I first read about these dolls in grade school, Darrow made whips, baseballs, and other items from leather.  In the 1870s, like so many others, he turned his hand at dolls.  It must have been a Renaissance period of doll makers, because so many other businessmen and women were attracted to them.  It's a little after Greiner, approaching the Golden Age of German and French bisque dolls, the age of Joel Ellis, Mason and Taylor, the wax doll, Izannah Walker, and so many more.


It used to fill me with horrific thrills to read about Darrow dolls; the leather attracted rats that chewed them to bits, and I was deathly afraid of rats.  I've met a couple of pet rats since then that I could be friends with, and many toy and plush varieties which are great, but in general, I am not a rodent person.

 

But, I digress.   My Darrow doll came to me from a California neighbor who was also a dealer.  She was worn, not at all like the gorgeous examples provided in doll books. As with the Ellis dolls, Grieners, other papier maches, and later tin heads, the Darrow heads were meant to look like china heads, but were to be unbreakable.  No one counted on the sabotage from the animal kingdom; that ruined Darrow's doll business.  Consequently, Darrow dolls are very rare.  I wrote an article about them many years ago for John Axe when he edited "Doll News." At the time, there were long time dealers who had not even heard of them. I have written more on my web museum, "Doll Museum" at dollmuseum.blogspot.com.

Currently, a badly worn Darrow is on sale at Ruby Lane.  She is $325.00, but I've seen them valued as high as $1200.00. At the other end of the spectrum, one sold on eBay UK last year for around $24.00!    I think  lot of folks mistake them for worth cloth or composition dolls, if they get to see them at all.  Good places to read about them are in the books by Janet Pagter Johl, John Noble, Eleanor St. George, Helen Young,  and Mary Hillier.

The leather for the dolls' heads was pressed in mold, but the dolls were glued together, not sewed, as noted by Miriam Formanek Burnell in "Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Childhood."  He obtained his patent May 1, 1866, and this is marked on the dolls in an oval, along with Darrow's name.

Bulletin 14 of The United States National Museum has a listing for Darrow making rawhide dolls as late as 1879.  You can obtain this book free as an eBook on Google Books.

 

Darrow dolls are also grouped with cloth dolls.

Leather has been used for doll bodies, especially kid, for a long time.  Native American dolls are often made completely of leather, and these are highly desireable, espeically dolls of the Plains people, like the Sioux.  There are excellent examples in Carl Fox's "The Doll." I have wonderful dolls of leather stretched over a mask from Morrocco.  Some are made like baby dolls in their own ethnic costumes.  I've seen wonderful artists dolls made of soft leather, too, with floss wigs and painted features, and dolls of fur and leather also come from Poland and from the Inuit People.  Leather dolls are interesting and well worth collecting, especially the rare Darrow rawhide varieties.