“There is no doll in the world with such features and curls and symmetrical lines as the Kestner dolls have.” – ad from the Omaha Daily Bee, December 1921
This week a 27 inch antique Kestner 146 doll arrived all the way from Germany.
The Kestner 146 Doll Features
She stands a tall 27 inches with her original Kestner bisque head pate still in place. I think she is stunning. Her bisque head is beautiful with her working sleep eyes. She no longer has eyelashes but it doesn’t matter. Her jointed body has a beautiful creamy original finish and she stands and poses well due to some very tight cording inside.
The Bisque Head Markings
The Kestner doll’s bisque head is marked in English “made in Germany” which quickly demonstrates she was intended for export. The number 146 is incised under the word Germany. Then she has the incised L 1/2 on the left of Germany and the number 15 1/2 on the right. No number is found low on the neck like many doll heads have. According to different doll books such as Cieslik’s German Doll Encyclopedia, the L and the 15 always went together. Cieslik notes that the alphabet system used by Kestner was registered in 1897 but may have been used before that time.
Her large beautiful bisque head has a full circumference of about 13.5 inches meaning she needs a doll wig size of about a 14. I noticed that early on because her original curly blonde mohair wig did not survive the age of time.
She wears those distinguished thick Kestner eyebrows with a slightly smiling open mouth expression and a dimple in her chin.
The Kestner 146 Doll Body
Her back bears the red stamp that reads “Excelsior” in a rectangle with “Germany” written underneath and then the number six below that to the right. Kestner registered the Excelsior trademark for his dolls sometime in the 1890s for dolls meant for the American market.
Her body has six individually carved ball joints at the shoulders, elbows, and knees. Her hip ball joints attach to the upper thighs. She seems to be a transition body between the earlier eight ball jointed dolls to the later all attached ball jointed dolls. Lightly well drawn red lines outline the features of her fingernails and toes.
Kestner Doll History in American Ads
Her open mouth, jointed wrists, and Excelsior body give clues to her age. An newspaper advertisement from 1911 describes a 27 inch jointed Kestner doll for the Hale’s Good Goods Store that read, “7.50 Each – Handsome full jointed Kestner doll, 27 inches tall, of best quality dull finish (the latest effect), real hair and eyelashes, silk shoes and stockings, fancy chemise” (The San Francisco Call, Nov. 5, 1911).
I don’t know what they mean by “dull finish” except that perhaps they mean what we today in American English call “matte” or “flat” in regards to paints. Except my doll has a bit of gloss to her finish and only her ball joints seem “dull.”
**See some other antique German doll marks here.