Amish dolls why no faces

I admired its tiny, beautiful brows with open eyes, its dainty nose and lips, and its cute defined hands and feet, the tiny fingers and curly toes. She was exotic, a non-Amish doll dressed in proportionately scaled-down Amish clothes-the first time I saw an English one in our clothes.

I played with a set of white cloth twin Amish dolls. My mother had crafted them from scratch when I was too young to remember. They were about twelve inches tall and outfitted in a matching set of dark brown clothes: a dress and black Amish cap for the girl, and a shirt and black pants for the boy.

The dolls had no faces. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no fingers, no toes. Featureless shapes denoted the head, hands, and feet.

I want a doll like that. Later that year, after begging often enough for the little English doll, my father ordered my mother to buy one for me. In the past, the dolls were stuffed with rags, but nowadays cotton and polyester are often used as stuffings. In the past, the dolls were not washed, and when they got dirty, a new layer of cloth would be wrapped around them.

Faceless Amish dolls. Author: vic15 — CC BY 2. The dolls are sewn by hand or with a traditional foot-operated sewing machine. Read another story from us: Valley of the Dolls: The stone dolls of Kuklica and the legend of the petrified wedding party. However, the tourist market for the faceless dolls, considered by many to be a unique form of folk art, has in recent years been invaded by mass-produced dolls made by non-Amish reproducers.

At one time Amish children played with faceless dolls because of belief that everyone is the same. Mar 16, Nikola Simonovski. According to the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible, people are forbidden from creating graven images or idols. Amish teachings interpret this to mean that no created objects, including dolls, should be accurate representations of the human form. By creating a faceless doll, children cannot regard the doll as a human likeness and thus owning one is not a sin.

Amish religious precepts also teach that vanity and pride are sins. Many Amish individuals believe that represented likenesses, including photographs, encourage vanity, and are therefore forbidden. Similarly, creating a doll or toy with a human image creates an ideal image of the human form and could encourage children to model themselves after this image.

This is why many people believe faceless dolls are an affirmation of Amish modesty. Although most of the reasons cited for the faceless dolls are religious or traditional, increased commercial interest provides a more practical reason.