doll maker and businesswoman, was born in London on 6 November 1864. In 1872 she came with her parents and younger sister to Brisbane in the Great Queensland . They settled at Lake Cootharaba at Noosa, then an area of dense bush inhabited largely by Aborigines. Two girls, Widgeon and Kummera, became the Baron sisters’ playmates and inspired Sarah Ellen’s first dolls made many years later. Her parents had come to this remote spot in search of gold; when unsuccessful, her father worked at the local sawmill. Later they moved to Brisbane where Mrs Baron opened a restaurant.
Sarah Ellen Baron worked as a seamstress and helped out in the restaurant, a popular dining place for politicians. There she met Alfred Midgley, a poet, devout Methodist and MP; they were married in 1886 and had four daughters and two sons. After Alfred lost his seat and his produce store failed in 1887, they moved from Sandgate to Taringa, then Dara, finally settling in the Brisbane suburb of Corinda in 1890. Alfred became ill and Sarah Ellen helped support the family by making and selling jam and crocheting babies’ bonnets and jackets for wholesale suppliers to Brisbane stores. Later she set up the successful Corinda Knitting Mills and supplied Brisbane’s leading department stores direct; the firm was carried on by her son, William.
Alfred died in 1930, having been nursed by Sarah Ellen for years. She began to make her dolls after his death. By 1936 she was producing them from a cottage at Woollahra, Sydney, called 'The Gunyah’. Her married daughter in Townsville, Daisy Burnett, modelled the 'unbreakable’ clay faces which were fired in Dinmore Pottery’s Brisbane kilns. A son in Brisbane hand-whittled the boomerangs and spears carried by the male figures, then Sarah Ellen made the sateen covered bodies and assembled all the parts; finally, 'an artist’ painted on the tribal marks, all reputedly extensively researched for accuracy. The shells worn or carried by dolls such as Widgeon and Kummera were collected especially from the Barrier Reef. The dolls were a great success and sold from Townsville to Melbourne. Curran’s in Brisbane exported them to the United States where they sold to international doll collectors.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
