GUIDES AND DOLLS : It’s All Toys, Figurines and Teachings in a New Exhibit at the Bowers Museum

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art unveils a handpicked, international collection of educational toys this weekend. The items won’t help your kids with their long division, nor do they emit any of the electronic bleeps, whirs or honks popular in modern teaching toys, but if the exhibit’s organizers have called it right, those things won’t be missed.

The lessons offered in “Pageantry of Dolls” have a different intent, drawing on centuries of teachings and traditions from a diverse range of cultures.

Featuring nearly 50 dolls, effigies and figures from the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa, “Pageantry of Dolls” previews Friday to museum members, and opens to the public on Saturday in the Friedman Galleria. The exhibit continues through Jan. 10. A doll-making workshop and holiday party for families will be held on Dec. 18.

Organized by the Bowers’ chief curator Armand Labbe and curatorial researcher Jacqueline Bryant, “Pageantry of Dolls” was culled from approximately 1,200 dolls and toys in the museum’s collection. The Bowers has regularly hosted doll shows since 1942 when the museum’s first curator, Bessie Beth Coulter, purportedly persuaded local children to loan their own toys for the exhibit. The tradition was interrupted in the late 1980s by the facility’s expansion and renovation, but administrators expect to hold the shows annually again now that the construction is complete.

Guest curator for the show is actress and doll enthusiast Jane Withers, whose personal collection began as gifts given to her during her days as a child film star in the 1930s and is now considered one of the most extensive in the world. Although none of her dolls will be shown here, Withers (who is perhaps best known to television audiences as Josephine the Plumber in commercials for Comet cleanser) will make a presentation at the members’ preview and may return for a public workshop during the run of the show.

In selecting pieces for “Pageantry of Dolls,” Labbe said he looked for dolls significant for their ability to teach.

“Thematically, this show is about how dolls are a way of educating the young to adults’ roles” and encouraging the development of positive qualities like bravery, sympathy or pride in their heritage, Labbe said.

A prime example is the kachina doll used by the Hopi Indians, Labbe said.

“The doll was given to a young boy during the kachina ceremonial cycle . . . to educate him about some of the religious and social responsibilities he would have as an adult and help him identify the spirit forces that impact his community,” Labbe said.

A carved wood Angak-china , or rain kachina, is one of six Native American figures in the show. The exhibit also includes two clay Native American effigies from the late 1800s, both intended as models of female beauty.

In Japan, children may learn the virtues of self-sacrifice and caring through the hoko-san doll, Labbe said.

“When a child became sick, (adults) would place this doll in the child’s arms,” noted Labbe. “The doll was to empathetically take on the disease. The next morning, the doll would be floated downstream to carry away the sickness.” The oval-shaped hoko-san at the Bowers wears a crimson-colored thread wig and a placid expression. A more ornate entry is a Boy’s Festival doll, a plump, limbless character in a glittering brocade kimono.

African ibeji figures, which are used to honor and retain the spirit of a deceased child of the Yoruba people, will also be shown. Twin births are a common occurrence in this Nigerian tribe, explained Labbe, and if one of the twins dies, the mother may carry a wooden effigy of the child in procession, then install the figure in the home as a receptacle for the child’s “vital source.”

During the 18th and 19th centuries, dolls, especially baby dolls, were used in Europe and America as a way to help teach youngsters to be affectionate and nurturing, said Labbe. Among the American dolls on view are representations (crafted in 1949) of George and Martha Washington, elegantly turned out in velvet, lace and satin, as well as several dolls by preeminent California doll designer Grace Storey Putnam. Most notable is a 1924 Bye-Lo baby, one of only 19 examples remaining of these realistic-looking dolls that Putnam reportedly modeled after a newborn child in a Salvation Army hospital.