Oh, You Beautiful Doll!
The Canadian Museum of Civilization Celebrates The Story of Dolls in CanadaHull, Quebec, February 1, 2000 — Opening on Thursday, February 3, 2000 in the Canada Hall Mezzanine of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC), Timeless Treasures: The Story of Dolls in Canada celebrates dolls and doll making in Canada.
Occupying 1,200 square metres (4,000 square feet) and covering over a thousand years, Timeless Treasures showcases more than 400 dolls from the CMC, private collectors and doll artists across Canada. The exhibition features an unprecedented range of dolls connected to Canada: rare antiques, Inuit and First Nations dolls, Eaton's Beauties of the twentieth century, and 35 unique creations by current-day artists. This comprises the first-ever national exhibition of the work of Canadian doll artists. The exhibition reveals the wide range of meanings and uses ascribed to dolls throughout history, while also showing the technological developments in doll making and its industrialization in the twentieth century.
The exhibition's guest curator is Evelyn Strahlendorf, an author and active promoter of Canadian doll making. Host curator Peter Rider is the CMC's Atlantic Provinces Historian and the curator of numerous exhibitions.
"Dolls are, in essence, cultural icons," says Strahlendorf. "They reflect our culture, show who we are, what we admire, who we think is important. They are a unifying influence, in that women and girls from coast to coast and through time have made dolls, dressed dolls, and dreamed of owning fancy dolls from retail catalogues. Dolls also reflect our history, showing how clothing and technology have evolved, and how different peoples at different times in history have seen the world."
Timeless Treasures features a cross-section of Canadian doll making from the earliest times to the present day. Visitors will be able to see the dolls used by Inuit women to teach their daughters the basics of clothing construction, as well as the dolls of other First Nations peoples, made of materials like cornhusks, beeswax and leather. Homemade settlers' dolls are also featured, bearing witness to lives which revolved around making do with the materials at hand. One intriguing doll from these early times is a Montagnais "tea doll" from Labrador, which was stuffed with tea at the beginning of a journey for use by a trapper and his family. More elaborate dolls from this period are also featured, including two dolls made around 1850 for the children of Lord Elgin, Governor General of Canada.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, dolls became more elegant, with china heads, elaborate hairstyles and fashionable clothing. The Museum's Empress Eugénie-style doll and a magnificent walking doll on loan from a private collection are special features among the antique dolls, as are several examples of the mass-produced "Eaton's Beauties" — familiar to every little girl of the early 1900s.
The works by doll artists in Timeless Treasures are striking in their variety of techniques, materials and subject matter, from satirical to historical figures like Sir John A. Macdonald and William Lyon Mackenzie, to Native spirits and folk heroes like Évangéline. Also in the exhibition are many dolls representing well-known Canadians like the Dionne quintuplets, Barbara Ann Scott, Emily Carr and Wayne Gretzky, as well as mass-market dolls familiar to Canadians of all ages.
Half of the dolls in the exhibition are from the CMC's collections, but loans from doll collectors and artists across Canada also figure largely. In addition, the Ottawa Dollcraft Guild shared its expertise with the curators and generously supported the restoration of an antique doll from the Museum's collection.
"We are pleased to present an exhibition like Timeless Treasures in our Canada Hall Mezzanine," says Acting CMC President and CEO Joe Geurts. "The Mezzanine was designed to showcase Canadian heritage themes, from hats and wedding dresses to Acadian history and potbellied stoves. In many ways the history of doll making mirrors Canada's human history, and we are sure that every visitor will discover personal reflections of childhood in this exhibition."
Timeless Treasures: The Story of Dolls in Canada will be featured in the Mezzanine of the CMC's Canada Hall from February 3, 2000 to March 30, 2003.
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