Richenda

First of all, this is not a golliwog. It is not my intention to cause offence. This is my very, very old black doll named Richenda.

I was doing some clearing out today and I came across her. Now, I was never a doll sort of a child. I preferred soft toy animals of which I had a number, mostly made by my mother from scraps and stuffed with old stockings and the like. But I did have a few dolls all of which had been given to me by family friends and relations. I had little affection for them but, as a solitary child,  they came in handy for imaginary games of 'school' 'hospital' or 'tea-party' when the cats would not co-operate. The hospital game for example involved all the dolls having horrible accidents - being squashed or tumbling downstairs  - and needing to be rescued and  healed.

This doll was given to me as a baby, I believe, by a progressive friend of my parents. 'Her' name was always Richenda - I don't know why. I have no idea what I thought of her. Living in rural Wales I never met a person of colour and in the mid-20th century politically correct toys were decades into the future. Looking at her now I find her delightful and it occurred to me that, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I  might be able to find out something about her.

Turns out Richenda has a prestigious pedigree. She is a Norah Welling's doll , possibly dating from the 1930s.

Norah Wellings, who is considered by many experts to be the finest ever English designer of soft toys, began her career with the Chad Valley Company in 1919, aged 26. She had finished her formal education at the age of 14, leaving school to care for her invalid father, but embarked on a correspondence course with the London School of Art, studying drawing, painting and sculpture. After her father died, Norah put her skills to good use, rising through the ranks at the Wrekin Toy Works to become a chief designer of the company's cloth doll range by the time of her departure in 1926. Some mystery surrounds Norah's reasons for leaving, although she apparently confided to relatives that the final straw presented itself in the shape of a gift-wrapped dead rat left on her desk when she arrived for work one morning! Regardless of the actual facts behind her departure, it proved to be a momentous decision.

Undeterred by the rat, Norah's subsequent career was a raging success. With her brother Leonard she set up her own small  toy workshop employing seven people. Her creations attracted a lot of interest and  eventually she was running a factory  with 250 employees. Quality not quantity was her motto and she designed all the dolls herself. Made of felt, they represented different fashions, occupations and nationalities. She sold through upmarket shops like Harrods and exported all over the world. She made dolls to be sold as souvenirs on cruise  liners and it seems that was why she started making them of other ethnicities. During WW2 she created the Royal Air Force Mascot Harry the Hawk, which was greatly in demand at the time.

Leonard died in 1959 and within a few months Norah sold up, gave her employees  two weeks notice and, not wanting to sell her designs, or leave them for anyone else to use,  she made a huge bonfire and burned everything - her tools, the designs, and all the unfinished dolls. Everything went. The completed dolls and toys were given away to different societies and institutions. They are collectors' items now.

This was all news to me. Not that I want to make any money from Richenda although I would be happy to donate her to a collection. I like the fact that I had a black doll at a time when they were few and far between. Golliwogs are still legal in the UK but are a very sensitive racial issue.