Wednesday, May 14, 2003 | 8:45 a.m.
Florence Theriault has examined and assessed many antique doll collections.
As the founder of Theriault's, a Maryland-based premier doll auction firm, collections come her way when owners either die or choose, for whatever reason, to relinquish their lifelong pursuits.
As with any type of collecting, Theriault said, there are different levels of enthusiasm.
"A lot of people do it to get interested in something before they know it, get caught up in the historical aspect," Theriault said.
"I see other people who really want rarity. I see other people who just want a face that speaks to them. There are so many elements that factor into them. Doll collectors are really fascinating."
And sometimes they are a bit, well, fanatical. One longtime New York collector had every inch of furniture in her apartment covered with dolls. "Then we opened the kitchen cupboards and there was no cups and dishes in there," Theriault said. "There were just doll heads."
But accumulating hundreds and sometimes thousands of antique dolls isn't entirely unusual to devotees to the niche market.
Dressed in wool coats, silk and lace, the dolls and their pensive gazes tug at collectors' heartstrings. Their price tags can run into the thousands of dollars.
This weekend will be no exception when Theriault's hosts "300 Impossible Things Before Noon" at The Venetian.
The auction features nearly 400 French bisque and German Gebruder Heubach dolls from two private collections, which will be on display for two hours prior to bidding.
Also included are vintage toys from a collection most noted for its tin lithograph mechanical Popeye toys, created in the 1950s.
"We have some wonderful toys in this catalog, which we normally don't have," said Theriault, who founded the firm with her husband, George, three decades ago.
The collection includes several tin mechanical Disney toys, dating back to the 1930s, as well as Mortimer Snerd, Charlie McCarthy and Howdy Doody items.
Most likely, the bulk of bidders will be eyeing the dolls.
Theriault's is well known in the world of antique dolls. It handles more than 10,000 dolls a year and holds roughly 40 auctions annually.
An auction last year at The Venetian brought in $1.8 million for 238 dolls belonging to the late Mildred Seeley, a longtime collector and author, legendary for opening her collection to the public for viewing, an oddity in the antique doll world.
One of Seeley's dolls, an Albert Marque doll, circa 1916, was auctioned for more than $215,000. Among the items to be auctioned this weekend is a rare 25-inch French bisque doll, circa 1882, with an estimated value of $25,000.
Collectors have already been inquiring about what might be the weekend's runaway sleeper: A very rare German portrait doll of Princess Juliana of the Netherlands as a young girl that was created in 1910.
"It's a portrait of her with this very wistful, sad face," Theriault said, adding that the doll's estimated value is at least $8,000 but could rise at the auction.
To have and to own
Spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on antique dolls is not unusual to enthusiastic collectors. Once clutched under the arms of children in generations past, the dolls are considered precious works of art to those who travel the world pursuing new additions.
"The sculpting on them is just outstanding," said Frances Ciraolo, a San Diego collector who will be attending this weekend's auction for a closeup view of the Heubach dolls, known for their expressive faces.
Ciraolo began collecting in the late 1970s after her husband bought her a doll for Christmas, and has spent as much as $33,000 for a doll. She hunts down clothes and accessories to fit the era of her dolls, most of which were made prior to 1880.
With more than 500 dolls already, and her designated doll room flooded, Ciraolo sees no end to her consumption of antique dolls. Nor has she begun to sell them and trade up.
How could she? Every doll, she said, is her favorite.
"I won't ever sell them," Ciraolo said, suggesting the " 'til death do us part" philosophy common among doll collectors.
Considered among the world's top collectibles, joining stamps and coins, antique dolls fit into a uniquely personal category.
As Theriault explains, her husband says he's never seen people kiss coins and stamps goodbye. But they will kiss their dolls goodbye.
Theriault attributes this to the lifelike qualities of antique dolls, as well as the nostalgic attachment to America's playthings of yore.
"I don't know anybody who is spending money for pure investment," Theriault said. "They hope it will be a good investment when they go to sell it, but there's an emotional component.
"When the dolls leave their home it's like they're really sending their children off."
Doll story
Though doll collecting can be expensive, it incorporates even those with modest incomes, such as Seeley, who was a schoolteacher who bought lower-priced dolls and traded up.
Not a collector herself ( because of conflict of interest with her auction firm), Theriault came into the business after attending general antique auctions with her husband.
Soon they began purchasing and collecting antiques, then holding their own auctions. Realizing they needed to specialize, they focused on dolls.
"We were going to do rare books at first but we found out how heavy they were," Theriault said with a laugh.
Three decades later she is a renowned author of several antique doll books, and has auctioned many private collections. The former librarian says her greatest fascination with antique dolls is in the historical research -- or, as Theriault says, "making the connection."
"I like taking them out of their isolated world of being a doll, being a toy, and putting them in a bigger picture," Theriault said.
Regarding this weekend's auction, Theriault said, "You could travel thousands of miles to go to a museum, and you might not see a collection as fine as this."
The dolls are from a New Orleans collector who collected in the 1960s and '70s and owned dolls by Gladys Hilsdorf, a legendary doll collector who died nearly 20 years ago but began collecting in the 1940s and made several trips to France to acquire her dolls.
The other collection belonged to a German couple whose dolls were featured in a Lydia Richter publication, making them famous to collectors "who looked at them and dreamed of them," Theriault said.
The early market
For a long time, France and Germany were the biggest producers of dolls. Collectors consider the "Golden Age of Doll-Making" to be from 1875 to 1925, and the 1920s to the 1960s for modern dolls.
Mass distribution of dolls began in the mid-1800s. Bisque, an unglazed, matte ceramic, was introduced in the 1870s, creating a new lifelike element to doll heads.
In the late 1800s French companies began making luxury dolls to reflect Victorian ideals of children as miniature adults (automatons were also made). Around this time the Heubach company began making dolls, which would eventually feature expressive faces characterizing myriad emotions.
In 1910 America entered the market, and in the 1940s plastics forever change the world of dolls.
Fortunately, collectors say, doll owners had the foresight to preserve dolls of the past. But collectors know their place. They are merely the caretakers. Many of the dolls have survived more than a century and will likely last even longer.
"When you buy the dolls and take care of them, you're a caretaker only," said longtime local collector and dealer Christine Lorman.
Eventually, Lorman said, "They're going to go to someone else ... We like to find them and transfer them to the next generation, no repairs, no cracks.
"There are collectors throughout the United States who have thousands. Some have hundreds that are very expensive dolls."
As collectors die or sell their collections, the antiques re-enter the market and into the hands of new collectors.
"Dolls have always been loved throughout history," Lorman said. "All of these are well over our ages. There are 200- and 300-year-old dolls. If they weren't loved they wouldn't be here. They're very fine pieces; they're very coveted."
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