Shallowpool Dolls
Shallowpool Dolls were made in the Cornish village of Shallowpool, near Looe, by three friends - Joan Rickarby, Muriel fogarty, and Peggy Price - who started the business there in 1952. They produced dolls until the late 1980s, when the business closed. Many of the dolls in the Shallowpool range were based on famous Cornish characters, like Dolly Pentreath from Mousehole, and Mary Kelynack, a Newlyn fishwife. Shallowpool dolls were contemporaries of the Peggy Nisbet range, and though many of their characters were based on Cornish personalities never included in the Nisbet family, they did make a number of dolls that overlapped with them.
These dolls included Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and Prince Edward, Son of Henry VIII, plus some similar characters, like the cornish fishwife.
Shallowpool dolls were made with Plaster-of-Paris faces and hands, carefully painted and varnished, and fixed to a padded wire armature. They were beautifully modelled, and the costumes of the Royal dolls were finished to an extremely high standard, so it is understandable that they might end up in a Nisbet collection, (either by accident or design), where in our opinion, they could only enhance it!
(If you would like to find out more about Shallowpool Dolls, we recommend the excellent book, "Cornish Shallowpool Dolls" by Susan Brewer, available from Amazon)
(17th august 2014 - Our thanks to Michael B, (cousin of Peggy Price), for supplying some corrections to the information shown on this page)