but no longer functional) 4x4's still stand in the Magick Garden...
...testimony to the old long-gone "Arbor Area".
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In 1984, when the Dollmaker lived in Hitchcock, Texas,
a Wee Peeple Doll was featured on the cover of the
Texas Weekly Sunday Supplement....
The Football Player was a doll made for a high school boy,
...commissioned by his mother.
Bless her heart.
Notice the byline: Photos by Allan C. Kimball
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During the summer of October 2004
20 years later...
the Photographer who took the pictures for that Sunday Supplement,
Allan C. Kimball,
ran into the Dollmaker at the Watermelon Festival in Luling, Texas
and, low and behold, he had become the owner of the
Hill Country Sun...
Customers (whether purposefully or haphazardly) arriving
at the Wee Peeple Doll Shoppe
on the grounds of the Texas Renaissance Festival
in October of 2004
might remember the stacks of Hill Country Sun Newspapers
strewn about like hay bales everywhere in the Doll Shoppe...
Everybody got a Hill Country Sun Newspaper with their purchase that year.
Heck, everybody who walked across the threshold of the Doll Shoppe
got a Newspaper with the Wee Peeple Dolls on the cover!
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ok now...let's Keep going back in time....
BEFORE 1980...
the Dollmaker did make Dolls
but they were not called the Wee Peeple Dolls
these earlier dolls were "floppy"! (gasp! NO!)
Oh yes.
Back in the 70's....
1978
even before the "Wee Peeple Dolls"
there were the...
"Dolls of the People You Know"
This was the Dollmaker's first attempt at starting a Dollmaking business
....hmmmm...
Portrait Dolls made from photographs and descriptions!
How about that! $25.00 for a Portrait Doll back then!!!
In violation of zoning laws located on Nueces Street in downtown Austin, Texas
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So the Floppy Dolls ... aka: Dolls of the People You Know
pre-dated the Wee Peeple Dolls.
In 1980
The Dolls stopped flopping.
The Dollmaker wanted her Dolls to be free-standing!
So...
Standing up on their own two feet was what characterized the
Wee Peeple Dolls
This was an important change for the Dollmaker.
The evolution from sitting to standing.
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But now we must Keep going BACK...........
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OK... even BEFORE the "Dolls of the People You Know"
in 1975-1976
During the Dollmaker's senior year at college....
she submitted a request to conduct
a One-Year
Independent Study in Toy and Dollmaking
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BACK, BACK,
to the very Beginning....
The Dollmaker's Story actually begins in college
with this doll...
The first Doll... the Ballerina Doll
As a child, she had dreamed of becoming a Ballerina.
This Ballerina Doll was created during the summer of 1975...
...safely far away from the pressures and distractions of Art School,
using her mother's old Singer sewing machine,
and hand embroidering the face.
It was the first Art she had made in four years of Art School
that meant anything to her, personally.
She became intensely drawn to Dollmaking as a path of personal expression.
That Ballerina Doll changed the course of the Dollmaker's life.
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Other dolls from that Independent Study in Dollmaking:
This little male doll was the Dollmaker's
first attempt at Soft-Sculpturing the faces,
using a stretchy but ribbed knit...
This doll taught her to look for face fabric with no ribbing in it!
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Carved and dried Apple-Head Dolls
These were fine as long as she was at school in the dry Allegany Plateau,
but as soon as she brought these Apple Heads home to Southampton on the coast,
they grew mold and she had to toss them out.
So, Apple Head Dolls were interesting, but not stable.
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There were many other dolls made during her course of study...
the styrofoam marionette.... the sock puppet...
In her Senior Year she was literally surrounded
by her Dollmaking Experiments...
the Dollmaker's College Yearbook Picture.
(1976)
That would be Alfred State Ceramic College, Alfred, NY
....and that would be the Dollmaker in the center...
(face painting by college roommate, Angie)
(The Dollmaker was 23 years old at that time!)
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70's 80's 90's
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Kandra Niagra, Dollmaker
PO Box 326
Smithville, Texas 78957
Phone: 512-332-6680
Email: bigkandra@aol.com
06/07/12