TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Dolls Bring Real Joy To Collector

ADVERTISEMENT

By ELAINE MARKOWITZ Tribune correspondent

Published: November 24, 2007

SUN CITY CENTER - Francine Webb's sunny kitchen is awash with dolls - not lacy dolls with soft curls or wind up dolls that speak. These are Japanese dolls called kokeshi, fashioned from wood.

Lacking arms and legs and sporting painted hair, the dolls are distinctive, with no two alike.

The dolls date back at least to the early 19th century. Some sources say centuries earlier. The dolls apparently originated in small mountain villages in northern Japan.

"There are two schools of thought on the dolls," Webb said one recent morning in her Sun City Center home.

"Either tourists went to the hot springs in the mountains and wanted souvenirs to bring back, or farmers going to market made dolls out of leftover wood to keep their children occupied."

Webb said artisans would have created the dolls for souvenirs, but she supports the second view. She said that farmers made their own bowls and other household items and didn't waste any wood.

Webb is president of the Sun City Center chapter of Questers International, an organization of Canadians and Americans who collect all sorts of items, antique and modern. Webb, a collector of wide-ranging interests, most recently has focused on the kokeshi, gaining expertise through reading and travel. Her large assortment of dolls represents both traditional and modern kokeshi.

"What I like about the kokeshi is that they are whimsical and simple," she said.

Those qualities apply to both old and new dolls.

Kokeshi are called either traditional or creative, Webb said, with the creative being of more recent vintage. Some of the distinctions are apparent, even to the untrained eye.

Traditional dolls, particularly those made in the mountains of Tohoku, are highly valued. They often maintain the original wood coloring, varnished and smooth. If they do have color, it's typically red and encircles the top of the head. Other dolls have red cherry blossoms adorning a painted, kimono-inspired torso.

Many of the older dolls also are made of one continuous piece of wood with carved, helmet-shaped hair.

Webb expressed particular pleasure in her traditional dolls, although the oldest in her collection dates only to 1980. Although not deemed an antique, the doll is made from a single dowel-shaped piece of wood. The body, of natural wood color, has no curves, no arms and no legs. Black hair is painted in ribbons down the cylindrical form.

Webb pointed to another favorite with two rounded heads poking out of a faded, red barrel-shaped body.

"You don't find too many with two heads," she said. "These probably represent a mother and child."

Creative kokeshi often are made from numerous wooden pieces crafted on a lathe. They typically are more colorful and vibrant than their older cousins. In Webb's collection, those dolls have topknots of black hair and painted clothing. They sometimes sport hats. A number of them have heads that bob.

Webb singled out several of her favorites. One, a foot-high woman fashioned from three rounded pieces, had a long torso painted with earth-toned flowers on the natural wood. The head and a small topknot constituted the other two pieces of wood.

Another favorite, a 9-inch doll, had a large, round head with a circular design around the scalp. Big, round black eyes stared out from the wood. Wood said the rounded eyes are representative of the dolls in one particular village.

Since kokeshi are scarce in Florida, Webb goes elsewhere for her dolls.

"EBay is a major source," she said. "Most of the sellers are from the West Coast of the U.S."

Webb also has imported dolls from Japan and Hawaii.

Visits to San Francisco and Los Angeles have yielded more dolls.

"They have Japanese cultural centers there where dolls are sold," she said.

The source closest to home is the gift shop in the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, where a small assortment of dolls is sold.

Webb is starting to explore other kokeshi dolls popular in Japan. Those include creative dolls with a touch of humor and levity, dolls with scowls and grimaces depicting criminals, and religious icons, male figures called Daruma.

The Daruma are popular in Japan.

"They are part of Japanese folk art," she said.

The price of dolls varies. Webb said a signed doll from a well-known artist brings the most money, but most other dolls are affordable.

"The majority of the small creative dolls cost about $10 to $15," she said, "but I've seen some for over $300."

Sometime in February, Webb, who moved to Sun City Center from Windsor, Ontario, in 2004, is scheduled to do a presentation on kokeshi to the Sun City Center chapter of Questers International.

"I did frequent presentations back in Windsor," she said. "This will be the first one here."

For information on the kokeshi dolls or Questers, call Webb at (813) 634-1314.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT