We’re all curious about what the future holds. In the mid-19th century, many traveling peddlers and gypsies earned money by advertising their services as fortune tellers or “fate ladies.” In the same vein, Victorian ladies were soon creating miniature fortune teller dolls to predict their futures. The dolls had paper skirts which could be unfolded to reveal the fortunes. It became a popular pastime for ladies to read their fortunes while taking tea or at parties. Most fortunes painted a rosy future, but a few warned of trouble ahead.
I find fortune teller dolls fascinating, and their scarcity makes them even more special. Most didn’t survive due to the fragile nature of the paper fortunes. Fortunes were hand-written on the colored paper slips, usually in English or French. Many different types of dolls were used to create the fortune tellers. Some of the earliest from the 1840s had a china shoulderhead with china arms and legs on a peg-jointed wooden body. One of the hands was formed into a fist with a hole in it, convenient for inserting a wand or a pointer. Papier Mache heads were also used, with leather bodies and wooden lower arms and legs. Small peg wooden (or penny wooden) dolls from the Grodnertal area of Germany were easily converted into fortune tellers. Some dolls had special stands, and others were supported by the numerous slips of folded paper surrounding the peg wooden body. From the 1850’s onwards, china dolls became popular to use as fortune tellers. These were followed by French Fashion dolls with bisque heads in the 1860s and Bébé dolls in the 1880s.
If you want to see pictures of antique fortune teller dolls online, take a look at my Pinterest board called Fortune Teller Dolls.
In Chapter 4 of A Tale of Two Hittys, Miss Willow is a 1840s-era peg wooden doll with a tuck comb. After Mekitty’s Aunt Mamie, grows too old to play with her, Mamie’s Aunt Georgy converts Miss Willow into a fortune teller doll. She makes her a stylish jacket of black velvet trimmed with gold braid, with narrow sleeves and a pointed waistline. Her wand is made from an ivory crochet hook. A pointed hat tops her head and hides the “unfashionable” tuck comb.
An 1840s-era peg wooden fortune teller on Pinterest inspired Miss Willow’s costume. Miss Willow has a special stand so that she can rotate freely, and any one of the fortunes can be selected. Here is a view from the back:
To complement her costume, Miss Willow wears a choker necklace and earrings made from lucky golden coins. With her hat off, you can see her tuck comb hairstyle.
The 12″ tall peg wooden doll who is now Miss Willow originally had a different outfit when I made her in 2013. She was one of the very first dolls that I ever carved. My father turned the doll’s body on a lathe and made the peg-jointed arms and legs from dowels. Then I finished her head and painted her face and hair. Here is what she looks like without her costume. She is a constructed like the peg-jointed wooden dolls from Germany called “Grodnertals,” named for the area in Germany where the dolls were originally made.
The finished doll was in a local art show, using the stage name of “Madame Belle.” I made her a red and purple satin dress and a golden wand topped by a crystal ball. Madame Belle had a skirt made from 168 pieces of folded gold and silver parchment paper. All the fortunes were printed on an inkjet printer. The base was made from wood which I spray-painted gold. It could spin smoothly, thanks to a metal turntable with ball bearings inside. Here is a picture of the doll dressed as Madame Belle:
To create Miss Willow, I used Madame Belle’s skirt of paper fortunes, but I replaced one of them with a new one for Kitty. Her fortune says, “If adventure you crave, then your fate shall be grave.”
Here is what the printed fortune looks like. The circles indicate where the two pieces of cotton string will go through to hold all the fortunes together.
And here is the fortune attached to Miss Willow’s skirt:
Will craving adventure be Kitty’s undoing? Keep reading A Tale of Two Hittys to find out when and how her fortune comes true.
If you are feeling adventurous yourself, you can make your own Paper Fortune Teller, based on an antique toy from 1833. Have fun!
Sources:
Header image is by John Williams Waterhouse: The Crystal Ball
Attribution: John William Waterhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Cadbury, Betty. “What is your Fortune, My Pretty Maid?” Doll Reader, February/March 1981, pp. 3-5.
Radler, Evelyn, “Have Your Fortune Told by a Doll!” Doll Reader, November 1990, pp. 83-85.
Whitton, Margaret. “Fortune-Teller or ‘Fate Lady’ Dolls.” Doll Reader, June/July 1980, pp. 8-11.
