Doll News Winter 2018 - 77

Myla Perkins holds up a
black antique doll from her
collection to a group of
wide-eyed Detroit school
children. Myla made
regular exhibition tours of
the Detroit school system.
Photos courtesy Ebony
Magazine, January 1975

M

yla Perkins was thirteen years old when
she decided she was 'too old' to play with
dolls anymore. She carefully packed them
away, saving them, as many of us do, for the
day she might pass them down to a little girl
of her own. Years later, Myla's daughter Julie rekindled her
mother's love for dolls, a passion she never really outgrew.
Myla said, "Every Christmas, and every trip I took, I bought
Julie a doll. I wanted her to have a wider variety than was
available in the stores, so I started looking for antique dolls at
antique shows."
In the early 1970's, Myla purchased an antique black doll
that appealed to her, which began a life-long collection of
primarily antique black dolls, almost all made before 1910.
"When I first started collecting, I didn't realize that black
dolls were made as early as the 1800s," says Myla. The rarity
of such dolls prompted her to search for more, rummaging
through local shops and writing to antique dealers across
the country. Subsequently, she joined two doll clubs - the
"Detroit Doll Collectors Club" and the "Funtastic Doll Club
of Chicago."
Myla's collection included dolls from the 1830s, with
papier-mâché heads, wooden arms and legs, and cloth
or sawdust bodies. Others, dating back to the Civil War,
have bisque heads and arms, glass eyes and teeth, and
composition bodies. The largest doll in her collection
measured 36-inches tall. The smallest doll, a mere one-inch
"Frozen Charlotte," prompted Myla's charming tale of how
"the doll's careless owner left her in the snow until the
arms and legs no longer moved." Most of Myla's antique
dolls were made in Germany and France, as American toy
manufacturers did not mass-produce dolls until shortly after
World War I. Even then, black dolls with black features were
seldom seen on store shelves until 1969, "when the demand
grew too great to be ignored," according to Myla.
Squeals of childish delight would always greet one of
Myla's favorite dolls, "Bobo," a character doll whose
comical expression is enhanced by his protruding red tongue.

Brown glass-eyed 20-inch "Thelma," by Leo Moss,
is notable for her intelligent expression and neatly
formed double cornrows, which extend thickly at the
back of her head.

She believed the doll to be made by a black doll
maker named Leo Moss, born before 1865, who lived
in Macon, Georgia. She had many of these dolls in
her collection. In 1973, Myla attended her first UFDC
National Convention, held in Kentucky. She entered
only one doll in the competitive exhibit, a doll named
"Mina," a large Leo Moss baby doll. The doll, with
DOLL NEWS * UFDC.ORG

77


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