Plangonology

Plangonology is the collecting of dolls: the assembling, study and keeping of dolls as objects, from the bisque-headed French and German dolls of the nineteenth century to Barbie, ball-jointed dolls and artist dolls. The word is the hobby's own coinage and lives mostly in society names and price guides; most collectors say "doll collecting". The interest is non-sexual and belongs with the other acquisitive hobbies in this catalog, where fetish keeps its older sense of an object credited with a power beyond its making.

Definition & scope

A plangonologist collects dolls for what they are as objects: the maker, the mould, the material, the costume and the condition. The field divides by period and material. Antique dolls, made before about 1930, are wood, wax, papier-mâché, china and bisque; vintage dolls, from roughly 1930 to 1980, are composition, hard plastic and early vinyl; modern collectibles are vinyl fashion dolls, resin ball-jointed dolls and one-of-a-kind artist dolls. Collectors specialise by maker (Jumeau, Kestner, Madame Alexander), by line (Barbie, Blythe, American Girl), by type (character dolls, automata, dollhouse dolls) or by the many variants of a single doll. Scope runs from a shelf of childhood survivors to museum-grade cabinets with provenance files.

Examples

What the term covers. Hunting a particular mould number at a doll show; keeping a 1959 Barbie in her original box; commissioning an artist doll; restoring a bisque head with a hairline crack and recording the repair; cataloguing costumes, wigs and sleep eyes by maker; collecting one factory's dolls across its whole run; and the ball-jointed doll hobby, in which owners buy resin bodies and faces and then paint, wig and dress them.

What the term does not cover. Dollification is a sexual role-play in which a person is treated as a doll, and the robot and doll fetish is a sexual attraction to doll-like figures; neither has anything to do with keeping dolls on a shelf. Antiquing overlaps in the shops and fairs, and a doll collector is often an antiquer too, but the antiquer's object is the whole past and the plangonologist's is one kind of thing. Collecting in general and its neighbours coin and stamp collecting and deltiology share the drive and differ in the object. Compulsive hoarding is a named disorder; a large, catalogued, displayed collection is a hobby whatever its size.

How the word is used. Plangonology and plangonologist appear in society names, price guides and dictionaries, and seldom in conversation; collectors talk about dolls, makers and moulds. The "fetish" in this entry's category is the everyday sense, an intense attachment to a class of object, with no sexual meaning. No diagnostic manual names doll collecting; the only clinical neighbour is hoarding disorder, which describes a different problem.

History & origins

Bisque and the factories (1840s to 1930)

The collectible doll is a product of nineteenth-century industry. Pierre-François Jumeau founded his Paris firm in 1842, and by the 1870s French bisque dolls from Jumeau, Bru and Steiner were luxury goods with glass eyes, kid bodies and couture wardrobes. German factories in Thuringia, Kestner, Simon & Halbig and Armand Marseille among them, made bisque heads in the millions and undercut the French by 1900. Kämmer & Reinhardt's character dolls of 1909, modelled on the faces of real children, are the pieces the antique market prizes most. Composition and, after 1945, hard plastic and vinyl ended bisque production, which is why a pre-1930 bisque doll is "antique" in the hobby's vocabulary.

The hobby organises (1937 onward)

Collecting the dolls, as distinct from playing with them, organised in the twentieth century. The United Federation of Doll Clubs was founded in the United States in 1937 and still runs the annual convention, the magazine and the accreditation of doll museums. The Colemans' The Collector's Encyclopedia of Dolls (1968) gave the field its reference work.

Barbie and the modern collectible (1959 onward)

Mattel launched Barbie on 9 March 1959 at the New York Toy Fair, and the doll became the twentieth century's most collected; Mattel puts lifetime sales above a billion dolls. Mattel began issuing dolls made for collectors, with certificates and tiered editions, in the 1980s, and the boxed 1959 "Number One" Barbie is the hobby's best-known trophy. Blythe (Kenner, 1972), American Girl (1986) and, from 1999, the resin ball-jointed dolls of Volks followed. Barbie entered the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester in 1998.

In practice

Collectors buy at doll shows, auctions, estate sales and online, and the specialist shows are where most antique dolls change hands. The work after buying is identification (the maker's mark on the back of a bisque head, the mould number, the body type), condition grading, conservation (cleaning, restringing, re-wigging, storing away from light and damp) and documentation. Display matters to most: cabinets, stands and period furniture. Ball-jointed doll owners photograph, dress and repaint their dolls and share the results, which makes that corner of the hobby a craft as much as a collection.

Psychology

The motives are the collector's usual ones with a specific inflection. Dolls are figures of people, so a collection carries memory, period and character in a way a coin does not, and many collectors begin with a childhood doll or the doll a parent kept. Completeness (every variant of a line), rarity (a factory's short run), craft (the modelling of an antique face, a hand-sewn costume) and the pleasure of arranging a display do the rest.

Prevalence & culture

No survey counts doll collectors, and this entry's figure is an estimate. The United Federation of Doll Clubs is among the largest hobby federations in its field, doll shows run in most large cities, and the ball-jointed doll and reborn communities online are sizeable, which places the committed hobby at a few percent of adults at most and the casual keeping of a childhood doll far higher. The catalog files it beside coin and stamp collecting and postcards, at the lower end of the collecting group.

Safety, consent & law

The hobby is legal and harmless. The practical risks are the antique trade's: reproduction bisque heads sold as originals, repainted faces, married bodies and heads, and forged marks, so provenance and a trusted dealer matter. Old dolls can carry lead paint and flammable celluloid, a handling and storage question. The hobby raises no consent or legal concern of its own; the line to watch is the one every collecting entry draws, between a catalogued collection and compulsive shopping or hoarding.