As thoughts turn to holiday gifts, let us remember interactive toys from the pre-Xbox age. Paper dolls, for example. These artful, tactile playthings have done more than document styles through the decades. They also reflect attitudes and social change, sometimes as graphically as editorial cartoons. Proof, along with a fascinating holiday outing, can be found at the Anacostia Community Museum’s new exhibition, “200 Years of Black Paper Dolls.”
What a wholly absorbing blend of visual culture, social history, fashion and nostalgia for the scissors-driven pastime! Collected by Arabella Grayson, author, historian, model and five-year D.C. resident, the selections range from shockingly derogatory stereotypes to positive portrayals mirroring 1950s and ‘60s civil rights progress.
Among cut-’em-out characters: Mammies, buffoons, Sambos, and slave girls, such as “quintessential pickaninny” Topsey from 1863.
Prepare to drop your jaw at images of black Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman whose wardrobe includes guns — this from the 1990s, not the 1890s! — and a magazine lampoon of former South African leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Then check the “movin’ on up” contrast between tattered “Patches and Petunia” (1937) and post-Brown v. Board of Education “Betty and Billy” (1955).
Then appraise the celebrities — “Our Gang” kids Farina and Stymie, a bare-breasted Josephine Baker, Grace Jones and Star Jones, and sports legends Jackie Robinson and Tiger Woods. This show’s appeal transcends gender, race and generations.
Besides box sets and booklets, paper dolls appeared in comic strips, political cartoons, greeting cards, magazines and advertising promotions. An 1890s Aunt Jemima family paper doll set features before and after the sale of her recipe rags-to-riches depictions. Jointed (“articulated”) puppet-like paper dolls date back to 1885, some sold with colored crepe paper and trimmings for handmaking original apparel.
Paper dolls were powerful shapers of attitude. Said Grayson at the exhibition’s recent opening, “Children see before they speak, so [paper doll] images were a way they came to know their [prescribed] role and place in society.”
Black Paper Dolls
“200 Years of Black Paper Dolls: The Collection of Arabella Grayson” is on display through April 29.
Venue: Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place SE, Washington
Admission: Free
More info: 202-633-4820 or www.anacostia.si.edu
