Stinet Luth (75) from Norg will close her shop in antique dolls on Asserstraat in December. That doesn’t mean the end of her doll doctor’s practice: ‘who else should do it?’
The doorbell rings incessantly in Luth’s small and crowded shop. While the doll doctor is being photographed by the photographer, people enter continuously. They want to come and have a look, now that it is known that Luth will close her Poppenstijn shop in December.
Luth is already busy packing the hundreds of dolls, dollhouses, antique toys and the other curios she has collected over time. She sells part of it, another part goes to storage and what remains is for charity. And yet: when a new offer comes along, it is impossible to turn it down.
New life
“I’m afraid that my children will get rid of it when I’m gone,” says a lady from Haren, while she gives Luth a 75-year-old doll. The arm hangs a bit pathetic and the doll does not wear any clothes. Luth looks at the toys and smiles. “I will make it and fix it up. She will have a new life,” promises the doll doctor.
Luth has been crazy about dolls all her life. She remembers seeing real, antique dolls for the first time in the children of a farmer with whom she played during a sleepover. At that time, she promised herself to buy such a beautiful doll later. Luth became a psychiatric nurse, moved to Arnhem and there she immediately fell in love in an antique shop. She points to her very first real doll in the display case. It is a doll in a red suit, with an intact face and red painted lips.
Grateful work
“I fell for her face, I thought she was so beautiful. She cost 175 guilders, which was actually much too much for me.” Luth beams at the memory. “I was allowed to pay in three installments.” It was the beginning of a hobby that would continue to grow. After a career with the Red Cross (‘I’ve been all over the world’), she opened the shop on Asserstraat in Norg in 2005. There she not only sells dolls and antique toys, but also repairs toys and cuddly toys. Her heart lies with the latter.
“People from all over the Netherlands come to me especially.” She opens a random page in her cash book. “Almere, Beilen, Oosterwolde, Krommenie, Haaksbergen, Leeuwarden…”, she sums up. It’s a rewarding craft, she says. “I rarely have dissatisfied customers.” She visited a doll doctor in Leeuwarden a few times, but taught herself the finer repair work. She takes out the carefully repaired doll Inge and her phone to show how she works.
After a stay of almost a year in Norg, the patient has finally been made to the doll doctor’s satisfaction. “She can go home after half her skull was cut off,” said Luth. It was quite a job. The material of the doll has not been used since the 1950s, if it catches fire, toxic substances are released. Fortunately, Luth also has individual pieces of these ‘Schildkröt’ dolls in her collection. “I fixed those pieces together with two-component clay to restore the contours.” Precision work, and then the painting has yet to come. The coloring is just as accurate. “Look, now you can hardly see where it has been repaired.”
Unsightly hugs
Luth is not sad that the store is closing in December. The owner of the building has had sales plans for some time and she is pleased that the decision has now been made. She stops at a time when she is still fit and healthy. But quitting as a doll doctor? That never. “I like the work and there are hardly any doll doctors left. At least not in this environment. I am fit enough and I need to have something to do.”
Moreover: where are those young men going with their bears? They’re really coming, laughs Luth. “Young men of about thirty or forty years old, with their little bear they still sleep with every night. Then I get something that is unsightly – you can no longer tell whether it is a sheep or a rabbit.” Still, Luth doesn’t reject a hug. “But at such moments I have to keep my emotions under control.”
People who want to have a doll repaired can come to her by appointment. She also hopes to be able to provide her services elsewhere, for example at the Kinderworld toy museum in Roden. “It would be nice if people also had a place to come.” She has all the patience for hugs, sometimes a little less for people: “They should not think that something is ready from today to tomorrow, I can’t stand that!”
Appointment with the doll doctor?
You can, on Luths website you can find her contact details. She also lectures about her doll doctor work and the travels she has made and continues to make. She is very busy, so a response sometimes takes a while.