Twins account for 1.9% of the world population. But in real life, I have encountered more twin babies than twin dolls. You would think that twin dolls would be more common.

After all, most antique dolls were mass-produced in factories. And although there was great variety to original clothing styles and fabrics and wigs, even by the same doll factory,  stores did receive shipments of dozens of the same doll at a time, all dressed alike, with identical wigs. Essentially, any two dolls from the same shipment were “twins”.

So why  don´t we find more twin dolls today? My speculation is that most people, back then and now, don’t buy two of the same doll. Very rarely, I will have someone buy two of the same doll, one for their child to “keep nice” & save as a heirloom, and one to play with now. Or
a child will become very attached to a particular doll, and the parent will buy a spare, just  in case the original is lost. (As a parent, I know how difficult it can be to get your child to go to sleep on vacation when you´ve forgotten to pack their special cuddle toy).

But most of the time, parents just buy one. Back in the 1880´s, I believe that this was even more typical; most people were not wealthy, and many a little girl would only receive one or two dolls for her entire childhood. Twin dolls retaining their original clothes are quite rare. I have the good fortune of offering three sets of twin dolls for sale in the shop right now: composition twins, papier mache twins, and pair of  Greiner twins (which are otherwise identical but vary in height), which I just acquired. Click on the antique dolls link (at the top of the page) for more information on all three of these hard-to-find twin doll sets.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 6:31 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.