Summary

National Doll produced to represent an Iranian woman. It was brought for Monica Gates by her mother in 1978. The doll is intended to represent an woman weaving. Carpet weaving has long been practiced in Iran. Depending on the quality and size of the rug, may take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete.

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

Doll working at a wooden weaving loom. Body and head of doll are made of cloth. SOme facial features are painted on, brown eyes are sewn. Black hair is covered with two scarves. A small one is green with silver flecks. The top scarf covers the head and shoulders, made of a fine red cloth with silver threads. Blouse is green and yellow, with large pink and small red flower s printed.Skirt is long, wide and green with red and yellow dots. Doll sits on a wooden form covered with woven cloth in blue, red, yellow, black and green. She faces the loom, which has balls of brown, green, and pink wool hanging from the top beam. The loom has strings threaded from top to bottom, with a rug woven on these strings in the colours of the hanging balls of wool. Legs are covered with loose pink trousers, slippers are woven red, white and blue.

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