A couple of weeks ago I went over to a meeting of the local Doll Collectors’ Club to talk about preservation issues. I was in for a treat! Yes, Halloween and Thanksgiving are past now, but I am thankful that these creatures are only dolls and not alive. I am sincerely hoping they won’t come and haunt my dreams, ever. The theme of the meeting was “Off the Wall Dolls”, the really weird dolls, that is.
There were 13 people present at the meeting, and all of them had lots of questions about how to best preserve their many many dolls. A variety of materials were involved: plastics, paper/clay compound, textiles, wood, paper, leather. I came armed with a bag full of archival supplier catalogs and product samples, ready to advise on storage options. As in all collecting, it is important to preserve original packaging that the dolls came in.
In most cases I ended up recommending archival boxes and buffered tissue. If the doll packaging was already opened, the doll could be taken out of its original packaging and wrapped in buffered or unbuffered tissue.
The original packaging could also be wrapped in tissue. Then both things could go into an archival box and packed with balled up tissue to fill up the empty spaces in the box. Another solution is to use an archival polyethylene zip-locked bag for storing the doll. A sheet of Volara foam or Ethafoam can be inserted into the bag for support.
This is the transparent middle-aged man. He even has little audio transmission holes on the back on his head, so apparently he used to have a sound component and batteries were meant to be inserted someplace. If only we knew what he used to say!
Library and Archives Preservation 