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What if a doll could tell the truth about who we are? We sit down with Dr. Eric Dupree—author of Dolls Beyond Play, cultural anthropologist, and lifelong collector—to uncover how dolls carry stories of identity, memory, and belonging across centuries. From nineteenth-century French fashion dolls that globalized taste to handmade folk pieces stitched from scraps, we trace how design choices around skin tone, features, and body shape both reflect and reshape culture.

Beneath it all is a call to honor folk traditions. Shaker, Amish, African American, and Appalachian dolls hold untold histories of resourcefulness and love, made from what was available to mirror what was desired. These pieces are not merely “mixed media figurative objects” but intimate records of families and communities. When we recognize that the doll most directly reflects its maker, we grant overdue dignity to the hands and lives behind them. Whether you collect for memory, create for meaning, or study for insight, treating dolls as cultural texts opens a fuller view of who we are—and how we want to be seen.

If you care about representation, creative entrepreneurship, or the lived meaning of objects, this conversation reframes dolls as cultural texts worth serious attention. Listen to learn how collectors buy from memory, how makers market with story, and how a small figure can carry a world of human experience.

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