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November 2005 Vol. 24. No. 11
Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.
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Humboldt Senior Resource Center Back issues Table of Contents
Plus in this issue catch more news, opinions, features, book reviews, and event calendars.
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I Play With Dolls Jacki Taylor trades retail sales for life-long passion at home by Barbara Clark
Highway 36 beyond Bridgeville rises rapidly into the coastal range, and the switchbacks there are known as the 20/10, signaling the speed limit needed. Somewhere around 2,500 feet the golden pasture falls down steeply toward the Van Duzen River, and it was in 1996 that Jackie Taylor told her husband, Carl Clench¡, that she wanted to live there. They had moved to Eureka for a year to see if they could find their new home - it would need to have "his" and "hers" barns. Happily the Deerfield Ranch came on the market, and now the Taylors live in their rambling, one-story house nestled into the steep hillside, their separate barns a short walk out into the pasture. When her three-year lease for the Weavers' Shop in Ferndale came up for renewal earlier this year, Jackie, 71, knew it was time to go home and play with her dolls. She laughs when she says it, but it's true. She has played with, collected and repaired dolls since she was five, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, mother and aunt. She still raises llamas and sheep, and she still spins wool from those animals as well as from the dogs and cats. But nowadays, her work is with her dolls. She inherited half of her mother's doll collection - her mother, Bea De Armond, was the founder of the Hobby City Doll and Toy Museum in Anaheim. Looking around her barn, every nook and cranny is filled with dolls on display, doll bodies awaiting costumes hanging from the rafters, dolls of every age and dress, doll rocking chairs, sleighs, pianos, cellos. One formal English tea set is surrounded by a saluting John-John Kennedy doll, two girls in antique formal dresses and one naked doll lifting her cup. (See more photos page 6). Jackie's humor and sense of life sing out everywhere in her workshop. Old sewing machines, all still in use, are set up in various places. At her work bench by the bright window, she paints doll faces. "I had no intention of making whole dolls," she said, "but friends kept asking." So now, pouring porcelain clay into the molds, firing them in the kilns and painting them is part of the repair process. When she gets a wind-up doll or a music box toy for repair, it goes first to Carl's barn. He is a retired aerospace engineer and physicist. When the mechanics are fixed, the toy goes to Jackie's barn to be cleaned and re-dressed. The dolls with their original clothing are the most valuable, but craftswoman Jackie also knows the timeless art of bobbin lace making. She possesses maybe a dozen bobbin pillows, many from different countries and reflecting designs of lace unique to each European village. Each of the bobbin pillows is loaded with a strip of lace in progress, some with 30 bobbins of thread. She has attended lace classes in Hong Kong, Denmark, and all over the U.S. She will go with a friend to a class in Montreal in April. She repairs and replaces any lace that she needs to re-dress the dolls. The back bedroom of her house is loaded with her mother's doll collection, and she plans to build a doll museum here one of these days. Dolls line shelves in all the closets, fill the wardrobe, cover the bed. A second bedroom is another workshop. Jackie commits to returning a repaired doll within two weeks of receiving it. She will have some of her dolls and her woolen products at the annual Humboldt Artisans craft fair at Redwood Acres the first weekend in December. Jackie can be reached at 777-3711 or by e-mail at jackiet@quik.com. Barbara Clark is Senior News editor. |
Senior News
