The recently acquired silhouette of Sarah Davenport served as a model for the reproduction,19th-century toy.

The Isaiah Davenport House recently added a doll created by master doll maker Christine LeFever of Lynchburg, Ohio. The 16-inch recreation of an early 19th century doll will be on exhibit in Cornelia Davenport's bedroom in the Savannah house museum.

"In one of our upstairs bedrooms we tell the story of the little girl, Cornelia Davenport, who lived in the house in the 1820s. Though we know much has changed in the way of toys over the past 180s years, we feel reasonable in assuming that Cornelia had a doll and it may have been similar to the doll created by Christine LeFever for the museum," says Jamie Credle, Davenport House director.

In deciding about the Davenport House doll, collections committee chairman Annie Robinson found illustrations by Jacob Maentel of Pennsylvania of Ann "Annie" Eliza Pague showing a small girl holding a rather large doll.

"The doll in the illustration is a "fashion doll" - an adult doll dressed in the fashions of the day," comments Robinson. Realizing the difficulty of finding an appropriate 1820s doll, the museum did the next best thing in having a one-of-a-kind, hand-made doll created for its collection.

Using the recently acquired silhouette of Sarah Davenport as a model, LeFever designed and created the doll with a papier-mache and hand-painted head and taupe cotton dress and slippers. The doll carries a quill pen and book exactly as pictured in the silhouette. Having the silhouette to use as a guide for clothing, hairstyle and stance, LeFever based the doll on rare Queen Anne dolls of the 18th century. Most of the dolls bearing Anne's name were made between 1714 and 1820 and have papier-mache heads and busts, cloth bodies and limbs with painted shoes and stockings. LeFever clothed the Davenport House doll to reflect her period - the 1820s.

LeFever is a nationally recognized doll maker and folk artist. Her background includes creating handmade chalk-ware figures and historically inspired paintings. This year she was selected for the Early American Life Directory of Traditional Crafts, a collection of the top 200 craftspeople as judged by curators at Colonial Williamsburg, Old Sturbridge Village and the Shelburne Museum.

Having the newly acquired artifact on exhibit will allow families to see the type of doll available to early Americans.

"We hope doll and toy lovers as well as a general audience will delight in our new acquisition," concludes Credle.

Located on Columbia Square at 324 East State Street in Savannah, the Isaiah Davenport House is open for tours daily - Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. with the last tour starting at 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 p.m. with the last tour starting at 4 p.m.

About the Davenport House doll

• She wears double petticoats
• Around her shoulders is a lace tip-to-tip, adorned with a red Chippendale styled rose.
• Her head was made from a handmade mold which captured the hairstyle and features of the time period.
• She has a painted face.
• Her body - arms and legs - are made of cloth. The artist designed, cut, sewed and stuffed the doll.
• The artist designed the clothing based on apparel appropriate to the time period.

Thoughts about dolls:

Papier-mache dolls are among the most distinctive of 19th-century dolls. Early in the century Europeans discovered that paper and pulp could be molded cheaply into mass-produced dolls. By the 1820s a more sophisticated type of papier-mache doll appears, known as the "milliner's model" or "dressmaker's dol." The heads were attached to bodies of kid leather or fabric and their limbs were molded or carved. These dolls, resembling miniature adults, were designed to exhibit the latest fashions in clothing and coiffures and were not intended for play. Milliner's models were produced until the 1860s and can be dated most easily by doll's hairstyles.