Summary

National doll produced to represent a Guatemalan woman, it was given to Monica Gates by her mother in 1959, after she saw a lady on a television program showing national dolls from South America. Monica's mother then rang the television station to get in touch with the lady who then sold her two Guatemalan dolls. Guatemala has a large Maya population, 40% to 60% of the total population. Traditional clothing or traje for Maya women consists of a corte or skirt, a woven faja (belt or sash), huipil (traditional square-cut blouse), a shawl and a headdress. Design, style, pattern and colours traditionally were specific to a village, although this is not always the case today.

The Gates collection contains 170 national dolls from 74 different countries and some correspondence relating to the acquisition of several of the dolls. The costumes of the dolls represent national costumes from the 19th Century to the 1990s. Monica Gates collected or was given these dolls between 1957 and 1990.

These dolls were purchased as souvenirs of particular countries and like many mass produced souvenirs they are often not accurate representations of a particular country or region, and may actually better reflect neighbouring counties or regions. This occurs because costumes are often stylised and simplified resulting dolls wearing generic costume elements which are common to many countries/regions. Often the fabrics and decorations used are selected to make the dolls cheap and easy to manufacture and aesthetically pleasing. This can result in the fabrics, colours and decorations of the doll's clothing having little or no reflection of the costume associated with a particular country or region they are meant to be representative of.

Physical Description

Female doll with brown coloured skin. She has black plaits with a pink ribbon. She has little earrings in dark green. She wears a short gather skirt in dark blue with green, yellow, white stripes. She is dressed in pink cotton underwear and has a cotton blouse. The blouse has a green neck line and has different colours: red, yellow, light green, purple. The ground colour of the blouse is white.

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