ABSTRACT
The dolls made at the Q'ewar Project are Waldorf-style dolls, and are marketed primarily to the Waldorf school community in the United States and Europe. Dolls are important representations of our material culture as their design embodies cultural values. Historian Miriam Formanek-Brunell describes how dolls can be used as "texts" to shed light upon the intentions of producers. Dolls provide a unique opportunity to analyze product design because they are sculptural representations of the human form. In addition to being toys, dolls are created as ritual and spiritual objects, museum-quality art, collectibles, and commercial objects such as store mannequins. Dolls present a rich opportunity to evaluate choices and uses of materials. Dolls are made of a vast array of materials: cloth, clay, corn husks, papier mache, wood, bone, shells, apples, spoons, and more recently rubber, celluloid, vinyl, and other plastics, delineating a history of available consumer and industrial materials.
