Surprise Travel Doll!

Today I got a box in the mail from my sister. She's been helping my mom go through stuff in her house; my mom is healthy, but she is 83. Most of what was in the box was old school papers, but there was also a travel doll in her original box! Tam showed us several travel dolls on her blog, and now I get one out of the blue! Now that I'm looking at the doll again, I do remember having her when I was a little girl. Unfortunately, I can't remember where she came from. Let's take a look at her.

Here she is in her box. The box is beaten up, but mostly intact, and the cellophane or plastic on the cover is still there. Judging by my beautiful handwriting, I must have received her when I was maybe seven or eight at the most?

Her head, torso and arms are made of lightweight plastic; her legs and feet are made of rubber. Her shoulders and hips allow her to move her arms and legs forward and backwards, and her head can turn left and right. She does open her sleep eyes, but I'm not sure they open all the way. Something rattles a little inside her head when you shake her; maybe it is the sleep eye mechanism. I love the shape of her little hands.

She wears a white cap, a white rectangular neckpiece, a red and black garment that looks like a shawl, but is also the only thing covering her torso, an apron, a skirt, an underskirt, simple underpants, and rubber shoes. Her underskirt is held on by virtue of being attached to a string that ties around her waist. I think her hair is probably mohair.

The mark on her underskirt looks like it was possibly some sort of mark by the manufacturer? It feels like it is painted on. Is it possible it was paper that changed over her many decades? It also looks like her underskirt was either sewn oddly, or is inside out, as the raw edge of the hem is on the outside of the skirt as she wears it. I don't remember ever taking her clothes off, but her underskirt could have fallen off and been put back on at some point, I suppose.

She is about 5 5/8" tall, or 14 cm. That probably explains why the bottom of her shoes are marked 14M. Maybe there were larger and smaller dolls like this, making this doll the Medium size.

I only found one clue as to which country this doll is from, but it isn't completely helpful. On the underside of her apron, there is a tag which appears to read, Mele, Danmark.

So our little lady is probably Danish, but I'm not sure that I'm reading the first word correctly, as it doesn't seem to mean anything applicable in Danish. I also tried looking up the word as Mels, but I got no results with that either.

I hope you like my little surprise dolly! I also enjoyed going through my school papers. There were a couple of notes from teachers that shed a lot of insight on my personality, and a note from a kindergarten speech therapist concerned because I can't lift the tip of my tongue when I speak. Well, yes, because I'm tongue-tied. I wonder if my parents tried to do the exercises with me that the speech therapist recommended. To this day, I'm not always understandable with every word when I speak. Oh well!