The Chocolate Girl – Pincushion Doll

This pincushion doll has been especially designed to fit a porcelain doll made by my friend Elaine Kewin, artist and owner of BrierRose.  This half doll is simply unique and the story of The Chocolate Girl.

There is a lovely story behind this half doll model which takes its name after the painting Das Schokoladen-Mädchen, or La Belle Chocolatière by Swiss artist Jean Etienne Liotard, representing Anna Baltauf (1740-1825), the daughter of a knight living in Vienna. At those times, chocolate shops were the rage in Europe, and Anna was working as a chocolate waitress in one shop.

The story says that during a very cold day of the winter 1745, the Austrian Prince Ditrichstien entered the shop, fell immediately in love with Anna and later married her notwithstanding the public scandal and his families disagreement. It was love at the first sight!  The Prince asked Jean-Étienne Liotard, then a highly demanded painter to whom even the Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria commissioned a group portrait of her children, to make a the pastel portrait of his wife, dressed as a chocolate-girl, as a token of love.  From 1765, the portrait of Princess Dietrichstein was displayed at the Dresden Gallery ‘Alte Meister’ in Germany.

On a trip to Europe in 1881, Henry L. Pierce, the owner Baker’s Chocolate in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA, saw the pastel Das Schokoladen-Mädchen. He adopted the chocolate girl as the Walter Baker & Co. trademark in 1883, one of the earliest examples of a trademark in the U.S. The image was used on product packaging, in advertisements and in publications to show off Baker products. Even female employees of his Company would dress up as the Chocolate-Girl at world fairs. 

Stitched with the beautiful The Thread Gatherer silk threads on lovely hand dyed Picture This Plus linens, the doll is finished with a hand dyed silk ribbon by The Thread Gatherer.