The Comical Hotch Potch Doll


As you may have seen in the past couple of years, I have been collecting book-related toys and thingamajigs. A couple of months ago, my brother brought home a wonderful Mini Hotch Potch doll to add to my growing collection!

The Hotch Potch doll is inspired by The Comical Hotch Potch, or The Alphabet turn’d Posture-Master, a hand-colored print created by English publisher Carrington Bowles in London in 1782.

(via PhotoSeek.com)

The print shows “cavorting fellows” contorting their bodies into the letters of the alphabet.

This stuffed cloth doll is part of a 1999 collection  produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, inspired by The Comical Hotch-Potch or the Alphabet turn’d Posture-Master, a hand-colored print made by the famous English publisher Carrington Bowles in London in 1782.

Lookie:
It makes a great instructional and entertaining toy for learning the alphabet:

And it looks good on my shelf, too:


I love vintage odds and ends, and the Hotch Potch doll is exquisite — it looks exactly like an 18th century toy!

I hope I can find more Hotch Potch dolls so I can have them spell out words on my shelf!

10 thoughts on “The Comical Hotch Potch Doll”

  1. At a pediatric dentist’s office next to the therapy centre Alonso attends, there is this exquisite Madeline dollhouse. The old house in Paris, but not covered in vines… it is about 4×4 feet in size, with open rooms fully furnished in the period’s style – a claw-footed bathtub, the iron bedsteads, and a table and chair. It is complete with a cloth Ms. Clavell, Madeline and Pepito in proper doll size (not tiny). Both Alonso and I press our noses to that glass window every Tuesday and Wednesday morning and long to go inside and play :)

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