Numbers were small but talents were big at Harlem Doll Show

Looking over the display of disparate dolls, I knew that this had to be the work of several doll-makers. The three-tiered display sported cloth dolls and dolls with papier-mache-like faces, black origami doll ornaments, and even doll cookies in red, yellow and royal blue icing dresses.

Curious and captivated, I had to ask about the artists. Then I learned that the dolls – every last one of them – were not made by several people but only one: Shirley Nigro-Hill of “Nonna’s Treasures.”

Nigro was one imaginative woman, but she was nowhere near her booth. She was making her way among the other doll-makers with a box of white cream-topped cookies she had made for the show and for everyone to sample. She and her husband used to own a bakery, and she apparently still loves to bake (the cookies, by the way, were delicious).

She got interested in doll-making, she said, when she was 10 years old and saw a pattern for a sock doll in a magazine. She’s been collecting dolls since then, too, and had some that had been in her family for years until they were destroyed in a fire about 10 years ago. She couldn’t replace those, but she’s managed to continue her collection of both black and white dolls.

The dolls on her long display table were tall and short, thin and bulky, homely and fabulous – among the cutest were little dolls no more than four to six inches tall. Two adorable ones were seated side by side on a twig-style wooden bench.

Standing against a wall were three girl-size dolls in pretty taffeta dresses. It apparently isn’t easy to make dolls that stand, but Nigro seemed to have gotten the hang of it. The dolls on her table were either sitting in chairs, folded at the waist or standing, seemingly holding their own as upright figures. At one point, a visitor passed too close to a standing doll in a sky blue sheer dress and the poor thing toppled to the floor (the doll didn’t seem to be damaged, however).

Nigro was one of a handful of doll-makers – I should call them doll artists – last weekend at the Harlem Holiday Doll Show and Sale, which has been sponsored over the last 20 years or so by the Morrisania Doll Society. Doll collector and founder Ellen Ferebee has organized all of the shows, which bring doll artists and collectors together. This year’s vendors consisted primarily of doll artists, and I learned that most are also collectors whose doll-making grew out of their collecting.

Coincidentally, before I attended the doll show over the weekend, I had gotten this email from a reader:

“I would like to know a doll maker who could make a black doll for me. If you know of one please let me know.”

I responded that I did not know any doll-makers and suggested she Google “black doll-makers.” I did a quick Google search, however, and gave her contact info for Ferebee and the Harlem show, along with a link to a page on the Black Crafters Guild website that listed other doll shows and contacts.

The page belonged to doll artist Tanya Montegut, who had set up a display at the Harlem show.

Her “Dolls by MonTQ” have the look and feel of women who love themselves and love a good time. They don’t say a word but you can feel the energy in them, and you can see the ebulliency of their personality in Montegut herself, whose dolls seem to be created in her image.

The dolls are made of wools, tweeds, and corduroys, and the ones on her display had the shape and musculature of real African American women. Their hair was fly – in both the style and looseness – and their clothes were party-ready. They looked as if they were headed to a night club or seated at the bar in one, their legs crossed.

“My first doll was made from my favorite wool pants I could no longer fit but refused to throw away,” Montegut said on her guild web page. “I was so proud I carried her around for a while half hanging from my purse just so people could see her. I named her Johanna after the great grandmother I’d never met.”

The first thing you noticed was that her dolls had no facial features, reminding me of the Lime dolls of the Dominican Republic that I own. She allows folks – in their own heads – to put their own faces on the dolls, making them into the image of a sister, aunt, mother or other relative. An interesting concept, I thought.

Montegut wasn’t at the show for long before I noticed a “SOLD” sign on a doll in a rust outfit. She also sells on etsy.com.

Joyce L. Stroman’s table faced me as I walked into the door of the LeRoy Neiman Art Center, where the show was held. I headed right to it, struck by a lovely half-doll in a beautiful outfit with a wire-cage-style bottom. As I stood admiring Stroman’s dolls, a man showed her a mouse pad he had made bearing an image of that same doll. When I returned to visit her table a little while later, someone had bought the doll.

Stroman also makes decorative tiles and other crafts.

I had my first experience with doll collectors and doll artists several years ago when I attended my first doll show, sponsored by Barbara Whiteman of the Philadelphia Doll Museum. It was there where I met many talented doll artists like the ones at the Harlem show.

These are very creative people who have chosen dolls as their means of expression, in much the same way a painter chooses paint and canvas to express himself or herself to the world.

At the Harlem show, seated in a corner working on a doll, was artist Regina Dale, Queenhealer7, creator of T.A.S.T.E. dolls. The acronym stands for “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” and she creates her dolls in honor of the Africans who were lost in the Middle Passage. She also sells her dolls on etsy.com.

Most of her cloth dolls were faceless, too, and most were dressed to the nines. I suspect that making beautiful clothes is just as much fun for these folks as making the dolls themselves – bringing out the fashion designer in them. The clothes truly match the workmanship of the dolls.

As for the reader who wanted the names of some doll-makers, I came away with several for her to choose from. That will be the hard part.