| |
| Photography by AMANDA KING. |
Trish Inch lives with husband Randall in a double story home in Browns Bay, Auckland, with north east views of Hauraki Gulf.
Once all three children left their family home, more room was given to the Sherwood Primary teacher’s unusual collections. Trish has collected cups and saucers for the past decade but three years ago she adopted a more eccentric fetish – golliwogs.
Transforming the old bedroom into a sunroom several years ago, she says the room with a view was the perfect location for her new golly collection. What began as gifts from family, friends and students rapidly grew into a collector’s dream and now more than 150 black dolls fill the room.
A shelving unit was purchased especially for the toys, with three-quarters of the collection tucked into their little pigeonhole homes, some sit with pride of place in their own little sun bed, leaving just enough room for the cat.
Woven baskets, boxes and a chair keep the rest in place, a lucky few even having a special spot on the window ledge gazing out to the ocean.
<!--page-->Many of them have been found hiding in Auckland’s op-shops, some have come from as far as France or the UK as presents, and a few have been purchased new from specialist makers.
The golly collector says her little family continues to grow, with new ones arriving in time for each birthday or Christmas. On occasions she will sit and admire her collection, each toy has a special name, symbolic to the place it was discovered.
“Their names are usually related to where they come from,” says Trish. “Penny Rose came from Penrose, Auckland.”
She spends a lot of time in the golly filled room with intrigued friends, interested in her collection, listening to stories of the newest arrivals to the Inch household.| GOLLIWOG PLACE IN HISTORY The Golliwog is a character of children’s literature created by Florence Kate Upton in the late 19th century. The character is depicted in books as a type of rag doll and was popularised and sold commercially by hobby toy-makers around the world into the 1960s. While home-made golliwogs were sometimes female, golliwogs were generally male. In the period following World War II, the golliwog became a popular soft toy for boys. The image of the doll has become the subject of heated debate since the 60s, forcing both its name and the sale of them to be banned in many countries. |
|
