From all across America, from museums and private collections, from attics and country fairs, from families that have cherished them for generations - here are American dolls of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, a wonderful variety of dolls, all handmade, dolls fashioned from the humblest materials and radiant with the love that children, from pioneer days forward, have lavished upon them.Dolls made from clothespins, cornhusks, dried apples, and pinecones..dolls made of everything from bedposts to wishbones! Topsy-turvy dolls, Amish dolls in sombre clothing, with no faces (the Biblical prohibition against imitating God's creation), a nut-head doll wearing an elegant afternoon dress made of tobacco leaves, two Black dolls, friends meant never to part, their hearts connected by a small chain, a tiny Oriental doll from Utah, where the Chinese migrated to work the railroads, a single braid hanging to his toes, sailors and boulevardiers, a winsome cloth dolls with painted features and a pointed head, dolls with delicately defined hands and crooked teeth, or exquisitely embroidered faces and mere fists for hands!This book contains a lively historical and interpretive text and is a treasure for doll collectors and for lovers of dolls and things American.