Izannah Walker
Ludwig Greiner
and when she found a potential stamp candidate, she took a Polaroid photograph of the doll and filed it in a book with pertinent information about the doll. A member of the U.S. Postal Service’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee put her in touch with collectors in the Philadelphia area, one of whom was Carol Corson. The original photo shoot took place in 1987 in the basement of Pennsylvania folk art dealer, Caroline Edleman’s home. While not a doll collector, Edleman had a solid knowledge of early American dolls. Corson took a few of her dolls (and an Izannah Walker belonging to collector Frances Walker) to Edleman’s home where Andersen-Bruce built a make-shift photo studio in Edleman’s basement. Andersen-Bruce used tungsten lights and needed a space that would not allow daylight. The dolls chosen for this first shoot were all antique American-made dolls which included two Schoenhut boy dolls, a 34” short-haired Greiner, a Columbian, a Volland Raggedy Ann and four Izannah Walker dolls. (Frances Walker’s Izannah was part of the
photo shoot. “The other Izannahs were only present for the party”, indicated Corson.) Andersen-Bruce submitted the photos to Derry Noyes, but the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee rejected the photos because they felt the dolls were not universally appealing except for perhaps Raggedy Ann. It was thought that more dolls were needed, perhaps adding more recently made dolls to complement the range of older dolls. The suggested graphic design was to be groupings of photographed dolls which could be spread cohesively over the quadrants of the proposed four-stamp block. Clendenin, sensing a need for internal guidance, enlisted the assistance of LeGree S. Daniels, a member of the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors at the time. Daniels believed the idea for a doll stamp merged well with then postmaster general Marvin Runyon’s goal of attracting children to stamp collecting. Runyon felt stamps could–and should—teach American history. “These delightful, charming stamps illustrate the joys of collecting,
Babyland Rag
88 y The Museums of Washington D.C.
Plains Indian