Harvard resident Pat Hatch saw her first black cloth doll in a friend’s antique shop in 1973. The doll had a striking presence. She had no hair, and her features were so light as to be almost unnoticeable. She was large and soft and looked as though she had been loved very dearly by a child. Pat purchased the doll. She found another several years later and slowly her collection grew. What Pat saw in that first doll is at the heart of her collection: The dolls were made with love and had been loved greatly.

The collection consists of one hundred fifty black cloth dolls that were made between 1870 and 1930. Roben Campbell started documenting and researching the collection a year and a half ago. She found each doll strangely beautiful and different from anything she had ever seen. They all defy one’s expectation of what should come out of that time period. Very few books have been written on cloth dolls dating to the nineteenth century and next to nothing has been written on black cloth dolls. The exhibit No Longer Hidden is a first step to re-acquaint the public with the dolls.