Sometimes, it is not easy to decide if a doll really is a Peggy Nisbet.   Perhaps you only have a photograph on an internet auction website to look at; Perhaps you purchased a doll sold in good faith as a Peggy Nisbet, and now you see it alongside your Nisbet collection, you have niggling doubts.   How can you be sure?

Over the years, we have purchased a number of very nice dolls that looked a bit like, (but turned out not to be), genuine Nisbet dolls.

This section is designed to help collectors identify the key features that mark a Nisbet doll as distinct from many other, (and, it has to be admitted,) equally excellent doll families.

What good is the name of a new Nisbet doll, if you have never seen a picture of it before?   How can you tell if it is a genuine Nisbet?  Here, we will try and provide pointers that will allow the collector to establish, with a high degree of certainty, that a previously unseen or unknown doll is, in fact, a Nisbet creation, and along the way, provide lots of snippets of information that we hope will prove to be interesting and useful to the collector.

Is it possible to define the Nisbet magic, that secret essence that sets these dolls apart from all others?   We think that this questions can only really be answered by experience - time spent looking at genuine Nisbet dolls, or reading all the catalogues, to get a feel for the type of character that Peggy Nisbet loved to make; Time spent in examination of the techniques and materials that went into their creation; Time spent looking at the materials and fabrics used, the trimmings, lace, hats, footwear, and accessories, etc.

We realise that many collectors, (and would-be collectors), haven't the opportunity or resources available to them to devote to this study, and in any case, the sort of information they really need just isn't available to them - For instance, there is only one book that deals exclusively with Peggy Nisbet's life and work as a dollmaker*, and although still of huge interest to the collector, it answers relatively few of these questions.   *(look at Home Page / Frequently Asked Questions for details of the book, "The Peggy Nisbet Story")   Even this worthy volume doesn't offer a complete and named photographic listing of the dolls that Nisbet made.  

That omission was, (in part), one of the reasons we felt this section might be of interest to Nisbet collectors.  

On the right of this pane are a few of the key points and identifiers that will help you to establish the authenticity (or not) of the suspect dolls in your collection

We hope that you will find these pages of interest and value, but they are still a work in progress, and as such will continue to be added to and revised, as time allows.