Treasures in your attic: Bisque-headed doll’s value hinges on size, clothing
Q. Enclosed is a photograph of a bride doll I purchased years ago at a yard sale. It is marked “Made in Germany Armand Marseille 390.” It has a closed mouth, pierced ears and glass eyes. Are you able to tell me the value?
A. When we find a bisque-headed doll in an estate, and inspect it to determine the name of the manufacturer and the doll’s mold number, we know there is a good chance that the piece was made by Armand Marseille.
This firm was one of Europe’s most prolific doll makers, and large numbers of their dolls are found in this country.
Armand Marseille was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1856, but he and his family immigrated to Germany sometime around 1860. They were a Huguenot family (Huguenots were French Calvinists who were widely persecuted in 16th-century France), and their surname is a reflection of their French origins.
In 1884, Marseille purchased the Lambert toy factory in Sonneberg, Germany, and in 1885 acquired the Liebermann and Wegescher porcelain factory in Kopplesdorf. Production of bisque-porcelain doll heads reportedly began that same year (1885), and at the factory’s height it is said to have produced more than 1,000 doll heads a day. Given the company’s 45-year tenure (it reportedly closed circa 1930), that is a lot of doll heads.
Of the doll heads made, the mold numbers 390 and 370 are the most commonly found, possibly because each was manufactured for more than 30 years. We believe that the doll in today’s question was probably made between 1917 and 1930.
The head is bisque — meaning the porcelain was fired only once and does not have a shiny glaze on it. What had us puzzled for a while was the report that this doll has a closed mouth, because the 390 should have an open mouth. Research, however, revealed that some small mold-number-390 dolls were made with closed mouths, and this helped reassure us.
It is a shame that you did not tell us the size of your doll, because the value depends very much on how big it is. Giant-sized 390s in the 40- to 42-inch range can bring prices in the $2,000-plus range, while smaller versions may bring only about 1/10 of that.
Another thing that affects value is the clothes the doll is wearing. Collectors want the original clothes, or clothes that are appropriate to the age of the particular doll. The wedding dress on the doll in today’s question appears to have been made in the third quarter of the 20th century.
The outfit is one that might be seen on a mid-20th-century doll, and while bride dolls are sought after by collectors, this outfit is not really in keeping with the 390. This will reduce the price of this doll just a bit.
The Armand Marseille 390 doll is sometimes called the “Florodora,” probably after the “Florodora Girls,” the name of the chorus line in the turn-of-the-20th-century musical comedy “Florodora.”
Since we do not know the size of this doll, all we can say is that if it is small, but in perfect condition, it has an insurance-replacement value in the $250-$350 range.
Ÿ Contact Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson at Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 18350, Knoxville, TN 37928.