Name: Arabella on the Go! Paper Doll Sheet
Illustrated By: (Arabella on the Go!) Bruce Patrick Jones; (Topsy) Lydia Fraser
Published By and When: (Arabella on the Go!) Arabella Grayson, 2009; (Topsy) Lydia Fraser, 1932
Sizes: (Arabella on the Go! Paper doll) 10-1/2 inches, paper doll sheet 11 x 17 inches; (Topsy paper doll) 5 inches, paper doll sheet 6 x 9-1/4 inches
Description: (Arabella on the Go) Includes the Arabella paper doll, four fashionable clothing pieces, 7 accessories, a pair of shoes, and a separate description sheet. A reproduction of one of the earliest mass-produced Black paper dolls, Topsy, was included in the package with the Arabella paper doll.
(Topsy) Originally published in Canadian Home Journal in October 1932, the Topsy paper doll includes the doll and six labeled clothing items. The Play Dress includes an illustrated white doll for Topsy to hold.
Other: The Arabella on the Go! paper doll, drawn in the likeness of Arabella Grayson by Bruce Patrick Jones in 2006, represents Arabella Grayson, a freelance writer and Black-paper-doll enthusiast. Grayson’s “200 Years of Black Paper Dolls” exhibition has traveled to the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, Mills College in Oakland, California, and The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures.
On the description sheet, Grayson wrote:
Like all toys, whether their intended audience is for an adult or child, paper dolls chronicle our social mores. An affordable collectible, paper dolls date back to the early 1700s, a time when paper toys were expensive commodities the average European wage earner could ill afford. The earliest mass-produced Black paper doll published in the United States was Topsey, a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a best seller in its time. The unflattering rendering of the enslaved little girl was produced in 1863. For the next 100 years, paper dolls generally depicted people of African ancestry in stereotypical, subservient or unappealing fashion. With the sustained campaign for civil rights, political gains, and societal shifts and attitudes, and the talent of forward-thinking artists and publishers, Black paper dolls have come of age.
Read more about Arabella Grayson’s Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls exhibition here.
Gallery
Arabella on the Go!
Topsy
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