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Was this presumably Victorian connection between Charlotte’s legend and the penny doll a lingering memory from the 19th century? Another kind of doll, called a Half-Frozen Charlotte, has arms attached to the body by a wire that goes through the shoulders. These are "frozen" except for their arms, with straight, skinny little bodies. Other half-frozen types have fleshier bodies with little bellies and buttocks popping out. They were made in various styles and sizes, of bisque (unglazed ceramic), porcelain, metal, celluloid, terra cotta, ceramic, composition, wood, rubber and even molded sugar and soap.
Frozen Charlotte Dolls Warned Victorian Children To Bundle Up On Winter Nights
The smallest dolls were sometimes used as charms in Christmas puddings. Occasionally, versions are seen with a glazed china front and an unglazed stoneware back. This enabled the doll to float on its back when placed in a bath.
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History
The Charlottes and Charlies come from Germany and were made between 1850 and 1914. They are also made in bisque, and can come in white, pink-tinted, or, more rarely, painted black.[3] Some rare examples have moulded chemises. Male dolls (identified by their boyish hairstyles) are called Frozen Charlies. Hiding coins or figurines in cakes is a tradition with ancient roots. Exhaustive searches of historic newspaper databases, magazines, and books of the period have failed to unearth contemporaneous evidence to support the idea that 19th-century Americans equated the penny doll with the legend of Fair Charlotte. Further, no one who has written about the penny doll and included a Victorian connection to the legend in his or her analysis has published anything from the 19th or early 20th centuries to support the claim.
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They tried all within their power, Her life for to restore, But Charlotte was a frozen corpse, And is never to speak more. There is music in the sounds of bells, As over the hills they go; What a creaking wake the runners make, As they bite the frozen snow. And away they then go silently, ’Til five cold miles were passed, And Charles with these few frozen words, The silence broke at last.
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The male version of the porcelain doll earned the name Frozen Charlie, likely after Charlotte's beau who perished of a broken heart and shared her tomb. In 1840, The New York Observer published an article about a horrific New Year's Eve accident. According to the article, "A young woman, whose name is given as Miss _____, was frozen to death while riding twenty miles to a ball on the eve of January 1, 1840." The Germans manufactured the porcelain dolls to float in the bath, a 19th-century rubber ducky. The dolls would float on their backs in bathwater, entertaining children during their baths. There isn’t a single reference (in magazines, books, newspapers, or anything else for that matter) of these porcelain dolls being called “Frozen Charlottes” in the entire 19th and early 20th centuries.
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I cannot believe there is authentic proof in the mind of the manufacturers of old dolls or of the children playing with them for so dubbing them. Dolls with blue eyes became popular in Queen Victoria’s reign but we cannot call them ‘Queen Victoria’s’ nor can we call the wooden dolls she played with circa 1820, Victoria dolls. We all see dolls that remind us of some prominent or historical character but why should any one of us have the right to so describe the type.
Americans Named These Porcelain German Bath Dolls 'Frozen Charlotte'
The eerie tale of a woman perishing on a long sleigh ride inspired Maine poet Seba Smith to write a poem called "A Corpse Going to a Ball." One time highly sought after by young girls to play with in the bath or bake into a cake, these antiques are now sought after by collectors today. It’s commonly accepted that these dolls were didactic tools, physical representations of the consequences of parental disobedience. It’s widely believed that Victorian children were well-aware of the origin story of these dolls and played with them nonetheless. After all, many aspects of Victorian culture are openly macabre and death-obsessed, so this grisly historical narrative isn’t entirely outlandish. We all love those stories but here is where we must use discretion and whatever knowledge our study has developed.
More Antiques
During the course of the internship, the intern will take a leading role in the cataloging, sorting and storing of research files and creating user guides for these collections. Center staff will instruct the intern on archival procedures, computer cataloging, storage requirements, and preventative conservation. Nothing is more charming and delightful to collect than those little dolls that were mass-produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For an accurate and professional assessment of a Frozen Charlotte doll’s value, consider consulting with antique doll experts or appraisers who specialize in this niche.
The Tale of Frozen Charlotte
When they arrived, her more-bundled-up beau found her frozen to death in the sleigh. The story says Charlie died of a broken heart soon afterward, and they were buried together in a single tomb. These tiny, pale, porcelain nightmares were pottery dolls manufactured in Germany in 1850, and intended for children to play with during bath time.
Victorian children loved to play with tiny, porcelain dolls that resembled corpses. Called Frozen Charlotte dolls, the porcelain figures reminded children of the morbid tale of a young woman who perished from the cold on a sleigh ride. Instead of focusing on vanity and fashion, like the original Charlotte, children who played with the dolls learned to listen to their parents. In fact, the so-far earliest mentions of a doll called Frozen Charlotte and couplings of the doll with the legend appear in American newspapers in the mid-1940s. And it was doll collectors and reporters writing about doll collectors who called penny dolls by this name, sometimes also referring to the legend.
Their popularity soared in Britain and America, where they were baked into cake as a nice (or not so nice, depending on your tolerance for creepy little porcelain girls) surprise for kids. The song was itself based on a poem by American writer Seba Smith, who first published the poem in a Maine newspaper in 1843. His poem was in turn inspired by an account published in a New York newspaper in 1840 detailing just such an incident. The doll's coloration is sometimes believed to be a reflection of the young lady's frosty demise. All mentions of these dolls from the time period call them “penny dolls,” not “Frozen Charlottes.” So when did the name we use today actually become connected to these little porcelain dolls?
“The Victorian doll who represented a frozen woman” has become an example of “hidden” or “hushed-up” history, the type of bizarre “did you know … ? ” factoid we believe and share without asking for primary sources. Doll collector/historian Nancy Shepard cautioned about this intertwining of fact and fiction in 1952.
What's more, her beau Charles was left so broken-hearted that he, too, perished, and the lovers were buried in the same tomb. Antique Frozen Charlotte dolls, particularly those from the mid-19th century, tend to be more valuable. Older dolls carry historical significance and often possess unique characteristics.
The doll’s origins—as a German bath-time novelty, meant to float in a tub—were innocent, but its arrival in the United States, in the mid 1800s, coincided with the popularity of a morbid song. The story goes that Maine writer Seba Smith stumbled upon a newspaper story that recounted how a young woman froze to death in her carriage on the way to a ball. Hit with inspiration, Smith, who is also known as the first to record the word scrumptious, scribbled a poem on the theme. Published in 1843, A Corpse Going to a Ball described how on a frosty night, a young lady named Charlotte refused to wear a blanket over her fine clothes.
This is pretty remarkable, considering the near-universal belief that this time period was the origin of the dolls’ name. Because they were made on a production line to be sold dirt-cheap, such dolls often had facial features painted on in a hit-and-miss fashion, adding to their charm. Some, dating from the 1920s, have tiny arms molded on their chests as if clutching their hearts, thus the label "hand-on-my-heart" dolls. There were also many rudely made Frozen Charlotte-style dolls that were popular in the 1920s and '30s and sold inexpensively as cake decorations and party favors. Such dolls were mass-produced in Germany, Japan and the United States. Also popular in the 1880s and '90s were numerous little dolls with china heads, arms and feet attached to nankeen cloth bodies in varying sizes.
Larger examples were often used in the manner of a traditional doll, as a plaything. Some were even designed to be brought into the bath with a child as they could float on their backs and would not be damaged by water. Smaller sizes were commonly inserted into cakes or puddings as charms, in much the same fashion as a Mardi Gras king cake which traditionally has a baby figurine hidden inside; to find it afforded the discoverer promises of future prosperity. Although we have evidence that 19th-century Americans (and others) sometimes placed penny dolls (and other items) into cakes, there’s no evidence that they ever considered these objects as symbols of frozen women. Many people find porcelain dolls, in particular, to be eerie or creepy. Despite their treasured status amongst doll collectors, the stiff but uncannily human features of these dolls are often likened to corpses.
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