Hello to everyone, I have had a busy few weeks, I am on top of my orders now and getting ready for Christmas. Both Becca and I needed a day to ourselves so we took advantage of cheap tickets and went to the British Museum in London for the day. Wonderful to spend the day just wandering from amazing room to amazing room, saw lots of fascinating things but this little doll in the Greek and Roman Life room (Room 69) made me hold my breath. She is a cloth doll from around 100 to 500 AD and she has survived all this time. Most fabric decays and falls away but to find a little girl's plaything from so long ago is quite lovely. She is Egyptian made and is formed from coarse linen and stuffed with papyrus and rags. There are vestiges of wool still attached, so maybe she had an embroidered face and little blue beads that suggest there was hair ornament. She survived because she was in a particularly dry place in Egypt, which helps preserve organic materials. When I looked her up on the website, it explained that dolls were as popular then as now and that childrens' play doll could be made of cloth, wood, bone and fired clay. But cloth dolls are close to my heart and I was very pleased to find her.
Another toy that caught my eye was this wooden cat with a movable mouth. You pull the string up and down, there are even little bronze teeth! Again he is Egyptian and can be seen in Room 61. For anyone like me, a child at heart, along with exhibits of great significance and with heavy meaning there are puppets from all over the world, toy theatres, tiny doll's house furniture and incredible kites of all things. I can heartily recommend the little cafe in the wonderful atrium, they do a very good cuppa and a nice lemon drizzle cake, not too expensive either.
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