3. "Dolls with soul"

How I became interested in Waldorf style dolls

To answer this question first I need to move back to a certain radio programme I listened to quite accidentally and fragmentarily some time ago. Yet I was interested enough to search for it on the Internet, find it and listen to it again. The programme entitled "Dolls with soul" was dedicated to Waldorf dolls. Two ladies Lidia Michałowicz and Agnieszka Nowak, invited to the studio, talked about Waldorf dolls with such an interest...

As it happens I started to look for books on this subject. The following books turned out to be the most interesting for me: "Mam czas dla dziecka" by Barbara Kowalewska (published by Impuls, Kraków 2011), "Zabawki z naturalnch materiałów" by Freya Jaffke (published by Genesis) and "Making Waldorf dolls" written by Maricristin Sealey (published by Hawthorn Press, 2005). I have decided to make such a doll. I joined doll making course, organised by Agnieszka whom I mentioned earlier. Soon my first doll was finished, and now slowly there are coming new dolls... For me making dolls turned out to be fascinating and absorbing.

I make dolls for children who will play with them. Waldorf dolls are handmade, simple and natural. They are the dolls to be played with, to be dressed and undressed, and washed, to become part of the child's every day life, to be a friend and a confidante - they are "the dolls with soul".

Freya Jaffke, the author of many books on the subject of waldorf toys, says:

Toys stimulate power of fantasy and an object of play should give a feeling of naturalness. So it is better to give a child a piece of tree branch rather than a matematically contructed building block. This is also important in case of a doll. Doll is an image of human. For each child, then, she is a toy which helps experience its own developing being... (p.19, Zabawki z naturalnych materiałów).

And Maricristin Sealey adds:

For a child, play is their work and just as a craftsman cannot achieve good results with inferior materials, so children need toys with integrity if they are to find play satisfying (p.7, Making waldorf dolls).