Heidi Topps of Crystal Lake admits when it comes to collecting dolls, her attraction to the iconic Barbie knows no bounds.
“I was interested in Barbie dolls when I was young, but I just started collecting again in the past few years and getting things together,” Topps said while visiting the Kane County Doll and Dollhouse Show in St. Charles on Sunday. “I don’t know what made me start again.My mom’s always been into dolls and she has the older ones. I got out all my old Barbie stuff and just started getting into it.”
The show at the Kane County Fairgrounds included more than 65 dealers. Karla Moreland of Crystal Lake presented the doll show, and said she has been doing them since 1996.
“I’ve been in Kane County for a while. It’s always been a one-day show with one in April and the other in September,” she said. “Normally, we get about 450 people as well as the vendors who are also collectors. This may not sound like a lot, but it’s a good crowd for a doll show.”
Moreland said people of all ages come to the show.
“I have people who start in their 20s all the way up to people in their 80s. I have all eras. I have dolls from the early 1700s to current,” she said. “There’s antique, there’s vintage, there’s collectible and ball-jointed dolls, Barbies – it’s a show for all doll collectors. I feel doll collecting has been very stable. It’s attracting newer collectors and younger collectors.”
Topps said her interest in doll collecting involves “the thrill of the hunt, to just finding antiques that you remembered you had and got rid of.”
“It’s not rediscovering your youth. For me, it’s having things completed,” she said. “If you have a set, you want to just add to your collection. I bet I have 300 dolls.”
The runaway star of the show was the “Stella & Friends” exhibit where a line of shoppers waited to buy one of the 60 dolls the artist brought to the show.
Juli Riedl of Lisle manages a Stella-fan website and said artist Connie Lowe began working years ago “by dressing other people’s dolls and then she created characters of her own.”
“About seven years ago, she created this character Stella based on a 1920s-1930s era child living through the Depression,” Riedl said. “Stella took off like wildfire and we have two Facebook groups with mine having over 1,000 members.
“The dolls just touch people’s hearts and there’s just something about them that speaks to people,” she said. “They’re all one-of-a-kind and unique. People name them and take them on trips.”
Connie Lowe’s husband Jay Lowe was on hand and said the doll was inspired by his wife’s mother whose name was Stella.
He said “there is a lot of excitement and joy in sharing and collecting. We never expected this to happen and get so crazy but people love it.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
