Who is Loulotte and How Is She Related to Bleuette?

 Loulotte is a character from the Becassine cartoon published by the Gautier & Languereau publishing company for many years, beginning with the first issue (February 2, 1905) of the girls' magazine, La Semaine de Suzette (Suzette's Week).  It looked like this later issue:

The first issue showed an ad for the new magazine's premium doll, a pretty Jumeau doll called Bleuette, and offered a pattern for a dress to sew for her.

In La Semaine de Suzette's weekly cartoon, Loulotte was the baby for whom Becassine was hired to be nanny in the fictional Grand-Air household in Paris.  Like many actual servants of the time, she was a Breton girl who wore the traditional costume of  her native region of France.

 Loulotte was still a character in the Becassine cartoon years later when she become a young woman.  The girl and her Breton nanny had many adventures together.

In reality Loulotte was based on an actual little girl, the daughter of the Maurice Languereaus.  Maurice was one of the publishers of La Semaine de Suzette.

Loulotte became a small doll when she was made by a doll artist, Bernard Terrie, as a souvenir for the Bleuette Congress that took place in Lille, France, on 18 to 20 March, 1994. The Congress was organized for collectors and those who studied Bleuette. Each attendee received one of a limited number of the Loulottes. The souvenir doll was 24 cm (about 9.5 inches) with bisque head, fixed brown eyes, a dark bob wig, and articulated composition body. The heads were marked with a script L (for Lille?) and an edition number. Later the doll continued to be made by Jacques Defaut. His business name was amedeobjects, so he incised AO on the back of the doll's neck.

In 2015 the Georgette Bravot company, famed French makers of doll wigs and shoes, sold a limited edition of Loulotte dolls.  Some had different hair colors and styles than the typical dark bob.  They are marked GB, Loulotte, and an edition number, and were otherwise the same size and type as the first Lille Congress dolls.  Bravot currently sells shoes and clothing for the Loulotte doll, but not the doll itself.  The Bravot doll below is Loulotte # 174.

Who is Loulotte?  Now you know!

Bleuette in 1916

 Bleuette in 1916

The year 1916 provided readers of La Semaine de Suzette with 26 patterns including dresses, hats, handbags, other accessories, lingerie, and a variety of outerwear—in other words, a complete wardrobe. 

1916 France means WW1. The battle of Verdun was raging and would last 10 months before the French and their British and Irish allies triumphed.  Paris was bombed in 1916.  The war was personal for the young Suzettes, a daily concern.

The 1916 G-L catalog featured the uniform of an ambulance nurse and a military-style uniform (“Tipperary”) for Bleuette, which the Suzettes could purchase ready-made.  

Ambulance Nurse

In 1916 LSDS published in issue #7 Manteau de demi-saison, (below) a coat for the between-season, or in this case, spring.  It is a classic coat so popular that it was repeated in 1922, although without the coat sleeves. Below are some of the 1916 patterns made up recently.

 1916, #4 Little Wool Hat

1916, # 5 Spring Dress

1916, # 39 Skirt with Shoulder Straps

1916, #50 & 51 Crocheted Wool Jacket and Gaiters

 

1916, # 28 Handbag

The Smallest SFBJ 60

 

This little doll is the smallest fully articulated mold 60 made by the SFBJ.  She is size 14/0, or 14 sizes smaller than size 0.   She measures 7.5 inches or 19 cm.  She has four teeth, set glass eyes, mohair wig.

Knee, hip, shoulder, elbow and wrist are articulated.

Her mark is

SFBJ

60

Paris

14/0

Her wardrobe is a vintage "Kiddie Kase for Going Places," made by the Neevel Luggage Manufacturing Company, Kansas City, Los Angles, and New York.

 

She has a chair, a bear, a bunny, and an elusive marmalade tom cat.  Would you like to see her clothes and accessories?  She has an antique black velvet dress and bonnet with beadwork, and many maman-made things.

It's a privilege to be the caretaker of this little antique.

 

The Auvergne Costume

 

 Auvergne is an historical region in central France, now part of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The mostly rural, mountainous area is popular for hiking and skiing, with forests and dormant volcanoes such as Puy de Dôme. Natural hot springs spawned spa towns such as Vichy, known for its mineral water. Its capitol, Clermont-Ferrand is a busy university city with a Romanesque church, Notre-Dame du Port. 

(Google)

Costume pieces:  Dress, fichu with fringe, black taffeta apron, bonnet.

LSDS 1931, 26

LSDS 1923's "Petite Hollandaise"

Bleuette Wears the Costume of A Dutch Girl

The Netherlands has twelve provinces: Drenthe, Gelderland, Groningen, Flevoland, Friesland, Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Zeeland and Zuid-Holland. North (noord) and south (zuid) Holland are only two of the twelve provinces, but Holland has often been used to denote what is rightly called The Netherlands.  People from any of these provinces are called "Dutch."

Traditional dress varies across the twelve provinces, and the costumes changed over time, also.

Bleuette had three patterns for a Dutch girl's costume published in La Semaine de Suzette, one in 1908, Costume Hollandaise, later Petite Hollandaise in 1923, and finally Bleuette en Hollandaise in 1930.

Petite Hollandaise 1923, # 6 & 7

1908 Illustration

1923 Illustration

1930 Illustration

 Coifs (white caps) featuring "ears," pointed tops, flaps, caps with a gathered frill at the bottom, lace bonnets, and many types of decorations distinguish the various provinces.  A striped skirt is often part of the costume, but sometimes they are black.  Royal blue and orange are the national colors, so some costumes reflect that.  One thing the provincial costumes have in common is the "klompen," or wooden shoes.

You could make a lifetime's work of studying the costume variations and traditions of the Netherlands!  If you grew up reading "Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates," you might enjoy reconnecting with the Netherlands by making Bleuette the costume of a Dutch girl.

 

Incassable 301-1 Bleuette

Hello, bon jour! to a new member of my Bleuette family, a 301-1 incassable whose head is made of pressed paper and glue, also called pasteboard.  She is 29 cm, and dates from 1939 onward, a wartime Bleuette.  She has blue glass eyes on a rocker, though a few from this era have acetate eyes.  Those were not continued, but apparently served a purpose at the time.

You can compare her to my Rosette-sized incassable 301 below.  The pressed paper heads were a speciality of the SFBJ throughout their manufacturing years (1899 to 1957),  and sometimes cost more than a corresponding bisque head.  To be able to purchase a doll with an unbreakable head must have been a selling point with parents of rambunctious little girls!

Don't confuse composition with pasteboard, although both are incassable.

Bijou, a 29 cm Bleuette composition-head 301-1&1/2.

Composition is a poured material like porcelain, not pressed like pasteboard.

My incassable "SFBJ Paris" doll.

Another 301 mold incassable of larger size in my collection.

A slightly taller-than-Bleuette 301 incassable cousin.

Marilu, the Argentinian, Bleuette-inspired 16" incassable.

Happy Holidays from "About Bleuette!"

May all your dolls have unbroken heads, if not unbreakable!