The figure, a miniature porcelain doll, which was so small it fitted neatly between her daughter’s thumb and forefinger, turned out to be a Frozen Charlotte and well over a hundred years old. This was no ordinary toy, however – Frozen Charlottes have sometimes been associated with a darker meaning bound up with the Victorian tale of a girl who froze to death on a sleigh ride to a New Year’s Ball. Poor Charlotte, so the story goes, refused to heed her mother’s advice to wrap up in a blanket against the cold and met a terrible fate.
The story fascinated Sally to such an extent that it became the focus of her dissertation when she embarked on an MA in History of Design and Material Culture at the University of Brighton where she worked a few years later. She graduated in February this year.
Sally says:
“I’ve always loved social history and I’ve always been a bit of a magpie, gathering objects that tell a story or hold a memory – so studying for this MA whilst working at the university as a part-time administrator was the perfect opportunity to develop my interests further. I was extremely fortunate to qualify for the staff fee waiver scheme, otherwise postgraduate study would not have been possible.”