On Wednesday’s Naomi usually goes to visit her friend Annie. When she came home from her most recent visit, she was quite excited because they had been op shopping and she had brought home a few things including a doll for me.

Naomi said that when she walked into the shop, she immediately spotted a doll sitting in a basket with several others. She knew it was old because it was hard plastic and she thought that I might like her. She also couldn’t resist the price. $1.50; so she bought her. As you can see, she is very clean and had a lovely little knitted outfit on.

Of course, the first thing I did when she was handed to me was to look for a doll mark. On her back I found what I was hoping to see, the Pedigree marks.

I have a soft spot for the Pedigree hard plastic dolls. As you know I already have three others. Marilyn, Penny and my Pedigree baby who has a different mark from this one.

Naturally, I then wanted to find out how old the doll was and if she had a name. Naomi said she guessed about 1950 and that was a good guess as you can see from this link. She is Pedigree Little Princess, released in 1953, Coronation year in the UK. It is thought that she was meant to resemble Princess Anne who was three years old at that time. I have seen photos of the Princess Royal as a small child and she did have very fair hair like this doll has.

We had already decided to name her Phoebe but after reading this information I decided to add Anne as well so she is now Phoebe-Anne.

Phoebe Anne is 14 inches long so a little bit smaller than Penny. She has a crier which is not working and I think that her limbs are strung with rubber bands. She’s not a walking doll but she can stand, or rather she would if her leg was a bit less swingy and she had her original shoes. She has sleep eyes and an open mouth. You can see her two little teeth and tongue.

Phoebe Anne is in very good shape for a doll who is nearly 70 years old. She has lost her eyelashes but that can be fixed. Her hair was rather flat from her hood and from having other dolls on top of her in the basket but I didn’t want to do much to it because I wasn’t sure what it was made of. I thought that it might be glued on not rooted so I didn’t want to wash it. So, all I did was to very gently comb it out after spraying some diluted fabric softener on it. I think it came out quite well.

Phoebe Anne will be going downstairs to join her Pedigree sisters and I’ll try to take a photo of the whole group together.