I'm a sucker for handmade paper dolls and paper doll dresses, but early paper dolls like this, with (wonderfully awkward) graphite drawn faces and details, are the ones I'm always really looking for, and the hardest to come by. (How to not love those little curtains of drawn hair and those beady little eyes so close to that dash of a nose! And what a charmer of an outfit, with its own pair of legs attached to it.)
I found the doll and dress together between the salvaged glass and wood back of an antique frame--the frame had been damaged and discarded sometime along the way--so I reframed them in this wonderful antique octagonal frame I've had sitting around in wait of the right thing. There are simply mounted (each via one small piece of archival tissue to their backs, easily removed) to a clean piece of laid paper from an old ledger, with the original wood back of the frame closing them in. (Easily remounted if one wanted them to set them against a darker mat, but I quite like the quietness of the old cream paper behind them, myself.) Doll, dress and frame all mid-late 19th century I believe.
Frame, with original glass and wood back: 9 1/8" x 9 1/4". Doll: 4 3/8" t. Dress: 2 1/8" w. All in good condition.
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