Readers ask about Lime dolls, folk dolls & button hooks

Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. These are market values, not appraisals for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that are determined to be of great value.

Here are this week’s questions:

Question:

I purchased (a Lime doll) at an estate sale that is about 18 inches high and has a beautiful big yellow hat. She is beautiful. Do you have any idea on the worth of these dolls?

Answer:

Lime dolls are beautiful faceless clay dolls made in the Dominican Republic that I blogged about for the first time last year. I had seen a grouping of them at auction, admired them but had left the auction house by the time they were sold. A week later, I stumbled upon another grouping at an auction and grabbed them up. They are now arranged on a buffet table in my dining room, a lovely family of Lime dolls in colorful clothing and proud poses.

Lime dolls were made by Liliana Mera Limé, and are said to represent the rainbow of people from around the world who make up the Dominican Republic. She began making the dolls in 1981, but they have been discontinued. Lime dolls have labels on the bottom.

Similar clay dolls are still made by artisans in the country for sale to tourists. I have a few that are not marked and are not Lime.

The dolls are not terribly valuable. I found them selling for less than $50 on retail sites and only a few on eBay, with the highest one sold for $51. At this point, they appear to be pieces to be loved and admired more than held for their monetary value – and that’s what I’m doing with my little collection.

Question:

This is an interesting article, but I want to purchase a button hook as a Christmas gift for my beau. Can you help me?

Answer:

The reader was referring to a blog post I had done about button hooks, which were used in Victorian times to fasten over-the-ankle boots and shoes that buttoned up the side. I had bought a box lot that contained hooks, letter openers and manicure items.

My button hooks are not for sale, but I did find plenty of them selling on eBay at reasonable prices. Some of the highest-priced ones were made of silver (none of mine are), but you can also get them in bone or metal for as low as $3.99. Since they are pretty competitive, that’s the first place I’d suggest you try.

Question:

I recently found this old African American doll that I can’t find anything about. It seems really old with handmade cloth clothing. I think the most significant feature is that the head seems to be made of some sort of bean. The bean is either varnished or a dark color that acts as the skin color for the doll. I can’t upload a picture right now, but do you know anything about these “bean” headed African American dolls?

Answer:

I’ve come across some dolls with walnut heads but not beans. I even got a handmade doll in a box lot at auction recently whose head was made of tar. Can you email me a photo so I can take a look?

You likely have a folk-art doll that was made by hand, in much as the same way-as topsy turvy, clothes pin, corn-husk and rag dolls. At auction last year, I came across a grouping of black Americana folk-art dolls.

Dolls in general have been around for centuries, some of the earliest were found in Egyptian tombs and even farther back. They also have been made out of all kinds of materials: from the earliest of clay, fur, rags, bones and wood; to wax and composition; to porcelain and bisque; to leather, rubber, papier-mache and celluloid, to plastic and vinyl.

The word bean has been attached to several modern dolls, as I found out. Mattel in the 1970s made the Baby Beans series of dolls with cloth bodies filled with beans, including a black one called Black Bitty Beans. Lovers of British comedy are familiar with Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, who has his own bobblehead.

There’s the Ida Bean doll (black cloth doll stuffed with beans) that was introduced in 1993 by the Addy Collection. And Joel Chandler Harris’ tar baby still makes some of us cringe, and the phrase is still being used today – innocuously or otherwise.

With so much diversity in what a doll is made of, bean head or tar is not much of a stretch. When I found the tar head doll in a box lot from auction, I didn’t know what material it was. I was browsing at an antique mart later and found a doll exactly like it. The seller had marked it “tar head doll” at a price of about $25. It was not identified as an African American doll, but if the seller had thought it was, he/she surely would have mentioned it. Most dealers know that affixing African American or black Americana to an item usually will make it sell much more quickly and at a higher price.

Are these dolls considered African American because their faces are black or dark? If anyone can identify them or tell us more about them, please write me in the Comments box below.