Today was one of those days. A lady came into my store with a bag of dolls for sale. She started taking them out of her bag, and there was nothing terribly exciting at first--mostly average condition, common bisque Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls. But then, she took out what looked like a Nancy Ann Story Book doll in a jar! I almost gave her my standard mini-lecture on how bad it was to store dolls in any sort of an enclosed container...but then I looked at the doll more closely.
The doll wasn't stored in the jar...the doll was originally sold and packaged in the jar! The jar was shaped so the doll fit in the jar perfectly, with the jar in the shape of a heart. The doll stood on the cap of the jar, with her head placed in a specially blown glass holder so she wouldn't move. Her skirt fills out the bottom of the jar. Her shoes are attached to an inner metal lid. The jar cap states that the doll is from "Dollcraft Co., Santa Clara, Calif." on the rim, and also "#118--Donna, Junior Miss." The bottom of the cap states: "Dolls with a Story (in script) by Dollcraft, Santa Clara, California."
Inside the jar lid and the inner metal lid, the doll company has a brochure (pink, with hearts). From this, I set out to find out more about the doll and also Dollcraft Co.
The mark on the doll's back cannot be seen in the jar. But, there were additional hints on the packaging. On the sides of the jar, hearts were embossed. There were also hearts on the jar lid and the brochure. Hearts are commonly found on the packaging for dolls marked with the Kerr & Hinz mark (K & H USA). So, I began to assume that the doll was a Kerr & Hinz doll. But, who was Dollcraft?
My research turned up interesting information. John Casey, in his Internet history of the Silicon Valley, claimed that Dollcraft was created in 1943 by Elise and Maurice Juster (which moved to Santa Clara in 1948). Generally, the Justers are credited with creating Kerr & Hinz. But...here is where things get interesting. The Justers didn't own a company called Kerr & Hinz dolls. According to Casey, the Justers moved Dollcraft to Santa Clara (at the corner of Kiely and El Camino) because they were using the Kerr & Hinz tile factory furnaces to fire the bisque bodies of their dolls! At the Kiely and El Camino building, the Justers painted and dressed the Kerr & Hinz fired dolls. According to Casey: "Kerr & Hinz was located for years near the corner of Lafayette and Martin, where the firm produced ceramic wall and flooring tile for customers all over the Western U.S." The Justers doll company was located "in the area of Santa Clara just South of El Camino Real, near the Moonlight Shopping Center."
When you look at the packaging of the doll marked K & H, they never are labeled Kerr & Hinz! Usually, they are unlabeled (which makes sense, since they were trying to pretend to be Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls). Sometimes, they would be labeled something entirely different, such as "Peg O' My Heart" Doll. Casey provides further history about Dollcraft: "Elise and five employees set about creating the 6, 7 and 8 inch high dolls which were to become very popular all over the U.S. during the late 1940s through the late 1950s. The firm produced more than 120 different individual dolls, including the Storybook line...and the Globetrotters, with dolls dressed in authentic native garb from virtually every country in the world." The brochure contained in the jar bears this out, with listings for the Globetrotter dolls, and also baby dolls, Little Ladies, the Romance of History series and the Bridal Series, plus "Collector's Dolls Under Glass," which is what our doll is. You could also get Red Riding Hood in a glass jar, and also a Bride, Martha Washington, and several others.
The final interesting tidbit Casey provides is directly about our glass-enclosed doll in a jar: "one of the biggest customers of the firm was Cal-Neva lodge, located in North Lake Tahoe. During most of the 1950's, there was a grand display of the Justers' dolls, each cased in a heart shaped bottle with the Cal-Neva logo displayed on the lid, adorning one of the walls in the main casino. When a customer hit a certain slot machine jackpot, they would be given their choice of a doll."
As many collectors know, the dolls marked K & H ceased production after a lawsuit by the Nancy Ann Storybook Company. Casey asserts that, indeed, it was Dollcraft which was sued for patent infringement, and further that the Superior Court of San Francisco "found the suit specious, and without basis, but only after the Juster's had spent all of their capital trying to fight off the action."
Finally, our doll in a bottle has a history!
