Элизабет Миллер (Elizabeth Miller). Информация об авторе.

In 1944 Elizabeth Miller was born in Sunderland, a city situated in the North-East of England. She attended first Fulwell Junior School and then Monkwearmouth Grammar School. After leaving school at the age of 18 she studied Speech and Language Therapy in Edinburgh and subsequently became a Speech and Language Therapist. This very demanding job she has done continuously up to the present with only short breaks when had her children. Elizabeth married Harry in 1965 and bore him two sons, Scott, the elder in October 1966 and Edwin, the younger in 1968. Sadly in 1983 Edwin was killed while making his way home from school on a bicycle.

Elizabeth has many and varied talents. From an early age she sewed and knitted. Early in her married life she made garments for the family and began to knit by machine as well as by hand. As an adult she revived the interest that most girls have in dolls and began to collect them. She has even made rag dolls, knitted dolls herself. The dolls that interest her most are antique (nineteenth century) dolls with a bisque head. An extremely high degree of craftsmanship has gone into the production of these heads. Very few modern dolls can equal them. These dolls often have interesting period costumes. They are sometimes expensive to buy, but are a good investment since the value tends to increase.

Besides these antique dolls Elizabeth likes more modern baby dolls, not only of bisque but also of hard plastic and vinyl. Her favourites are 'baby dolls' for which she can make clothes usually on the knitting machine. She began by using commercially produced patterns, but discovered that these were not easy to find. Hence she began to make up her own patterns. She became so good at this that she produced for sale to other enthusiastic machine knitters her own booklet of unique patterns entitled 'Easy And Quick Machine Knitted Dolls' Clothes Patterns'. Another booklet followed the first one and than another. Now she has four booklets for baby-doll clothes patters and also booklets of clothes for 'Fashion Dolls And Barbie' and for 'Action Man' and other male dolls. All these booklets are still available, though sales have dropped in recent years and Elizabeth no longer advertises them in the machine knitting magazines.

Over the years Elizabeth has discovered that you do not need to be rich in order to build up an interesting collection of dolls. Dolls can be found discarded, or for sale very cheaply. Often these dolls are dirty, worn or damaged. They can have disfiguring ink, or paint marks, or need to be re-strung. Elizabeth gives these dolls some tender loving care. Few are beyond redemption and even these few are good for spare parts. Elizabeth cleans up dolls bought for a few pence, washes their hair, re-strings them and even supplies 'new' limbs or heads. The result is that the dolls appearance is greatly improved and their value much increased. Some of these renovated dolls she will sell, so as to obtain funds for the purchase of one of her most favourite dolls.

Teddy bears also interest Elizabeth. She has attempted to make them herself, but, as with her attempts to make dolls, she is very critical of her own work and does not feel that it comes up to the standard of well know contemporary doll and teddy bear artists.

About eight years ago Elizabeth began to make garments for teddy bears when a friend who makes teddy bears asked her to do this. Elizabeth's teddy bear artist friend had discovered that a naked teddy bear sold for much less than one that was clothed. The teddy bear artist is highly specialised in the manufacture of the tiny bears and has no time to make clothes. Elizabeth on the other hand is an expert at making tiny garments and so a mutually beneficial partnership began. Since that time other bear artists have approached Elizabeth and she has made garments for them, too. Elizabeth is skilled enough to satisfy the demands of each customer and to produce garments of a different style for each of her teddy bear manufacturers. Elizabeth is always inventing new designs and new styles, rather like the adult fashions that appear on the catwalks in Paris and Rome. All are done to greatest perfection.

Even though she has just now officially retired and is drawing her old age pension Elizabeth remains active. In addition to her doll collecting and knitting, Elizabeth still has some private patients. She still works, in a voluntary capacity with stroke patients and at a shop in Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. She and her husband join in fund raising for the local rescue kennel. They have two Labrador dogs.