Imagine you are a child living in the 1930s. It is coming up to your birthday, and Mummy and Daddy have asked if there is anything special you would like. You would really love a soft toy which you could cuddle and go on adventures with, but you don’t mind what it looks like. You will love anything! Your friend has a beautiful Norah Wellings Sailor Doll but you can’t ask for one of those, they are much too expensive. So imagine your surprise on your birthday when you find a little black Norah Wellings boy sitting waiting for you!
When I showed the children this doll by Norah Wellings their reactions were rather mixed. Some of the children loved the doll and felt very sorry that it was missing its arm. They thought it must have been well loved though to lose the arm! Other children though thought the doll was rather scary, with its staring eyes and big pink lips. They all agreed the little boy was very realistic though, especially for a doll which was ‘almost ancient’ as one child told me.
Norah Wellings is very famous amongst doll collectors with her soft dolls being very popular. She was born in England in 1893 and was quite an intelligent woman. She left school when she was 14 because she needed to help her mother look after her father who was an invalid, but she continued to receive tutoring. She went on to study sewing, needlework, dressmaking and gardening with the London School of Art by correspondence! In 1919 though her father died and Norah had the freedom to start her career in toy making. She went to the management of the Chad Valley Company, a toy company who had just opened a soft toy factory and got a job as a toy designer. She stayed with Chad Valley for seven years.
In 1926 Norah and her older brother Leonard decided to open the Victoria Toy Works Factory in the same building as Leonards plastering business. They started with just seven employees, including Norah. In 1927 Norah was given the opportunity to present a specially designed doll to the Queen and also had a stand at the British Industries Fair in London. Both of these events helped to give her company publicity and her dolls became very popular. Within a few years the factory had outgrown its original premises and at its peak 250 people were employed by Norah in making dolls. Norah believed in ‘quality, not quantity’ and this allowed her to sell her dolls through some of the more upmarket stores, including the exclusive Harrods! She also exported her dolls though and 70% were thought to have been sold overseas in America, Canada, Egypt and Australia. Perhaps her most famous dolls were the sailor dolls though and these were sold on almost all ocean liners and often had the name of the ship written on the bands around their hats. The business closed in 1959, several months after Leonard died. Norah decided she didn’t want to continue the business, but also refused to sell her designs. She built a bonfire and reputedly burned all unfinished dolls, patterns, designs and even the tools. Completed dolls were given away to institutions and societies.