Make four French paper dolls
Make four 1916 French paper dolls and dress them up.
Antoinette
The youngest of the girls, Antoinette enjoys playing at the beach with her bucket, spade and ball. She also loves playing nurse to her sisters.
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Bernadette
Bernadette is fond of the outdoors: she loves fishing, reading books by the stream, going for picnics, and walking to the markets.
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Cecile
Lucky Cecile loves to ride about the garden on a new bike. She has beautiful clothes for school, special family lunches and outings.
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Danielle
Danielle is the oldest. She enjoys cooking for her sisters, and playing her mandolin. On weekends she paints and one day she hopes to have her own pony.
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Making, dressing and playing with paper dolls was a popular hobby, and still is! Some paper dolls allowed you to colour in the dolls. They were sometimes published in magazines or were found in special paper doll books.
At the top of each of your pages it says ‘Poupées a Habiller’ which in French means ‘Dolls to dress’. Each girl wears a different outfit for their activities. Would you like to play nurse, ride a horse or a bicycle, play ball or play the mandolin? Would you like to paint, cook, go fishing or to the market for flowers or play at the beach? Can you spot the outfit that go with each activity?
Paper dolls were printed from the mid seventeenth century in Germany and were manufactured by makers of games and toys. In the 1890s in America many thousands were printed as advertising dolls and in Britain during the Second World War (1939-1945) they were used to encourage girls to join up to the forces by showing what lovely uniforms a girl could wear!
Four French paper doll sisters
These beautiful paper dolls could be as old as your great, great, great grandmother. They are part of our paper doll collection and because they were cheap to make, rich or poor children could easily afford them. They show you how little girls would have dressed in 1916. They even show the back of the outfits. We could give them French names: Antoinette, Bernadette, Cecile and Danielle, or do you want to choose your own names?
These lovely dolls were made in 1916 in France and were given to the Powerhouse Museum in 1984 by Ann Schofield.
