The Hattie Thompson Doll — An early heat transfer face perhaps? — #AmericanDoll #7

For today’s “History of Dolls” blog post, I’m researching what I’m calling the “Hattie Thompson Doll” because according to the DAR website, this doll was made at some point in the 20th century, by a woman name Hattie Thompson.

Today’s blog post is part of a history challenge! Click here to read about the challenge and download the free PDF to join the history challenge.

On the DAR Museum website, they describe this doll’s dress thus: “The doll is wearing a long sleeved, full length red dress with a white fern print on it. The dress has a high collar and a pleated bodice, a slight leg-of-mutton poof at the shoulder, and straight sleeves that end at the wrists” (1). Just looking at the design in the image above, I believe this dress was supposed to imitate the dresses of the turn-of-the-century.

But as we’ve seen in previous installments of “The History of Dolls” on my website, just because a doll is wearing a dress from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s doesn’t mean the doll was made then. It could have been made any time after the era its dress represents.

The Hattie Thompson doll is one such doll. We can be sure of that because Ms. Thompson wasn’t even born until 1902!

So the DAR Museum gives us a very vague estimate of “early 20th century” for this doll. But I wonder if we, as a community of doll collectors and sewists could put a closer date on the doll…?

Let’s have a look at this doll’s facial features, and take a closer look at the fabric of her dress:

Sorry if that image is blurry. I’ve gotten my images off the DAR Museum website, and screenshots don’t have very high resolution. These images, of course, are used with permission.

Now what can we learn about this doll’s face? The DAR Museum tells us that the doll’s “Facial features seem to have been printed and painted in black directly onto the fabric. Doll has brown wool hair sewn into the head, and the face shows two eyes a nose and a pink mouth.” When you look at the doll’s face, you can see that her eyes are very nicely spaced apart, and the features are very even.

Now granted, Ms. Thompson may have simply been an amazing artist! But I’m going to hypothesize that it’s also possible, she used an early heat-transfer to create the initial markings that she later painted over.

If that’s the case, this doll may date to approximately the 1950’s.

Heat transfer patterns are still available today, but they weren’t available to the average American until the 1950’s, according to an article on the Howard Custom Transfers website. “In the 1950s and 1960s, advancements in technology allowed for the creation of heat transfer decals and iron-on transfers. These were often used to apply designs or images to clothing, including T-shirts, as a form of DIY customization” (2). Prior to the 1950’s, the concept of a heat transfer pattern had been invented but was mostly used by industrial companies.

As I’ve said, though, perhaps Hattie Thompson is just an amazing artist! That’s certainly a possibility.

When I made my Rachel rag doll, though, I used a simplified version of a lightbox, holding the fabric up to a window with a picture of Pippi Longstocking taped to the window. Then I laid my fabric over the top and used a pencil to draw Pippi-Longstocking-like features onto my fabric.

That’s how I got my features to look so evenly spaced on this doll:

So that’s certainly a possibility too.

Maybe Hattie Thompson used a window as a lightbox, with an image behind it, to form her doll’s face.

If that’s the case, the doll could have been made before the 1950’s.

What may help is to pinpoint the age of the fabric used for this doll’s beautiful red dress. Take another look at this red fabric, printed with tiny ferns.

Are any of you, my followers and friends, familiar with this fabric? Can you date it? Do you know when it was available in stores?

Is it, by chance, a feed sack fabric? That would likely make it earlier than the 1950’s. But if you remember buying this exact same fabric in the 1970’s, then we can be sure it dates a little later than the 1950’s.

I’m curious to learn what I can about this fabric! Please leave a comment if you recognize it at all…

But for the sake of our history challenge, for now let’s maintain the date that the DAR Museum gives our Hattie Thompson doll: the early 20th century.

Once again, today’s blog post is part of a history challenge! Click here to read about the challenge and download the free PDF to join the history challenge.

Today’s images and much of the information provided come from the DAR Museum online. Please click on the links provided to learn more about the DAR Museum. The address of the museum is 1776 D Street NW Washington, DC 20006, so if you plan to visit our nation’s capital, you might think about going to see the DAR Museum in person.

I’m a museum liaison for my local (Twin Falls, Idaho) chapter of the DAR, which means that I sometimes do museum research for our local club.

The letters, DAR, stand for Daughters of the American Revolution (3). What does this mean? It means I have an ancestor who was in the American Revolutionary War. I’m very proud of the fact that my ancestor served in the Revolution for American Independence from Great Britain, and as such, helped establish the United States of America as an independent nation.

The DAR is a club that offers its members an opportunity to serve our nation by doing organized volunteer work. Last year I made doll clothes to give as Christmas presents to a.) the families of United States military service members and b.) a homeless shelter in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Although the doll clothes I made for these purposes was featured in some of my articles here on ChellyWood.com, the volunteer work I do for the DAR is separate from the work I do to maintain this website. They are not affiliated with one another in any way. ChellyWood LLC is recognized by the state of Idaho as a for-profit business, whereas the DAR is a nonprofit organization.

Some members of the DAR serve as volunteers at local voting locations, soup kitchens, food banks and so much more. If you’d like to contact your local DAR to request volunteers to act in service capacities in your neighborhood, or if you’d like to learn whether or not you could qualify to join the DAR (you must do genealogy research to find out whether or not you are a descendent of a person who served in the American Revolutionary War), feel free to contact members of the Daughters of the American Revolution on their website, by using one of the links I’ve provided here.

REFERENCES:

Please note: images were used, with permission, and they come from the DAR Museum website. Click on the link provided to visit the DAR Museum website for yourself, to see a higher-resolution image and to learn more details about each of the dolls featured.

1. Hattie Thompson (artist-maker). “Doll.” [Medium: textile]. Early 20th Century. DAR Museum, Washington DC, Accessed 7 September 2024. Associated image is in the public domain.
2. Sipola, Madelyn. “The History of Heat Printing.” Howard Custom Transfers, Inc. 2024. Web. Accessed 7 September 2024. https://www.howardct.com/blog-entries/the-history-of-heat-printing
3. “Become a Member.” National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR), 24 July 2024. Web. 2024.