When they arrived, her more-bundled-up beau found her frozen to death in the sleigh. The story says Charlie died of a broken heart soon afterward, and they were buried together in a single tomb. These tiny, pale, porcelain nightmares were pottery dolls manufactured in Germany in 1850, and intended for children to play with during bath time.
Creepy porcelain dolls named Frozen Charlotte were sold in tiny caskets and baked into cakes
When Americans first saw the hard, white bisque dolls, the association with the unfortunate Charlotte must have seemed obvious. Sometimes sold for as little as a penny, Frozen Charlottes (and the occasional male Charlie) were made by the million. Everyday Free Standard Shipping with a minimum order of $150 or more. Purchase total must equal or exceed the minimum order requirement to qualify. Once qualified, free shipping will automatically apply in your shopping bag at checkout.
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Was this presumably Victorian connection between Charlotte’s legend and the penny doll a lingering memory from the 19th century? Another kind of doll, called a Half-Frozen Charlotte, has arms attached to the body by a wire that goes through the shoulders. These are "frozen" except for their arms, with straight, skinny little bodies. Other half-frozen types have fleshier bodies with little bellies and buttocks popping out. They were made in various styles and sizes, of bisque (unglazed ceramic), porcelain, metal, celluloid, terra cotta, ceramic, composition, wood, rubber and even molded sugar and soap.
For Decades, Frozen Charlotte Dolls Were Bestsellers
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Moreover, no one writing today about Frozen Charlottes has provided contemporaneous evidence that 19th- and early 20th-century Americans ever considered these small dolls as corpses or the embodiments of a vain young woman who froze on her way to a ball. Newspaper advertisements and writings of the period demonstrate that Americans at least knew these small rigid dolls as “penny dolls,” but toy sellers never seem to have advertised these as “Charlotte” dolls. In fact, nothing in 19th- and early 20th-century publications supports the belief that Americans ever made a connection between these figures and Charlotte [see Note 3 for databases searched].
Was Frozen Charlotte Real
Plus, many of the dolls for sale today on sites like eBay and Etsy are not pre-owned dolls, but rather those excavated in Germany. That the name “Frozen Charlotte” was coined within the doll-collecting community sometime slightly before or around World War 2 is evident in doll collector/historian Eleanor St. George’s 1948 book, Dolls of Yesterday [see also Note 4]. He stripped the mantle off her brow, And the pale stars on her shone, And quickly into the lighted hall, Her helpless form was born.
Frozen Charlotte Figurine
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The smallest dolls were sometimes used as charms in Christmas puddings. Occasionally, versions are seen with a glazed china front and an unglazed stoneware back. This enabled the doll to float on its back when placed in a bath.
Legends From History
The male version of the porcelain doll earned the name Frozen Charlie, likely after Charlotte's beau who perished of a broken heart and shared her tomb. In 1840, The New York Observer published an article about a horrific New Year's Eve accident. According to the article, "A young woman, whose name is given as Miss _____, was frozen to death while riding twenty miles to a ball on the eve of January 1, 1840." The Germans manufactured the porcelain dolls to float in the bath, a 19th-century rubber ducky. The dolls would float on their backs in bathwater, entertaining children during their baths. There isn’t a single reference (in magazines, books, newspapers, or anything else for that matter) of these porcelain dolls being called “Frozen Charlottes” in the entire 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Victorian children loved to play with tiny, porcelain dolls that resembled corpses. Called Frozen Charlotte dolls, the porcelain figures reminded children of the morbid tale of a young woman who perished from the cold on a sleigh ride. Instead of focusing on vanity and fashion, like the original Charlotte, children who played with the dolls learned to listen to their parents. In fact, the so-far earliest mentions of a doll called Frozen Charlotte and couplings of the doll with the legend appear in American newspapers in the mid-1940s. And it was doll collectors and reporters writing about doll collectors who called penny dolls by this name, sometimes also referring to the legend.
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They were supposed to be designed to float so that children could play with them on the beaches and in the ocean, as well as in the bathtub or a pail of water. Some had an overall pink complexion tint; some had only a pink-tinted face. Apparently business was very brisk for this new doll, as it was produced in quite large numbers by a variety of manufacturers. A New York Observer article published in February 8, 1840 included a story about a woman in upstate New York who froze to death on her way to a New Year’s ball.
Their popularity soared in Britain and America, where they were baked into cake as a nice (or not so nice, depending on your tolerance for creepy little porcelain girls) surprise for kids. The song was itself based on a poem by American writer Seba Smith, who first published the poem in a Maine newspaper in 1843. His poem was in turn inspired by an account published in a New York newspaper in 1840 detailing just such an incident. The doll's coloration is sometimes believed to be a reflection of the young lady's frosty demise. All mentions of these dolls from the time period call them “penny dolls,” not “Frozen Charlottes.” So when did the name we use today actually become connected to these little porcelain dolls?
The Judge carries in his pocket a small tin coffin on which is the inscription, “This man was talked to death,” and when a long winded lawyer gets to spouting on some unimportant question the Judge places the coffin before him. Unfortunately, there was no further information attached to the item, just a lot of unanswered questions. What’s with the mega creepy inscription that seems almost threatening in tone? I’m afraid I still don’t have any answers to these questions after a week of research. However, the little corpse in the coffin had some stories to tell. With the assistance of Center staff, the intern will arrange and catalog materials in the Center’s library.
We may think of our own doll in such terms but should not pass it on, for this is as bad as passing on a legend of our own making. Doll collector/historian Nina B. Shepard, in a 1952 commentary on how to put a value to an old doll, went further, mentioning how doll collectors affixing names to 19th-century dolls was problematic. These early descriptions of “Frozen Charlottes” lack the now-current claim that Victorians themselves connected the penny doll with the legend of frozen Charlotte, but that linkage was certainly in place by the early 1950s. Frozen Charlotte is a name used to describe a specific form of china doll made from c. These are the questions most people ask upon seeing Frozen Charlotte dolls, the little Victorian-era children’s toys that will more than likely give you a bit of the willies. Most Frozen Charlotte dolls were sold undressed, so mothers and daughters often would make little clothes for them.
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