Summary

Small female doll with composition head, forearms and legs (below knees), and stuffed torso. The vendor purchased the doll from the daughter of the original maker.

The doll was made in Adelaide by S. & E. Hook (Sydney and Elsie Hook - aka Hook's Manufacturing) circa 1916-1920, for commercial purposes. According to vendor her hair is original, and her face was painted by Elsie Hook during World War I.

Before World War I, toys and dolls in Australia were largely imported from the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan. With the outbreak of the War supplies were hindered, allowing local manufacturers to emerge. Sydney Hook had been keen to start a manufacturing business, and around 1916 made up his own composition formula for the dolls through trial and error using paper pulp, sawdust, whiting and glue. Their heads were formed in cast iron moulds made by Wheatley & Williams Pty Ltd, South Austalia. Elsie made the first torsos, articulated cloth limbs filled with kapok and clothes for the dolls; later her mother and employees took on the task while Elsie kept painting the dolls. They were made in 11 sizes and sold through large and small retailers during World War I, marketed as unbreakable. The business became part of the War effort - for instance it made a 'Doll Bazaar' float for a Red Cross fund-raising parade in Hindmarsh in October 1918 (for which it won second prize behind a 'decorated sidecar' and a 'double tradesman's turnout' in joint first place). The float was shamlessely branded 'See that the dolls you buy are branded Hook's Dolls Made in Australia'. A Christmas 1918 shop window photograph featuring Hook's dolls (in The Encyclopaedia of Australian Dolls - 1993:23) shows them wearing simple pale knee-length shifts.

After the War ended new suppliers flooded the market, and a major fire destroyed the stock, effectively ending the business. In later years Elsie returned to doll-making, including production during the Depression and World War II.

Physical Description

Small female doll with composition head, forearms and legs (below knees), and stuffed torso. The composition is coarse and lumpy on the limbs with ill-defined fingers and feet moulded as if wearing shoes (shoe portions painted black). Head is finely cast. Painted skin colour; facial features and fingernails emphasised with paint. Hair blonde, blued on and stitched along central part. Probably wool, with staple forming hair wave. Torso and thighs made from one piece of cream linen, stuffed, stitched at hips; upper arms stitched on at shoulders. Limbs move freely. Stuffed with kapok. No clothes other than off-white pants, still on the doll.

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