Our wonderful photographer who takes all our photos for both Tender Leaf toys and ThreadBear designs is also really talented at animating!

We wired up the bodies of the dolls and then set to creating a little story and a scene in which to bring them to life!

Rag dolls are perhaps the oldest form of play things, and the easiest toy to make from any given materials.

The earliest dolls being made from materials found in nature, such as rocks, sticks, and clay. Thousands of years ago, Egyptian children played with dolls that had wigs and movable limbs, which were made from stone, pottery, and wood. In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, children played with dolls made of wax or terracotta and now of course we have plastic as well as fabrics.

Dolls are essential in childhood development, social skills and learning about empathy.

“When children create imaginary worlds and role play with dolls, they communicate at first out loud and then internalise the message about others’ thoughts, emotions and feelings,” said Dr Sarah Gerson, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University and the lead author. “This can have positive long-lasting effects on children, such as driving higher rates of social and emotional processing and building social skills like empathy that can become internalised to build and form lifelong habits.”

We have 5 beautiful and diverse dolls in this range and they are all carefully hand finished using lots of high quality fabrics, trim, and real wool hair!

Click on the picture below to take you to the doll page!