A Note from our own TC Vollum
Discoverer and Guardian of the Original Hitty's Sister

One day I had a little extra time and I was browsing ebay. There had been a discussion on Hittygirls about whether Hitty had been a copy of a china head doll. This led me to do an ebay search for miniature china head dolls.

There she was! The first thing I noticed was that the feet were JUST like Hittys. I had never seen a doll other than Hitty with feet like that. Her legs, too, seemed to have been made in just the same way as those of Original Hitty. Then I noticed her funny little bent arms and I HAD to have her. As a wood carver I'm drawn in by technique as well as by suggestions of authenticity. I had to examine how every little bit of her had been made. I wanted to know how she was painted and how she was jointed. Unlike Hitty, this doll was joined by cruel wires that bit into the wood of her body.

I bid, I won, and I began wanting to compare her to the big sister we all admire so much.

She was off to Stockbridge for a visit. There she inspired a Hitty enthusiast who makes me look like an idler - Sara Cole. What an event in this little doll's life. She's now being admired in a way every little doll would wish - and she doesn't even have to live in a museum!

An idler indeed. Did you know TC homeschools two great kids? -SC

Hitty Sister-- A Visual Guide

The most vital detail of Original Hitty's Sister, for those of us interested in her relationship to the Original Hitty, is her legs. Hitty Sister's legs prove that she is, without a doubt, from the same source as the Original Hitty.

As TC pointed out to me, Hitty Sister is nearly as much of a mystery as the Original Hitty. She goes on to say, 'Since it is clear they have exactly the same techniques employed in making their legs and bodies is strong evidence that neither one is completely unique, unless they were carved by the same person.'

Hitty's Sister is smaller in scale than the Original Hitty. She is 4 5/8 inches tall. Her legs are an extremely close match to the Original Hitty's, except they are smaller in scale. This is where it gets interesting: note from the pictures that even though Hitty Sister's legs have been created on a smaller scale, they appear to have been created from a similar pattern to the Original Hitty. At the bottom of the page you can see a side-by-side comparison of Hitty Sister to my Perfume Hitty. Compare the shape of Hitty's left leg to Hitty Sister's left leg, and make the same comparison with their right legs.

Both dolls have a taller, thinner left calf, and a shorter, fatter right calf, similar in shape. Hitty Sister's boots are identical in color and nearly identical in shape to the Original Hitty. She has red garters, which are similar in color and quality to Hitty's. Hitty Sister has traces of paint on her legs, body, and arms which are all of similar color and quality. It gets a little tricky here. The paint on Sister's thighs, body, and arms are matching in color and quality. She has paint of the same type on her calves, but it is impossible to tell for sure the original color, because at some point, (TC points out), someone has colored her calves from boot-top to garter with..... PENCIL!

So we can't tell if the paint on Hitty Sister's calves was originally identical in color to the paint on the rest of Hitty Sister. But what we can tell is that the paint on Sister's thighs, body, and arms, is a match to the color, type and quality of the paint on the Original Hitty's thighs, body, arms and HEAD!

Arms:
Hitty Sister's arms have a special feature-- bent elbows that were created by combining two different pieces of wood at the elbow with a solid, non-moving join. The lines between the two pieces are visible on both arms. The elbow joins are solidly fixed together and originally, the join was covered over with paint. The paint on her arms matches her body and thighs.

Body:
Hitty Sister's body has only traces of paint, but it matches the paint on her arms and thighs. Her body is more child-like than Hitty's. TC pointed out to me that the top of Hitty Sister's body was cut very roughly to shape it to the head, and this suggests Hitty Sister's head is a replacement. Her body paint cuts off abrubtly where the cuts were taken. The area above the paint line is characterized by raw wood, with visible cuts marks. The body is cut narrow and fits up inside, under the shoulderhead, which was glued on with a hard, now-yellowed glue.

Head:
Hitty Sister's head is bisque, with blond hair and blue eyes. The fixation of the head to the body, as discussed above, strongly suggests that it is a replacement. The back of the shoulderhead says 32 Germany, and underneath either 1370 or 1970. The style also suggests it is a replacement, since it appears to be from a later time period than the traits seen on the body, and on the Original Hitty.

Conclusions:
I have always believed, personally, that Hitty was likely to have been produced by an individual at home. However, with a second body with identical traits, Hitty herself now seems more likely to have been a commercial product.

Barbara Allen agrees with the opinion TC and I share, which is that the match of the paint, on Hitty Sister's thighs, body, and arms, to the paint on the Original Hitty's thighs, body, arms, and head, suggests that Hitty herself is all original! The evidence that Hitty Sister's head is a replacement on an older body further supports this idea.

With the exception of some long-past (child?) artist's coloring of Hitty Sister's stockings with pencil, done at some point long after the paint had begun to be worn and chipped, both the entire Original Hitty and Hitty Sister's body, arms and legs appear to have been produced at the same place by the same person or enterprise, by the same methods, and both appear to retain their original paint job. Many of us have believed the joint at the base of Hitty's head, plus the seeming mismatch in style between head and body, might suggest Hitty's own head was a replacement. But in light of the appearance of Hitty's Sister, it now seems that Hitty's head is very likely to have been original to her body. And as TC points out, the style and technique on the body of both dolls strongly suggests her origin was the German commercial toy industry.