I had the pleasure to acquire Emile Jumeau's small notebook on his Unbreakable Baby. We deliver you of wide extracts; it is little known because become very rare,it marks an important date of the Industry Jumeau: 1877.
     A little time after the death of his brother ( 1873 ) who was already in the company and normally had to succeed his father, him, Emile, intending himself nevertheless for the architecture, agreed to take its succession.
      Talented, creative, inventive, he needed only three short years to integrate the factory, show his know-how and launch his own baby, this baby said "unbreakable ". The birth of the baby articulated in 1875 of Jules Nicolas Steiner, indeed doped at once his creative energy: it is the conception of the robust " Unbreakable Baby ".
     Why unbreakable? Because conceived in a very solid way, constituted with wood,  resistant composition, completely articulated. According to François Theimer:
" The peculiarity of the body of the baby bases on its new adapted artistic proportions. While the body of a doll amounts to 7 times the height of the head, joining perfectly the standards, that of this baby, more thickset, corresponds only to 5 times the size of the head ".






     Many of innovations complete the creation of this new Baby : the head is mobile on the trunk and either on the ruffle, the fixed eyes are in enamel with colored rays, the whole maintained by a metallic hook, the one that we know.
     This famous and very renowned " Unbreakable Baby " was however endowed with a head in particularly vulnerable biscuit. Emile Jumeau was probably conscious of it, the unbreakable word finding its point of break there. 
     Is it the reason for which the factory, keeping the same moulds and the same processes, tempted some essays of papier machés heads ? The one that describes our small notebook must be endowed with one of this one. It is indeed subjected without damage, in the childish brutality. A body, however solid isn't, but without head had (and still has) really, a disastrous and sad effect for the child.
     In brief, it seems that the results of these papier maché heads  were not probably convinsing and the manufacturing continued with magnificent but fragile, pressing heads of biscuit.....
     This baby was thus and was practically never unbreakable in spite of the assertions of the House Juemau who sacrificed the solidity of the doll to the beauty of an attractive little face which always amazes us ...... 
                         



                                                             Hélène  BUGAT-PUJOL





To satisfy your curiosity here is of wide extracts of this small notebook

 
"... Six years ago I was the most unbearable girl of the world.... I took myself in my harmless dolls that I pummel under the deceptive plead that they were not wise..... It was necessary to see me, disemboweling them, tearing their dresses ...... One day in a fit of anger I had just broken my thirtieth doll, maybe, when my father says to me ".... Tomorrow I shall bring you a doll to replace the one that you have again just annihilated.... "





   
    



 
   Judge my surprise when I saw, instead of a doll in skin... a magnificent unbreakable JUMEAU Baby dressed in a suit so elegant, so pretty and so rich at the same time that I was struck of admiration. I knew since this admirable garment took out workshops)of the JUMEAU house Jumeau customary of the fact ...... I admit it nobody of my too numerous victims had caused me half of the pleasure which made me this magnificent baby, which stood sat, on the knees in my will.....



 
  
     
  But it could not last eternally and my natural redwing got over and I became again nasty as before ...... I resolved to sacrifice Charming ( name of her baby) to my anger believing to have easily reason. How much I had made a mistake I might strike it, throw it violently on the ground and stamp above, it resisted to all my furious efforts. Its smiling face seemed to say to me: " you can strike me, small cruel mother, you will not annihilate me ! ".....
    



    The next day; I was in my bed with a burning fever, and I was delirious during a week. It is then that I understood  how much my baby was solidly built. I did not stop, during my delirious state, beating it and imposing it one thousand corrections. Ah! The poor Charmant, it really has to be iron to have resisted to all that I made it undergo.

     Unconscious of my acts, I twisted its members of all the manners, either I sent it of my bed at the bottom of bed room
(The little girl is going to cure and with the health to acquire a more soft and more kind character  ).... 



 I often thanked my Charming unbreakable, my dear baby, to have been the first cause of my moral transformation...... If I get married one day and what God gives me a girl, I keep it for her, because I am sure, this Jumeau unbreakable baby will never break.! "

       We understood Émile Jumeau's message: except the moralizing little story to the taste of time ( the miserable girl who becomes good and pleasant) the unbreakable Baby is really unbreakable. We dissuadeeven though our readers to verify it in a so rough  way as that of the girl!


                                                                         



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     While we prepared this site Mister Samy ODIN, Director of the Museum of the Poupée-Paris drafted, from his part, a fascinating article on the " Bébé Jumeau " for the French review " Ours et Poupées  (Bears and Dolls) " (n°27 of May June July, 2009) This article of eight pages illustrated with eighteen photos-colour of his dolls among the most beautiful of his Museum is a delight. To resume the subtitle given by its author to this "Bébé Jumeau " it is:
A Myth always alive





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