One hundred and fifty Cabbage Patch dolls will be on display at the Logan Historical Museum over the next month.
The Brisbane Doll Society (BDS) will host the exhibition from Tuesday 10 June until the end of July.
Greenbank’s Lynette Ryan, former President of BDS and current member, owns about 200 of her own dolls – many of which will be on display.
She sourced most of her dolls during the peak period for doll collecting – the 1980s, when “there were dolls everywhere”.
She would often collect dolls from markets, op shops, car boot sales and auctions. Some dolls she bought or inherited from her mother, and others she has kept from her own childhood.
After inheriting about 700 dolls from her mother, Ms Ryan wondered what she should do with her unexpectedly large collection.
“What do I do with them? I’d better find out a bit about them, and that’s why I went along to the meeting in 2007,” she said.
“I’ve got three that came back from the UK in 1953 with my grandparents. They’d been over for a visit and came back very sick with glandular fever, and I remember that year when they arrived back, they gave me a doll.”
Ms Ryan collects a variety of dolls, she is most interested in international dolls, which make up 90% of her collection.
“It’s not just a specific sort of doll and we have a wide variety. I mainly collect international dolls, but I also like the quirky sorts of dolls, unusual types.”
Although in the doll collecting community not everyone is interested in these types of dolls.
“My international dolls are not recognized by a lot of doll collectors because they’re not pretty enough,” she said.
“A lot of the German or the French dolls, the antique dolls, they’re quite expensive, like they can go into the 1000s.”
Ms Ryan worries that international dolls will “die out” due to a lack of interest and the increased overconsumption of single-use plastic dolls.
“They’re not as characteristic as the older ones, and a lot of the craft that went into making the clothing for the international dolls is going to be something of the past.”
Many of the international dolls were brought to Australia by immigrants and their families, Ms Ryan said.
The Beenleigh-based BDS is Australia’s second oldest doll society, formed nearly 50 years ago.
Ms Ryan said the club started with 14 members at a meeting in October 1976.
Today, BDS has between 40 and 50 financial members, more than 20 of whom attend monthly meetings held at the Beenleigh Neighbourhood Centre to participate in seminars, workshops, raffles, and competitions.
Society members meet on the first Monday of every month with a doll matching the chosen theme. May’s theme was ‘quirky dolls’, Ms Ryan said.
“Last month was Easter themed. The next one is weddings for June, and then in August, it’s school uniforms.
“It’s not necessarily the doll itself, it can be dolls dressed in a certain colour, because not everybody has got an antique doll of German or French origin, and not everybody has got a Cabbage Patch doll.”
BDS will host a meet and greet on Monday, 9 June at 10 am, prior to the exhibition’s opening, where doll collectors are invited to bring along a favourite doll to discuss it’s history and estimated value.
