The construction of Active Miss and Sweet Violet

A couple of days ago I blogged about my Madame Alexander Active Miss, one of my luckiest finds and among the rarest dolls in my collection.

One of the things I think is so interesting about Active Miss and Sweet Violet is their construction. A year or two later it became common to put vinyl arms with jointed elbows on walker dolls, but Sweet Violet and Active Miss both have hard plastic arms. Moreover, instead of having springs holding their jointed elbows together, as in the vinyl arms, their arms are fully strung — that is, a rubber band goes down into the wrist of each arm.

The result is a fully poseable doll that can achieve some pretty lifelike poses.

My doll does not need restringing, but eventually I hope to get my hands on an Active Miss or Sweet Violet that does, so that I can take pictures and create an instruction booklet for restringing more complicated dolls such as these.