Inside this edition of Small Wonders...

• Curator's Corner
• From the Director
• New Members
• Donations
• Area Doll Show Dates
• Coming Events at the Museum
• European Doll Tour, continued
• Other Museum Tidbits
  

	A Tasha Tudor Christmas
	November 5, 2005 thru January 15, 2006

“The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy.”
Fra Giovanni, 1513.

The above is a favorite quote of celebrated illustrator and author, and the subject of our holiday exhibit, the incomparable Tasha Tudor. The quote is also emblematic of her chosen lifestyle, as Tasha, born in 1915, has been fascinated since childhood with the bygone era of the 1830s. So captivated was she, that she has conducted her entire adult life at her rural New England home in a veritable “time warp” reflection of this era.
Many of you may be familiar with Tasha’s charming watercolor illustrations of children, animals, flowers and toys, which grace the pages of more than eighty books, and her more recent foray into “lifestyle” publications, such as The Private World of Tasha Tudor, Tasha Tudor’s Garden, and Tasha Tudor’s Cookbook. Tasha’s pursuits, although always a reflection of her beloved nineteenth-century existence, extend far beyond watercolor paintings and books, however. Among her diverse interests, is a passion for dolls, dollhouses and miniatures. And of course Tasha made her own dolls. Highlighting our exhibit will be the very last doll made by Tasha Tudor. A 17" portrait doll of her great, great grandmother Effie, will be surrounded by her own collection of doll-size furniture and other belongings, some of which were made by Tasha’s son Seth and his wife Margery.
We will also be creating scenes inspired by Tasha’s illustrations, (as well as a pair of very special paintings by Tasha’s mother, Rosamond Tudor, herself an accomplished portrait painter), using dolls and toys from the collection.
For more information about Tasha Tudor, and the exhibit, please see Rosalie’s column. Happy holidays!

-Jill Gorman
Curator

from the director...

Welcome to our first newsletter edition as the Museum celebrates teenage status. Lots of parents groan at the thought of raising teenagers, but those were some of my favorite years in my life and in my five children’s lives as well. I am also enjoying being the grandmother to a wonderful teenage grandson, so I think I am going to take great relish in being at the helm of a teenage museum as it continues to mature, refine, and define itself into an even more engaging institution.

We hope you will carve out time in your busy life to visit the upcoming exhibits we have planned. We are so excited about them we can hardly contain ourselves some days as the research and preparedness takes place. For us it may be years in the making, so it is a long wait to fruition. Take “A Tasha Tudor Christmas”, for example. The star, Effie, the last doll ever made by Tasha and a portrait of her great, great grandmother has been in the collection for several years awaiting her turn. And a visit by our family to Williamsburg, Virginia in 2003 and the Tasha Tudor exhibit there was the beginning of our research for this exhibit. It gave us a good idea how much room we would need to display our Tasha doll who is 17” tall and all her to-scale furniture, some of which was made by Tasha’s son Seth and his wife Margery, and accessories – a lot! Enthusiastic staff members like Kathy Davis and Nancy Uttech who are avid Tasha fans have kept us supplied with reading material and videos and Lacee Badgley and Nancy have tracked down many of Tasha’s beautiful works which will be available in the Museum Store (see page three).
Contact with Tasha’s family has led to the news that there will be an article on Tasha in a doll magazine within the next year and Effie has been invited to be in the article!
So why Tasha Tudor? And some of you will ask Who is Tasha Tudor anyway? It seems one either is an avid follower of Tasha’s, and has read all her books since a child and continues as an adult, or has never heard of her, seen her on national television or read articles about her. This seems hard to believe since she is considered to be one of the most successful illustrators of children’s books alive today. But it is her simple life style that has attracted so much attention in the end, the one she created in her works and also for herself and her children. But her success also caused this simple lifestyle to nearly be destroyed for her.
We hope you will make plans for a visit to the museum and let yourself be taken back to the good old days when life was simple, folks were neighborly, and Christmas was celebrated more like the first one, humbly. We promise you won’t want to miss our Christmas tree this year either – it will be MAGIC!

-Rosalie A Whyel
Director

Welcome To Our New & Returning Members:

We would like to thank the following people for their generous
donations during the last quarter:

Show Dates

NANCY JO DOLL & TOY SALE* Vallejo Fairgrounds Vallejo CA Friday November 4, 2005 12pm - 4pm Saturday November 5, 2005 9am - 3pm	NADDA* (Natl’ Antique Doll Dealers Assoc.) SeaTac Embassy Suites Seattle WA Saturday April 29, 2006 10am - 5pm Sunday April 30, 2006 11am - 4pm
THE ANTIQUE DOLL & TOY MARKET* Bellevue Inn Red Lion Bellevue WA Sunday November 20, 2005 11am - 4pm

*Look for the Museum sales table

EUROPEAN DOLL TOUR 2005, Continued!

As we left off in the Summer Newsletter our tour was saying Good-bye to France and the friends, doll and human, that we had met and made there. However, we were elated at the prospect of new heights, literally, in Switzerland that soon awaited us. A scenic bus trip to Basel on April 22 after visiting the Hospital Dieu gave us time to relax and contemplate our past adventures.
The next morning saw us at the beautiful Puppenhausmuseum Basel. Never could we have allotted enough time to see every dollhouse, bear, and doll that resides therein. 6000 inhabitants on several floors intermingle in a playful array of different scales just as though a child had left them there to toddle off to bed.
A visit with the Director led me to believe our museum problems are international just like our enthusiasm for the dolls as she promised a visit to our museum one day soon.
Mind-boggled by the sheer extent of the collection and the idea that they change the outside window exhibits every 11 weeks (this time an electrically run display of animals in an outdoor woodland scene with dirt and all!), we reluctantly climbed aboard the little trolley that brought us back to the door of our hotel in downtown Basel.
After lunch we headed by bus back to Colmar, a charming little town we all vowed to return to for a longer stay. This is one of those “gems” we all hope to encounter along the way but never actually anticipate and the Musee Aninee du Jouet was the same, a lovely surprise of treasures in a delightful setting.
That night our extra large hotel room was a special treat, 2 year old grandson Alec would get to spend the night with Grandma Rosie. As I prepared for bed, Alec was preparing his special surprise for me. All tucked in bed he smiled sweetly at me as I entered the bedroom. Framing his little smile was a perfectly inked beard and mustache just like Daddy’s! I will never forget the image of that little “Frenchman” in bed. I smile every time I think of it. That is why we make dolls in our children’s images, is it not? How else can we preserve their preciousness?

After a hearty warm breakfast in the hotel we checked out and boarded our cozy bus for the Museum of Riehen a short ride away. Hand carved early toys were a specialty here and the animals, farms, zoos, trains, towns, and their settings were so beautifully done and so well preserved it made the purest of doll collectors drool. As always, I was the last out the door gazing wistfully back at something I must have missed.

Of course, we needed to move on because we all knew what was coming next and had long anticipated the Museum Barrengasse in Zurich renowned for the collection of Sasha Morgenthaler’s dolls and animals. I believe “serene” is one word I would use to describe this exhibit. I felt so touched by the beauty of her early works, both the children and the amazing animals. The tactile aspect of the fabrics left us wanting to reach out and touch. It was very comprehensive without being overwhelming and left a new appreciation for Sasha’s talent.
Our brains were now filled to capacity with visuals of all kinds like the “sugar plums dancing” in our heads as we climbed the Swiss mountains to St. Moritz and looked forward to a free day in this picturesque village. Little did we know what tomorrow would bring….
We woke to a mantel of snow covering the beautiful Swiss Alpine village of St Moritz. It was as if we were in a fairytale, or to Ellie and me, a nightmare. It was the one thing we dreaded all year because today was the day we were to take the bus up to Davos, another winding road to the 10,000 foot level. We quickly made the decision that the Glacier Express would be a wonderful and safer alternative!

This little train that is celebrating its 75th anniversary took us on an enchanted ride we will never forget through the mountaintops and farming villages to the urban city of Davos and the Spielzeugmuseum of Angela Prader. We were graciously met and transported by Angela’s husband to this most marvelous of museums which they opened especially for our visit. It was perfection. Each item had a space of its own and one immediately knew the importance of what was being shown as well as Angela’s personal feeling for it. There was great joy to be found in her sense of purity, eye for detail, and originality from the fashion doll with her complete wardrobe to the Eagle train by Marklin. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
And so we said our farewells to our new friends and also to Switzerland and began our decent into Italy. But that will have to be another chapter in another newsletter, for once again I have run out of room. I shall see you in the Winter Newsletter in sunny Stressa. Ciao!

Other Museum Tidbits!

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